Ghana’s creative arts industry may suffer a major setback in the coming months if the current load shedding exercise continues.
This is because the sector has been hard hit in the wake of the Ghana’s energy crisis.
[contextly_sidebar id=”O7HHoBQMKpnVRMn0jNn3xbRhDpXxi1iR”]The industry comprises of musicians, producers, event organizers among others and majority of them on a daily basis have to grapple with loosing clients and revenue due to the unstable power supply.
According to the CEO of D.S Studios in Tema Community 11, Seshie Dotse the current load shedding has made productivity very low amidst loss of revenue.
‘’Revenue has been really low; for instance if you are having 100 days of light and you make GHC 100cedis, it means you are losing GHC 66 per the latest timetable by the ECG considering the time that 66percent of the time, the lights are off’’.
Seshie is a prolific recording engineer and has worked with majority of Ghana’s gospel and hip life artists such as Sarkodie, Kofi Kinatta, Jayso, R2Bees as well as Qwesi Oteng among others.
For players in Ghana’s show biz industry, power is of the essence.
Without power, programs and huge shows are unable to be held.
If they were to be organized, generators will be the option, but some of the musicians who spoke to Citi Business News said they have not been able to work on majority of their music projects due to the intermittent power supply in the country.
One of them is Edem a hiplife artist he says ‘’basically, productivity has gone down and now planning is very shabby because one will want to record in the morning and have series of meetings in the afternoon but you get to the studio and find out the lights are out and that makes it very difficult for our industry.’’
And it’s the same story for Keche, the ‘’Diabetes’’ hit makers who are a bit hopeful that there soon will be a change.
‘’What can we do? It is affecting every work we do as musicians and I believe everyone is suffering, you want to do some promo cds or even record and the lights are off and that is a problem now’’.
For the ‘’Wengeze’’ hit maker, Eazzy, the load shedding has had a negative impact on her work as an artist as she has lost thousands of cedis since January due to unstable power supply.
‘’To be very factual, I have lost close to GHC 8000 cedis since the start of the year; for instance just recently, we had to raise GHC 4000 for my video shoot we got there are the generator we had wasn’t able take the frequency of the lights and we had to transport a plant and this pushed up our total expenditure.’’
Eazzy adds that they have had to pay for several studio sessions which ranges from 400-500 cedis.
Due to the load shedding, the use of generators has been the next available option for many industries, but according to Seshie, its use is not an option for him.
‘’When you are dealing with sound, there is a superimposition of wave fonts, and you know the ear has the capability of getting certain frequencies so if you are using a generator, there are feeds that could get into the work you are doing and ultimately have an effect on the final song.’’
But the industry must thrive regardless of the challenges, moving forward, recording Engineer Seshi Dotse, tells Citi Business News there should be a concerted effort to make available enough power to sustain the country’s thriving creative arts industry.
It seems for now players in Ghana’s creative arts industry will have to continue to bear the brunt of the load shedding otherwise known as Dumsor or the current name, ‘DUMDUM’.
This report was couched from the Citi Businss News ‘Dumsor Series’ which highlights the effect of the power crisis on the various sectors of the economy.
The ‘Dumsor Series’ airs every Friday on 97. 3 Citi FM’s, Citi Business News bulletins, at 7 o’clock in the morning on the Citi Breakfast Show, 1 o’clock in the afternoon and at 6:20 in the evening on Citi Eyewitness News.
By Lorrencia Nkrumah/ citifmonline.com/Ghana