The Good, Bad And Ugly At #FreedomConcert With Sarkodie, Samini, Stonebwoy, others

Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi was the place to be during the celebration of Ghana’s 58th Independence Day. The much-hyped event, Freedom Concert finally came off on 6 March 2015 at the stadium with performances from Sarkodie, Kwabena Kwabena, Stonebwoy, Samini, Akatakyie, Guru, Kaakie, Kofi Kinaata, Nero X, Andy of Mentor 1, Kwadwo Nkansah Liwin and many others.

Let me take some few minutes of your time to analyze how the show went for those who were absent to have a clue of what the first edition of Freedom Concert went.

Promotion

Reflects Ghana Limited, organisers of the show really put in much effort to promote the maiden edition of the concert. With the exception of TV promotion, they used almost all channels of promoting an event – billboards, radio, posters, online, social media networks, float and many others. Even on the day of the event, Luv 99.5 FM played the jingle of the concert like they were playing music. Every song they played on the day had the advert of the show playing. The musicians also granted interviews on radio stations to tell the people of Kumasi that they were in town

Time

The show started late. I was told it rained two times at the venue which led to the late start of concert. It started around 10:30 so you can imagine when it ended when almost all the artistes performed for an hour or more. The show ended around 5:30 AM.

Attendance

I got to the venue around 8 pm and I was sad for the organisers. I thought Kumasi was a bad place to organise the first edition of the concert, especially charging Gh 20, Gh40, and Gh60 for regular, VIP and VVIP tickets respectively. Things changed when it was around 12 midnight. In fact, people were actually waiting to make the Freedom Concert their last chilling point after attending all the night clubs and pubs around town on the night of the holiday. The crowd was massive from Stonebwoy’s first performance to Sarkodie’s last song he performed.

Security

Organisers of the show promised a very tight security and they went by their words. The security men around the stadium were countless. I even saw a man arrested because he threw an empty can at Stonebwoy when he was on stage. I also heard that people were arrested outside the stadium for stealing and others for smoking marijuana. The security men looking after the artistes did not joke with their work at all.

One problem I had with the security was, they did not create any margin between the stage and the crowd because they all came to stand in front of the stage which even allowed people to climb the stage and others held the artistes’ legs.

There were three MCs on the night of the show – DJ Reuben and Anita all of Luv FM and another Luv FM presenter joined them later. I had a problem with how they went about the show. They had to come on stage to mention all the artistes which came on stage to perform even to the extent of the underground guys. They wasted most of the time at the concert. Imagine what will happen if there were to be 200 artistes performing and they had to come on stage to mention their names anytime any artiste was to come on stage to perform.

More than 10 underground artistes performed on the night of the concert so you can just picture how they wasted time when the MCs had to come on stage to mention the names of all the underground artistes including the known artistes who performed on the night. As you know, an MC will not just come on stage to mention the name of the next act; the person has to give some long talks before mentioning the artiste’s name as if we do not know him already. To me, they shouldn’t have been introducing all the artistes knowing very well that the event had started late.

They could have left the underground artistes to come one after the other without mentioning their names

DJ
Andy Dosty was on point. He came in when the crowd was bored with the Adowa troop which started the event. The enjoyed almost all his selections. You could hear the noise whenever he “dropped” a song. He knew the kind of songs to play for a crowd had been sitting down for hours and there was no show. Andy started his mixes before the underground artistes came on stage to perform so he was like John The Baptist of the musicians.

Sound

The least said about the sound on the night, the better. This is when an artiste proves his or her maturity. Stonebwoy who started the show had a great sound but after him, everything went bad. The sound men tried to make things better on the night but things did not work for them as expected. I heard some say those at the popular stand were not hearing the sound when Kwabena Kwabena was on stage.

During Guru’s performance, I went away from the stage to access the sound and indeed it was bad. You could hear only bass so with what the artiste was saying, it is just those in front of him that could hear.

Performances

The show started with underground artistes coming to sing just a single track of theirs. They were more than 10 and majority of them were booed at – how sad it was. After these underground acts that came to waste people’s time was Andy of Mentor 1 fame. The guy moved the crowd. They sang along his songs which showed that he was somebody back then. Nero X was also on stage and had people singing along to his “Osey” song.

Then came Stonebwoy who performed for an hour, from 12 to 1 AM. Stonebwoy was to leave for UK on the night so that made him perform first. He did really proved why he was nominated for artistes of the year at this year’s VGMAs.

Kwabena Kwabena was next. As I said earlier about the bad sound, it started from Kwabena Kwabena’s performance. The band had to come to a halt when they started because the output was VERY bad. As mature as Kwabena is, he started entertaining with a Capella version of his songs till the sound was good enough for them to join. Kwabena started his performance from 1 to around 2:15.

After Kwabena Kwabena was Akatakyie who just came to slow the event. That is what they came to do so let’s move on to Guru and Liwin.

Until that night, I had never seen a crowd jumping to Guru’s songs like that before. Even with the bad sound, all the songs Guru did were chorused by the multitude who had gathered for the show. The madness of the crowd got worse when Liwin joined him. Liwn after performing with Guru for some minutes started sharing his costume he brought on stage. He gave out almost everything he brought on stage.

Then came the time of the Highgrade Family. Kaakie did not impress at all with her live band performance. She started at a slow pace thinking she would raise the tempo but went off stage after performing for some minutes. Maybe she had to go off stage because time was fast running. Kofi Kinaata followed Kaakie and his performance was OK. Both artistes started their performance around 3:30 AM and finished around 4 for their boss Samini to take over.

Samini was in a rush for Sarkodie to come on stage so he had to cut some of his songs on the night. He performed close to an hour. There was no way Samini could go off stage without his freestyle. The freestyles Samini gave on the night made the crowd enjoyed his performance more.

Then was Sarkodie who came to close the whole Freedom Concert. Sarkodie is still on top of his game, I tell you. There was no VVIP or VIP when he came on stage. They all trooped to stand in front of the stage just to enjoy his performance well. Sorry to those who were at the popular stand because they did not get get chance of being there. Sarkodie brought the whole show to an end around 5:30 Saturday morning.

Kudos to the organisers of the show for a great concert they put together on 6 March 2015 for the people of Kumasi. We hope to see the second edition of Freedom Concert next year on Ghana’s 59th Independence Day.