Doing music in Ghana is a ‘thankless’ job – M3nsa

Ghanaian musician and filmmaker, M3nsa has lamented that the music industry in Ghana lacks sufficient appreciation and recognition for the hard work and dedication of its artists.

M3nsa noted that Ghanaians often have a fleeting appreciation for musicians, enthusiastically supporting them one moment and abandoning them the next.

In an interview on Wednesday, June 26, he drew from his personal experiences, recounting the challenges he faced while crowdfunding his BONDZIE album. He revealed that even his own family members, aware of his music career, were hesitant to support his crowdfunding efforts.

“These experiences have led M3nsa to conclude that pursuing a music career in Ghana is a “thankless” endeavour.

“It’s a thankless job in a sense, of course it is. You know you get loved…even some family members were actually making me sell the idea to them. I don’t need to sell the idea to you, you know what I do but you know we took up the challenge and some people came through and they made up for the all the push backs and struggling,” he stated.

M3nsa said that even the group that’s supposed to help musicians in Ghana, MUSIGA, didn’t help him when he needed funding for a project.

M3nsa stated that despite following the proper channels, MUSIGA only contacted him after he had already completed the project, offering support too late to be of any help.

“We went there for funding and they told us to write a letter after we went through the process and we got a response after the film has been launched,” he added.