Ghanaian highlife maestro Kwabena Kwabena has weighed in on contract disputes and misunderstandings that are recently making waves in the Ghanaian entertainment scene, sending a word of caution to up-and-coming artistes.
He has entreated them to involve lawyers whenever they are presented with a contract.
Speaking on GhanaWeb’s Talkertainment with Elsie Lamar, the artiste explained that although he has never signed to any label, he understands that every contract must have its clauses interpreted in layman’s terms.
“I have never signed to any record label so I probably might not be able to give an experience or a fair idea but the little I’ve studied around is that whenever you’re presented with a contract, the first thing you need to do is to get a lawyer to read the contract and interprete it to you, because every contract is law language” he explained
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He added that every party involved must understand what they are signing and be prepared to take responsibility for any consequences that come with it fully.
“If you put your signature to a certain contract, you must know that you are fully responsible for whatever consequences it brings,” he reaffirmed
Weighing in on the ‘Ground Up Chale’ vs. Kwesi Arthur saga, Kwabena Kwabena said he could not personally determine which party is at fault.
However, he stressed that the situation should serve as an opportunity to educate people on what to sign and what not to, rather than attaching emotions.
“In this case, we can neither say party “A” is guilty nor party “B” is guilty. Why am I saying that? Everybody put their interest in the contract. You read it, I read it; you sign, I sign, a witness signs. We must use this opportunity to educate people on what to put my signature under and what not to put my signature under instead of having an emotional understanding of it, because there are no emotions when it comes to law; must we all learn the hard way?” he detailed
He further advised, “My advice is that, having a label behind you is a good thing, it can open certain doors, it can take you to a certain level which individually you can’t, but please get a lawyer.”
He added, “The moment they’re interested in you, it means that they are confident that you can bring in revenue, so you must be interested in that revenue as well.”
PAT/EB
