I grew up listening to Reggae music and it has played a major role in my up bringing. In 2006, I published and executively produced a reggae song titled ‘African Girls’ by Akesifour which was nominated for Best Reggae song of the year at the Ghana Music Awards ’06 which Samini strangely took with his ‘Odo’ song.
Fast forward to 2015 and I got nominations for “It’s so Crazy” by De Voice for both the VGMAs and BASS Awards. This preamble is just to let you know where I stand when it comes to Reggae Music. I am for Reggae and will never disrespect it but that doesn’t mean it should be prioritised over what we have as a nation as in Highlife.
Now the issue here is Dancehall Music and a culture which is taking over our system gradually as if we don’t have an identity as a nation and the way Gatekeepers have become onlookers because of the benefits they are getting from it and not caring about what becomes of the future generation.
Fact is we can’t replace our intestine with cotton wool and expect to survive and that’s the issue Fatau Keita raised which I agree with him totally.
Music has great influence on a society so if Jamaicans are speaking against their own genre called Dancehall why have we embraced it with both hands as a Nation.
The Prime Minister of Jamaica have spoken against Dancehall and recently Luciano and many Jamaican Artists have spoken against Dancehall and it’s culture.
So if the frog comes from underneath the water to tell me that the crocodile is dead who am I to challenge him.
Their biggest dancehall artist as in the Jamaican Dancehall king Vybz Kartel is in jail right now serving a sentence for life imprisonment for killing another human being and is this what you want us to adopt as a Nation. A culture that promotes Violence and Drugs is that what you want this Great Nation to turn into.
We have a lot of great Highlife rhythms yet we are chasing madness and the Nigerians have rather come for our Highlife and have fused it with Afro-beats and are touring around the world whiles we travel there to go and play what they already have and do better than us. What is more annoying is that we can’t even speak the patois well according to Luciano.
I am more concerned about the way we put others above ours for example using Gramps Morgan from Jamaica as the Face of Ghana Panafest whiles we have our own great Artist like Amandzeba and co in fact someone should tell me what benefit that decision brought to us during the panafest festivities. How many people even heard Gramps was in town that is if he even came.
It’s time we realised that nobody will come and fix our country for us but it will take that conscious effort from you and I to put Ghana First.
Once again like Fatau Keita said let us minimise the playing of their Dancehall and maximise our Highlife.
Credit: Enock Agyepong
