Rocky Dawuni dispels controversies surrounding ‘Kyen Kyen Bi Adi Mawu’
Rocky Dawuni, has cleared the air on controversies surrounding the release of his latest single, ‘Kyen Kyen Bi Adi Mawu’, off his recently launched ‘Beats of Zion’ album.
The song which features renowned Ghanaian rapper, Sarkodie, upon its release, had another rap artiste, Cabum- son of the songs original composer, spark up claims of Rocky not seeking the clearance to publish his version of the 1977 highlife classic by Alhaji K. Frimpong.
In his defense, Rocky, who had been silent since the inception of this issue, educated all and sundry on Hitz fm’s morning show with Andy Dosty on how he had rather done a remake of the old classic and not a sample that required copyright clearance.
He further defined a remake of a song as “picking up any song of your choice and building up upon its foundational idea to create a more refined, enhanced and personalized sound of the song” while citing and plugging in the mechanical of the rightful publishers of the song which he did and hence, needed no clearance before doing a new master of the old piece.
On the other hand Rocky, a Grammy nominated & global Reggae icon, castigated bloggers who had mistook his approach as sampling and published it across board.
He defined sampling as clearly picking portions of an original audio recording and using it to create your own record which wasn’t the case in his latest single.
Moreover, for as far as the copyright issues is concerned, he stated that he would compensate the original songwriter with his deserved royalties and had already contacted the family of the late Highlife legend and created a fund for the family to accommodate proceeds that come out of the sales of the song.
He reiterated, “I was gifted the opportunity to record anything I wanted in the best studio in the world and I decided to do this song out of respect to and to pay homage to Alhaji K Frimpong. I saw the tweet from his son, Cabum, and it was quite unfortunate but understandable.”
He confessed that the trolling and malicious dealings with this issue was understandable because of the limited information people had.
The multiple award-winning international artiste and Grammy nominee further stood by his resolve that he did the ‘Kyen Kyen Bi Adi Mawu’ song simply to honor Highlife music and project indigenous music content from Ghana on a global platform.
The song has since gained a widespread listening and a growing love for it since its release.
