NAFTI holds regional music workshop

The National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) in collaboration with the French Embassy in Ghana is organizing a two-week regional workshop for African music writers, composers and performers to produce appropriate sound tracks to back African films.

Mr Martin Loh, Director of the Institute, opening the workshop on Thursday, said the idea of training local musicians to be able to compose appropriate sound backing for African movies was hatched years back but due to financial constraints it had not been able to bring the dream to reality.

He thanked the French Embassy for providing funds and renowned resource persons to train the selected 10 participants from Ghana, Burkina-Faso and Togo who would train others as well.

Mr Loh noted that unlike the Western film industries, which use their original sound tracks to back and blend with specific scenes in their movies, almost 90 percent of African movies had these borrowed Western sound tracks that do not in most cases blend with the scenes of the movie.

“Though most of our African movies have beautiful images, the poor sound track to back the scenes makes the entire movie incomplete and we need to rectify this shortfall in order that our productions compete favorably with other films on the international market,” he said.

He said the African film industry was still developing, and urged the participants to make the best out of the training.

Mr Pierre Jacquemot, French Ambassador in Ghana said the Embassy was pleased to be associated with such a reform in the film industry in Africa, as it was the first time such a workshop was being held in the whole of the African continent.

He asked the participants to be very serious with the work as the success of the programme would depend on their maiden composition and outcome.

Mr Jacquemot underscored the importance of music to the environment, and said Africa was blessed with a large number of its own traditionally created musical instruments, which could be used to create unique music backings for its own movie setting without necessarily blending them with western sound tracks.

“Africa is already plagued with a wide range of problems such as wars, superstitions and other negative perceptions, which do not help in its development, therefore it is the duty of the film industry to appeal to minds and conscience of the people through positive images for a change,” he said.

He advised film producers to take a cue from the negative happenings in African societies, partly due to some of these negative things that some of these movies portray and begin to change African productions to portray more positive things about Africa.