Ghana must make highlife her signature in music world

Ghanaian highlife singer Dada Hafco has said the genre can be Ghana’s signature in the music world.

The musician, who is of the opinion that the country needs to be known for a particular genre of music just like some other countries, was speaking in an interview with Prince Benjamin on the Big Show on Saturday, 23 May 2020 on Class91.3FM.

Dada Hafco also suggested that award schemes give priority to highlife music in order to promote it.

“For me, I have always said if the biggest winner on the night is the one who is crowned the highlife artiste of the year, believe me, everybody will drop whatever genre they're doing and do highlife music. Because, if the award scheme puts a song in a category, they should be able to sit down and say: ‘Henceforth, anyone who wins Highlife Artiste of the Year’ will be the ultimate winner of the night, and, for me, if we really want to change, it needs to start from there.”

The ‘Our Story’ hit maker also stated: “We [Ghana] need to create a signature for the world and that is highlife music, because nobody plays the Amponsah guitar better than us, nobody plays the Kwao guitar better than us and, so, we have certain things that we can use to imprint our sounds to the outside world”.

He added: “We have been living in people’s shadows, we do people’s music and we do Afrobeats music that we cannot lay claim to, we do reggae we cannot lay claim to, and we do hip-hop we cannot lay claim to. We need to have our own. One that when we put out there, nobody can contest us [with]”.