He is a maestro of hybrid African music and has represented Ghana home and abroad to high acclaim since 18. 50 years on, this veteran African music shows no sign of slowing down; instead, he is waxing stronger. With his 68th birthday around the corner, Nana Gyedu-Blay Ambolley recently released his 28th CD titled The Different Shades of Ambolley.
The Simigwa Do singer, who recently returned from The Netherlands where he re-mastered his current release, passed by our newsroom earlier in the week and was gracious enough to oblige us with an extensive interview, during which he took us round his world. He bared his mind about the politics of MUSIGA. Weekend Sun also grilled the grandmaster on sundry issues of life. Excerpt.
You were a principal actor in the leadership tussle of MUSIGA a few years ago, why were you part of it?
I was the Vice President of MUSIGA from 1979 to1988 before I left that time Koo Nimo was the president. And it is in our constitution that when you become a President or Vice President, you become a life member and you don’t pay dues anymore. By the time I came back from America, Sidiku Buari was the president and he had mafiaised the union. Before his term, every musician was voting when it was time for election.
He changed that system by selecting 10 members from each region to vote; the implication is that these 10 members could be easily bribed to vote for anybody that they wish. I was fighting Sidiku Buari at that time, because he claimed that he had painted the union office and had also done so many things, and I said, “If you had done all that you claimed, bring out your expenditure record and let us see.” The explanation never came till today. I challenged him on so many things because I knew the magnitude of the malpractices that was going on there.
He was afraid that if I come in, all the malpractices will come unto light. That was why he was fighting me, otherwise, why should an outgoing president be fighting someone who was coming in? He fought me because he had mafiaised the union by instituting the 10-man vote per region. They were paid to vote for Diana Hopson. Diana Hopson came and she too was also fighting me.
When another election time came, people from the electoral commission were bribed to give it to Obuor Brice. Anybody who heard of it was shocked that, between Ambolley and Obuor, they gave it to Obuor; it means that something is not right. Obuor too came into the position and he is also fighting me. And nobody is asking why three presidents are fighting Ambolley only. Diana Hopson was a continuation of Sidiku Buari; Obuor is an extension of Diana Hopson.
At the election, they made Sidiku Buari the chairman, because they knew what they were doing. When we went for election in Tamale, some of the members came to me and said: “Mr. Ambolley, Obuor and his supporters are going from room to room dishing out money, won’t you do something? And I said No. I have travelled and have had experience; I want to bring it back so that we can restructure the union for the benefit of all. If you want me to give you money or bribe you to vote for me, I won’t do it.
How has this type of politics affected music in Ghana today?
The government gave two million Ghana Cedis to MUSIGA. Go there right now, it is just as it was before. If you go to their bathroom, you can’t even use it. This two million is equivalent to 20 billion old cedis. If they want to set up a recording studio, they can use that money to do it. When I was in Los Angeles, I was part and parcel of the LA Musician Union. They had a studio there. If you go to a normal studio and it costs you like 50 dollars an hour, then if you are a member, you pay about 20 dollars an hour.
So it helps the musicians to record. These are the things they need to do because the welfare of musicians is very important. So many people that have contributed a lot to music, when they die and you go to their funerals, what you see are pathetic. Very pathetic.
When P.K. Yamoah died and we went to Swedru, the union came to donate only GHC100, for a man who contributed a lot. It is not only him – Thomas Frempong, Agyeku and Alhaji K Frimpong, all of them, pathetically. MUSIGA is there for the welfare of musicians. They need to restructure the place; they need to organise seminars. They need to organise workshops. They need to train the up-and-coming ones.
Do you think you have lived a fulfilled life?
I always thank God, because many a time when driving round town, people see me and their first reaction is to smile or start laughing because they remember some of my music. Aside from that, children, about 10 years old see me and they point at me. Some will start singing one of my songs and that gets me thinking: hey, when I sang that song, this kid wasn’t born! I always thank God for that because, I thought, and I still think, that I have done something that have become indelible in people’s mind.
If you have your life to live again, what would you want God to change about your life?
I will never trade my country, Ghana and Africa for anywhere else. There are some guys I left back in America, but since I came back I never missed America one moment. I never miss it, because I know what is going on there. When we were children, we were crazy about America because of what we saw in the movies. I thank God that I went there because it opened my eyes in so many ways. So many things I didn’t know before I left the shores of this country, I saw them and I got to understand so many thing. I will never exchange here for America and if I am coming back in another lifetime, I will ask the Most High: give me back my music.
What do you think of God?
I respect the African God more than the God that the white man came to sell to me. If you look at Africa, everything that a human being needs, God has given to the black man here: sun, water, arable land, and mineral resources – everything that man needs. It means that the God that gave me all these things love me. Why do I have to leave that and go after a God that comes from a barren land? Europe is a barren land. The sun only shines abundantly there for about three months in a year.
Are you a Christian?
I am a son of God. Christianity is being manipulated and it’s making people not to be themselves. If you go to the Bible, Jesus said he did not come to destroy but to fulfill. It means there was something there already.
What do you think of highlife music?
Highlife music is our heritage. It is something that we need to cherish, because every country has its culture. If you talk about reggae music, you know that it came from Jamaica; if you talk about salsa, we know it came from South America, if you talk about Jazz, it came from America. If you talk about Ghana and Ghanaians, people should know us as the originator of highlife. So we need to respect what we have and we need to make it accessible to the other parts of the world so that they will know that we are a people of culture.
The future of our music
Our music has been going through different formations. Nevertheless, the future is bright for our music. It is something that we have to work at it because the infiltration is too much. If you go to the university to study music, you will be taught Mozart, Beethoven and the rest. What is the relevant of Mozart here, when you have abundant of successful local musicians?
How old would you be by your next birthday?
By my next birthday, April 16, 2015, I will be 68 years old. I was born in 1947.
