George Forest
Instrumentalists are very important people in the music industry but ace recording engineer Yaw Owusu aka George Forest has told Flex newspaper that they are the least respected in the music set up – a situation he is bent on fighting.
According to George Forest, because there is no respect for instrumentalists there are few bands in the country at the moment. Instrumentalists do not have the congenial environment and conditions to make them give their all.
“Instrumentalists are the real musicians. We cannot do away with them in the industry but ask yourself which measures have been put in place by past and present governments, and industry stakeholders to make their work better,” he bemoaned.
He said he has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts to train instrumentalists into bands. This is going to be in the form of youth employment but under the ministry of tourism and the youth can earn their living through playing instruments or a band.
“The Minister saw us play and was impressed and asked that we wrote a proposal for support. We have done that and we are hoping something positive comes from it,” he said.
“This is an issue we must all take seriously. We should not play with our instrumentalists at all. If we say we want to revive live band in Ghana, we cannot do that by relegating the players of the instruments to the back,” George noted.
The ace music producer reiterated that he was ready to train people who are interested in playing musical instruments and through this help create job for such music talents. According to him, all he needs now is financial support from government, corporate bodies and individuals.
George Forest is one of the revered recording engineers in Ghana who has won a lot of spurs in his field and owns a band called the Adepa Band. The band has Lisa, formerly of TV3 Mentor as one of its vocalists. Collins Tee, another sound engineer who recorded Kwame Adinkra song with Kwabena Kwabena, SP Kofi Sarpong’s Ontonko and First Love, Mama Esther’s Wa Ye Lucky on keyboards. He has worked on songs by Nana Acheampong, Obaapa Christy, Philipa Baafi, Gifty Osei among a blizzard of other renowned musicians.
