Reggie N Bollie did not portray Ghana well

The whole of Ghana was over elated when the prestigious X Factor 2015 finalist, Reggie N Bollie, announced their plans of shooting the most anticipated official video for their debut single titled New Girl in Ghana.

Signed to Simon Cowell’s Syco Music, the Ghanaian duo proved their vibrancy by being the first 2015 X Factor finalist to release a single in less than a year after participating in the reality show.

Reggie N Bollie after topping music charts with their New Girl summer anthem in the UK Pop music fraternity, decided to lace the hit banger with a top-notch video shot in their homeland, Ghana. Lo and behold, the highly awaited video which was directed by Prince Dovlo and Sesan Ogunro dropped last Friday. It starred Deborah Vanessa, Nii Funny and others.

With a good picture quality, the video undoubtedly pleases the eye, as its characters were seen in a party mood, making merry and enticing viewers to dance and sing along.

Prior to the video however, Reggie N Bollie disclosed that, their label deems Ghana a beautiful country and would thus love to broadcast that to the entire world through the video.

”Our label researched and discovered the beauty of Ghana so they want us to capture the Ghanaian vibe, the atmosphere, that youthfulness and smiles on faces of Ghanaians in the video to portray the Ghanaian culture in a positive way.”, they said on Live FM Ghana.

I stand to be corrected, but where is the Ghanaian culture in the video? A larger portion of the scenes had casts doing urban dance moves, with a smaller quarter depicting tourist attraction sceneries in Ghana.

The other scenes had the duo doing most of their singing in front of a dirty broken wall, with other brief scenes of happy kids in tattered clothes grooving to the song, as well as school boys playing football with Reggie N Bollie.

And where was the New Girl? Was she the one in Bikini? What has a half-naked lady dancing at the beach and a coconut seller drinking his own coconut got to do with Ghana’s culture?

Broadly speaking, there is more to the Ghanaian culture than that which was illustrated in the New Girl video. It would be impossible to capture everything Ghanaian, but touching on our most unique or major cultures as a people could be used.

Reggie N Bollie is an international brand now, so in representing Ghana in any form whatsoever, they ought to show our positives and rich cultures. It’s about time slums, dirty neighborhoods, poor residents, etc are eradicated from our videos all in the name of describing African countries.

Certain scenes should have been scrapped off to give way for more tourists sites, native clothing, local food, dance and to mention but a few.

Showing the whites what we also have is not swanking; it’s showcasing our self esteem or pride as a people. It will in one way or the other prevent others from looking down on us.