We cannot preserve highlife if we don’t understand it - Akwaboah

Exceptional Ghanaian highlife singer, songwriter and producer, Akwaboah Jr, has observed that Ghanaians do not have an in-depth understanding of the indigenous highlife genre and we cannot preserve it if we do not understand it.

He told Foster Romanus in an interview on eTV Ghana’s Late Nite Celebrity Show that, “Some are doing Sekyi but they don’t even know that is what they’re doing”, and he pointed Kelvynboy’s ‘My baby’ as an example of Sekyi highlife.

Questioned about whether this is the fault of the music producers or the artistes, he confessed that it is a problem more on the part of producers because they are the ones who need to understand highlife better so that they can apply that knowledge in composing and producing their highlife instrumentals.

“In Ghana, we have Kwame Yeboah, me, my dad, Victor. They are people that you can actually go to. Even with my songs, I don’t compose them alone. When I’m done with my structure, I call my guys; the guitarist, the bassist, the drummer and another keyboardist.

We all share ideas so it’s not just one person producing the ideas. By the time we’re done, I’d have spent about 4000 to 5000 cedis; but most of the producers we have, they only play one or two keys on the keyboard and the rest is his mind’, he said.

According to Akwaboah, artistes should know the different styles of highlife music so that they can choose for themselves what they want and understand what they are doing. Having this knowledge will in turn help in preserving our indigenous Ghanaian highlife music.