'Years from now, we won't be proud of the songs we have' - Akwaboah fumes

Renowned Ghanaian Highlife singer and songwriter Akwaboah has lamented over what he described as a troubling wave of copycat culture in Ghanaian music.

This, according to him, is affecting the quality of the music in the country.

Speaking in an interview with Nana Romeo on ‘Atuu’, the 'Odo Pa' hitmaker expressed concern that the influence of foreign music trends has led many Ghanaian artistes to abandon their creative identity, leading them to produce songs that are similar to one another.

"Nigerian musicians have a certain way they do their music. When that trend came to Ghana, a lot of Ghanaian artistes took it up. Nowadays, if I listen to some songs by Ghanaian artistes, I cannot differentiate. They are all the same," he said.

Akwaboah warned that if the trend continues unchecked, the long-term consequences for Ghana's music heritage could be severe.

"If this continues, years from now, we will not be proud of what we have. Everybody is just copying everybody. It will get to a point where people will be tired of all music sounding the same. Someone can release an album, and all songs on that album will sound the same. After three months, everyone forgets,” he bemoaned.

The singer further shared his frustration of watching quality works by him and other artistes get overlooked while other ‘shallow’ songs gain traction.

"I know that what I do is way different from what those songs are. But they won't pay attention to me.

"We have artistes like Kofi Kinaata and Fameye doing authentic Highlife, but no one pays attention to that," he noted.

Akwaboah further lamented Ghanaian musicians' refusal to identify with their indigenous genre, Highlife.

"When you go to Jamaica, you know they have Reggae. America has Hip-Hop and RnB. The UK has its own specific genre. Everyone has their own genre.

“But if you come to Ghana and ask any random artiste what they do, you will be hearing foreign genres, meanwhile we have Highlife," he said.

ID/EB

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