Dada Hafco
Hip life artiste turned highlife musician, and a former member of the music duo Mframa, Terry Boamah, known in showbiz as Dada Hafco, has fingered DJ’s and event organizers as highlife game killers.
He described the event organizer as one who will never bill highlife artistes because of live band. According to Dada Hafco, highlife music is better showcased with live band but event organizers looking at the cost of hiring live band together with the charge of the highlife artiste, he would rather go for the hip life or dancehall artiste who will come to mime and save cost and in consequence stripping off highlife musicians from the bill.
Dada Hafco said they need to give highlife musicians the exposure by hiring live band for shows in order to bill high life artistes to perform. The Musuo singer, did not only blame the event organizers but has bitterly accused the Ghanaian DJ’s who ignore highlife music due to BPM’s (Beat Per Minute) whenever they have the airtime to play.
“Highlife songs are not supposed to run on BPM’s. I don’t do music looking at the speed at which it goes, whether 120 or 110. The music comes forth to me as an inspiration, so whether reggae or mid tempo or fast tempo, all I do is to deliver good content and I am good to go. DJ’s are always after BPM running from 120 or 119 and because most highlife tunes do not have them, they resort to other genres, ignoring highlife,” the Dada Bees president lamented.
Notwithstanding all of this, Hafco believes all of these highlife killers will come to book if MUSIGA and the Minister of Creative Arts will put the objective of promoting our own to play and instructing all radio stations to have 90% air play of solid Ghanaian music as it`s done in South Africa and by so doing, the Ghanaian music will look attractive for foreigners to tap into it.
He urged MUSIGA to create more record labels as well to relieve musicians of the pain of going through the hustle of doing independent work like going to the studio, record and promote music all by themselves. He went on to condemn broadcast stations that take money from local artistes to air their songs but will keep promoting foreign contents for free.
“If we could scrap that and give a lot of attention to Ghanaian stuff, we will definitely go on sale outside. If hip life started like this and Sarkodie is filling the Apollo’s then, highlife can do same too. To go international is broad but we must first start from here. We need to champion ourselves and if we do, outsiders will give attention to us,” Hafco pointed out.
Dada Hafco as well refuted the idea of highlife music not appealing to the international front and that it will only survive here in Ghana. He emphasized that, music goes beyond language barrier just as most songs have become hits in Ghana where the lyrics made no sense to the listener. He however admitted that, highlife music is difficult reviving after its death but in some few years, it’s going to be lively just as it was in the 1970’s / 80’s where highlife was projected outside our boundaries.
“The recent generation has come to accept that, it is only in highlife you will get good content, lyrics and groove with proper instrumentation all put together. A lot of musicians like me, Okyeame Kwame, Sarkodie, Keche and the likes are following the trend of highlife and gradually the genre is bouncing back and with time everyone will descend to it”.
“Highlife is Ghana. I was born into it but did hip life and after realizing that is what will put us on the map like it did with Nana Ampadu, E.T Mensah, Rex Omar and others, with the help of enough pushing, we can get out there,” Hafco concluded.
