Is Ghanaian music ready to go global? – Part 1.

There’s been a lot of talk about Ghanaian music in recent times, following the rise of the Kumerican Asakaa Drill, the introduction of young talents going global like Amaarae, Black Sherif and Gyakie; as well as the infamous “Freedom Concert” rant by Shatta Wale. One question stays unanswered despite all this, why is Ghanaian music not performing as well as music from other African countries, especially Nigeria and South Africa? We taken am extensive look at music in general and have identified four factors that influence the global reach of a particular type of music, namely, cultural, creative, technical and business. Let’s first look at the cultural aspect of music from Ghana and how it can be harnessed.

There was a joke flying on Twitter getting to the end of 2021, where an American said, if he were at an airport lounge and he saw a Nigerian, Jamaican and Ghanaian the only way he’d be able to tell who’s Ghanaian is the one trying to fake an American accent. As funny as it sounds, the truth in this is so brutal. This has been an agelong problem of how we are quick to adopt other cultures just to fit in, shunning what is inherent to us. Ghanaian dancehall artiste Shatta Wale, alluded to this some time back, when he went on one of his rants after coming back from a short stay in America, noting that the Ghanaian Music industry as a whole needed to come together and push a particular sound. That was a salient point. You can cast your mind back to the early 2010s when Ghanaians had the whole world dancing to “Azonto,” it was rather unfortunate some of the artistes at the time pushed an agenda against it. Why so?

Embracing one’s culture starts from self, you need to know who you are, to have a better sense of identity and self-worth because you can’t give what you don’t have. Music has proven to be spiritual, so as a musician, one should be able to translate that spiritual essence of culture into their music. It often appears foreigners would come to Ghana, take something that’s exclusive to the country and finesse it better than Ghanaians do. Here is a prime example: In 2021, the France High Commission organized an event where they brought some artistes from there to come interact with the Ghanaian people and feature some of their artistes. A very big cultural exchange, but between these two countries, who is winning? It is high time the Ghanaian music industry collectively came together to pushing a single genre unique to the country. There’s an abundance of resources to tap into like the infamous “Ghana bounce” rhythm, Highlife, Kpanlogo, the “Fante Masquerade Brass Bands” and so many others.

This would be the first step to readying the “Ghanaian Sound” for the global stage. After identifying the cultural elements comes the creativity needed to translate it into music. We are going to discuss this in the part 2 of the series.