Contemporary highlife musician, Kwabena Kwabena has said the new generation of artistes hold the opinion that the only means to be popular is by engaging in a lyrical battle with established artistes.
Reaffirming a statement by renowned recording engineer and music producer, Zapp Mallet that Ghana’s highlife music will soon die, the ‘Adult Music’ singer said he blames those experienced industry players who encourage the young artistes to lyrically jab established musicians to make their way easier to the top.
He explained that the young artistes are not being properly groomed to help champion the highlife agenda.
He also accused key industry players of not holding the forte for highlife music when they occupied positions they could have used to effect changes to the highlife music genre.
“The country we live in and the kind of problems that surround us is so big and we need national orientation because all those complaining about the challenges in our music industry are industry players who had the opportunity to occupy certain positions they could have used their positions to effect great change but now we’ve now turned into talkatives.”
Kwabena Kwabena told host of Kasapa Entertainment on Kasapa 102.5FM, Kojo Preko Dankwa he is now a target for telling the truth about the current state of Ghana’s music industry.
“For me Kwabena Kwabena, I’ve become a victim for speaking the truth. Everyone who speaks the truth about our music industry becomes a victim.
“The reason why Zapp Mallet said very soon our highlife music will be no more is because certain people in the industry have started championing a particular course to make our highlife music fade out soon. In this country if you want to sustain a genre, we rather push the young ones against the known artistes to beef them. Instead of teaching and nurturing these young talents to write good contents, an experienced person in the industry rather advises these young talented artistes to ‘diss’ and speak against legends to get hyped. We live in an industry where we no more live on talent but it is now hypes and ‘beefs’ to become people popular. How can you develop an industry that way?
Kwabena Kwabena admitted that the music industry as a whole is faced with so many challenges and the only means of effectively dealing with such issues is to have a change of attitudes towards the music industry.
“We admit people have talents yet we don’t support them. When I released my ‘Ashesi’ album, one senior industry player praised me that my album is one of the best highlife albums he has listen to. He later told me that the boys are no more playing my songs because I don’t come, I didn’t know what he meant by I don’t come. Even now I still have studio bills to clear… The problem highlife artistes face in the music industry isn’t peculiar to only me but to other highlife artistes too. Zapp Mallet is very right for saying that our highlife artiste may die soon.” Kwabena Kwabena told Kojo Preko Dankwa.
