Following Shatta Wale’s plea to identify one genre as Ghanaians that can be attributed to all music works in Ghana, the Deputy Minister-designate for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku-Mantey has disagreed with the assertion that Highlife music is lost in Ghana’s industry after the rise of other music genres.
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He claimed that the Highlife genre is the default rhythm among the numerous music genres that new artists are now experimenting with, he said this during his vetting by Parliament’s Appointment Committee on Tuesday.
According to him, people still produce Highlife songs till and date and despite the change and the adaption to other foreign genres, most of them have rudiments of Highlife.
He said that the kind of Highlife songs produced today has been the ones the youth enjoys most but it doesn’t mean that the genre is no more.
“We still enjoy highlife, we are still producing highlife but it is in a different form for the youth of today. It will be difficult for highlife to die, because most of the music we listen to today, even the dancehall, or other genres of music, they all have the rudiments of highlife,” he said.
Meanwhile, other industry players like Kwabena Kwabena, Arnold Asamoah Baidoo and others have also attested to the fact that Ghana is well known for Highlife despite our poor efforts in promoting the genre in the international market.