The public is being bombarded with all types of popular music that lack originality and real skill, a situation which keyboards player, composer and arranger Ato Scott Benin, better known as Red Cap says must be discouraged if Ghanaian music is to make any serious impact on the world scene.

Red Cap has therefore advised young Ghanaian musicians to learn music and make the effort to create their own songs instead of adapting foreign melodies and fitting them with local lyrics, as appears to be the craze now.
Speaking to Showbiz in Accra earlier in the week, Red Cap said the unskilful adaptation of foreign melodies has the potential of stalling the development of original Ghanaian music.

According to him, the practice could eventually lead to a situation where music originating from the country would not be competitive on the international scene because the melodies on which the songs are based would have long become stale and fitting local lyrics would not bring any new dimension.

Red Cap who was into popular music for over 30 years after he resigned from the Ghana Armed Forces in 1968, is now the principal organist at The Calvary Methodist Church and associate organist at the Ridge Church both in Accra.

He has not abandoned his interest in popular music but now uses his free time to arrange, programme and produce works for emerging artistes like Martin Hayford with whom he collaborated on a recently-released gospel album.

Red Cap has also successfully completed work on highlife and gospel tracks for Paapa Yankson and is currently at work on two new pieces by Amandzeba.

He told Showbiz that what the young Ghanian musicians are doing now happened in Cote D’ Ivoire in the 1980s when some of their artistes like Bailey Spinto, Francois Lougah and others put Ivorian dialects to popular European melodies.

In less than a decade, he said, it became clear that the wealth of Ivorian cultural repertoire had been discarded for something that completely stalled the progress and development of their music.

It took the bravado of artistes like Freddie Meiway, Ernesto Djedje and Chantal Taiiba to re-steer Ivorian music back on course.

Red Cap suggests that in order to arrest the deteriorating situation in music, companies currently spending huge sums of money to sponsor young musicians should insist that they compose their own songs instead of copying other people’s melodies.

“My worry is that young people keen on becoming musicians are not interested in learning music.

You cannot become a lawyer if you do not study law and you cannot be called a doctor if you have not studied medicine. So why don’t budding musicians want to study music?”

Red Cap has recently been re-arranging old highlife and gospel tunes with enhanced melodies.

He intends to release them at the end of the year and would be performing sometimes with a group made up of musicians including guitarists Kwesi Danqua and Prosper Budu, bassist Abu Isaaka and drummer Gabriel Gablah.

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