Moves to promote Ghanaian music underway

The Ghana music industry, for the past decades, has recorded low patronage of musical albums on the international music scene due to lack of promotion and the strategy used in marketing Ghanaian music on the world market.

Ghanaian music has been and is still being marketed within Ghanaian communities in various European countries, America and other parts of the world.

Currently the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) is working hard to create an office dedicated to developing, promoting and marketing Ghanaian music internationally.

The union had also received funding from the Cultural Initiative Support Programme (CISP) to train members on contracts and the use of written agreements.

The union is also rehabilitating a rehearsal unit at the head office with support from the Danish Cultural Fund to help those who cannot afford some things needed to enhance their work.

MUSIGA, headed by Mrs. Diana Hopeson, is working on a project that would give Ghanaian musicians an opportunity to promote their music globally through the internet.

The project, BEATWAVES learnt, has already started and will allow people all over the world to log onto www.tvu.com/musigatv to access musical clips and tunes from Ghanaian musicians and it also enables the artistes to sell their music on line.

Mr Willie Roy, Coordinator of the project, told a gathering of Ghanaian musicians that music from Ghana would also be available on youtube, an online network among other things. The project will as well control the rate of piracy of recorded musical works of Ghanaian artistes.

In a related development, one of Ghana’s music icons, Bice Osei-Kuffour aka Obour, has urged all Ghanaians not to see music and for that matter musicians as mere entertainers.

He said music holds the key to unlocking economic wealth and can be used as a tool for social change. "That is why musicians should not be underestimated as mere entertainers and concert people."

Obour told BEATWAVES in a chat that limiting music to just entertainment could be suicidal.

He indicated that countries like Jamaica were making huge economic gains through music and Ghana could learn some lessons from that. He confirmed his admiration for the people of Jamaica for using music as a major tool for tourism development.

“Millions of tourists visit Jamaica every year to partake in reggae sound splash and that brings into their kitty hard currency.” He added that music should therefore not be limited to entertainment but seen as a tool for national development.