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Gyedu-Blay Ambolley blames young acts for prioritizing other genres over Highlife

He believes that Highlife can never die because it gave birth to other genres.

Ace Ghanaian highlife act, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, has hammered in on the dwindling love for Highlife and the reason why songs of current young artistes loose relevance swiftly.

The legend made this assertion during an interview with Foster Romanus on the Late Nite Celebrity Show on eTV Ghana, in response to whether or not Ghanaians are really losing our highlife sound due to the introduction of the Afrobeat music genre.

“The younger ones are helping our heritage to be lost because they are doing more of dancehall, more of reggae, and all that but we all know that dancehall and reggae came from Jamaica. The blacks that were sent away from here created that in Jamaica but we have our own.”

“Our own is highlife and every dance music in the world, whether South Africa, America, or anywhere, has highlife connotations in them because highlife is the root. Jazz, pop, hip hop, and all the others are all branches of highlife but the younger ones are sheering more into dancehall”, he said.

He lamented that this is possibly going to continue because most of the current DJs are also not inclined with knowledge about the rudiments and cadences of music, and they are not from the days of highlife, hence they also support them and promote these songs on their platforms.

Gyedu-Blay noted however that, “Highlife can never die because it gave birth to dancehall, reggae, jazz, rap and genres like that”.

Furthermore, Gyedu-Blay explained that the type of music the current crop of artistes do easily die with time unlike those from back in the days by himself and other legendary highlife artistes like Amakye Dede and others.

He explained that this was because the majority of music producers currently do not invest time and effort to put together the instrumentals with the rudiments of music.

“Today’s music has been a sharp-sharp style of music because the younger ones just get a computer and work on fruity loops to create rhythms. Some of the rappers even go to the studio, the engineer plays different beats and then they just choose one that they like.

“Our time, it wasn’t like that. Our time, it’s not somebody who’s going to create it for you. You create it because we learnt what is called music; the rudiments of music, the cadences of music and all that. The younger ones these days don’t know about the rudiments and the cadences of it so sharp things also die out sharp sharp”, he reiterated.

Gyedu-Blay stated that aside from the issue with the instruments, the lyrics of most young artistes do not make sense.

According to him, the lyrics in music from his time were ones that reflect our way of life, however, our young musicians, on the other hand, are singing more about their girlfriends than the realities of life.

He advised young artistes to pay attention to the kind of lyrics they use for their songs so that the next generation can come and still enjoy the songs.

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Emmanuel Ghansah, Ghana Music

Singer, Songwriter, scriptwriter, blogger, lover of the creative arts, brands and communications expert.

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