Nkonkonsa Celebrity Gossip From Africa
Ghanaian actor and broadcaster, Mikki Osei Berko, popularly called Dada Boat, has expressed ill feelings about the premium that some artistes are giving to dancehall/reggae music in Ghana.
Mikki Osei Berko says it is unwise for any musician in the country to claim to be a dancehall/reggae artiste because the music genre doesn’t represent Ghana and also do not reflect the country’s culture.
He poured out his heart in an exclusive interview on Nkonkonsa on YouTube.
He stated that artistes like Samini, Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale who are Ghana’s topnotch dancehall artistes are not doing the country any good because instead of them singing the original tune of Ghana, they have rather adopted foreign music and marketing themselves as dancehall artistes.
Dada Boat was upset that the dancehall/reggae artistes in the country are not doing highlife to market the nation’s real authentic music.
He explained that highlife music originates from Ghana and has a local musical content that should be sold to the world and to enhance tourism in the country.
According to him, the dancehall/reggae artistes are helping a foreign country like Jamaica to popularize their foreign culture to override highlife which is born in Ghana.
Mikki Osei Berko added that Jamaica feeds on the originality of their music which is primarily dancehall/reggae.
”Most of their tourist attraction is based on their music”, he said and so asked Ghana’s dancehall artistes ”are you helping Jamaica or you’re helping Ghana?”
Touting further the uniqueness of highlife music, he mentioned Nigeirian legendary music icon the late Fela Kuti of riding on Ghana’s highlife to gain popularity all over Africa because he fused highlife music with Nigerian music tunes.
The sad thing, he expressed, is that although foreign arts are taking advantage of highlife, they don’t identify themselves as highlife musicians and so wondered why the Ghanaian arts would refer to themselves as dancehall/reggae artistes.
”You can claim to be doing some reggae in your tune but I don’t think that it’s wise to claim you are a dancehall or reggae artiste because that is not your music. That’s what I think. We need to promote our own music. Other reggae musicians sometimes play R&B songs and so forth but they identify themselves as reggae musicians…Why don’t they identify themselves as highlife musicians?”
Mikki Osei Berko therefore advised Ghanaian artistes to cherish and sell highlife to the world and stop copying foreign arts into the country.
Watch full interview below:
Source: NKONKONSA.com
