Ghana’s Rap doctor Okyeame Kwame says Nigerians, Librarians and Ivory Coasts are not wrong to acclaim the originator of Ghana’s authentic sound, highlife music.
According to him, to ascertain the originator of the music genre, history has to be compared.
Speaking exclusively on a phone interview with Max TV during the e-Quick entertainment show on Tuesday, the “No Competition” hitmaker said history could only put an end to such an argument.
“If you haven’t gone to someone’s farm before, you might think you owned the biggest farm so they are not wrong to acclaim the originator of the highlife music genre,” he stated.
However, Okyeame Kwame explained that from the books he read from the renowned musicologist who doubles as a cultural historian, John Collins, highlife music originated from Ghana.
“It started in Ghana in the middle of the 1920s when the precolonial masters were being bitten by mosquitoes. Around that period, they fetched for soldiers from Trinidad and Tobago as well as Jamaica. Those soldiers taught our ancestors how to play guitar and our ancestors also composed their own songs from what they learnt,” he explained.
As far as Okyeame Kwame was concerned, highlife music originated from Ghana but his view was opened for discussion only when Nigerians were able to bring evidence from their historians to prove Ghanaians wrong.
