Ghanaian music has no identity – says highlife musician

Ghanaian High-life artiste Terry Asare Boamah, popularly known in the music industry as Dada Hafco, has insisted that Ghanaian music has no identity.
Dada Hafco, who was a member of a hip-life group called ‘Mframa’ which made hit songs like ‘Filifil’, expressed his belief that Ghana music has lost its coherence.
“I have measured myself in Highlife and rap but I feel more comfortable in doing Highlife. The thing is, Ghana music has no identity, Ghanaian music has no identity and I feel that we can easily identify ourselves with Highlife just like Okukusaku and co did,” he told Happy FM.
When quizzed by host of the show, DJ Advicer of why current musicians do good Highlife songs and refer to it as Afro-pop, the ‘Fault of a woman’ hitmaker answered, “I can say the fault is usually not from our side, the VGMA board, for instance when they sit. One thing we should be careful about ,when someone has done an Afro pop song which has small element of highlife in it and we call highlife, it maybe wrong. When we were growing, you listened to reggae and from then, when you hear reggae you will know its reggae.”
“So it is from how the board categorizes it, and lot of people think it’s only the aged people that can do highlife,” he added
“The reason I say our music doesn’t have an identity is that when a Nigerian or South African song is playing, you can easily tell where it is coming from. Unlike Ghanaian music, it will be difficult for a foreigner who doesn’t understand our language to know it’s a Ghanaian song.”
Dadahafco is currently promoting his new single dubbed “Ye be wu nti”.