Ghanaian highlife legend, Rex Omar, has confidently expressed that the Ghanaian highlife genre is one that will live on forever.
In an interview with NYDJ on Y Kumasi’s ‘Ryse N Shyne’ he expressed his conviction in these words: “Highlife can never die. The day highlife will die, all Ghanaians will die”.
According to him, the love of highlife music is an inherent quality of Ghanaians that it will be very hard to do away with. “That is why if you do your research, you will realize that most of the major hit songs have at least 80% highlife in them”, he added.
The only problem he had, however, was that Ghanaians did not value the genre until it was taken by other countries and rebranded to us.
“If we have highlife deeply rooted, we have to link it to all our traditional rhythms which we haven’t done. That is why a Nigerian can come and be making money out of it and Ghanaians are now mimicking Nigerians. Isn’t it sad?
People don’t know that Afro beats that was created by Fela Kuti came out of highlife. Fela used to live in Ghana and he came to study our highlife. He created his own Afro beats out of our highlife. It has always been like that so Ghana we always don’t like what we have. We always want something from outside even if it was stolen from us”, he stated.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah
