Kwabena Bhonerg
90 Degrees Tribe, an event organising company located in Tema Metropolis, is set to revive the indigenous highlife music with a number of events to be held throughout the country in the coming months.
The company seeks to create special events platform to celebrate legendry highlife artistes across the globe and preserve the Ghanaian highlife music.
Mr. Kwabena Bhonerg, the Chief Executive Officer of the 90 Degrees Tribe, told Ghana News Agency in an interview that as part of his outfit efforts to revive highlife music, it had started producing some video documentaries on legends of highlife music in the country.
Some of these legends are A.B. Crentsil, Pat Thomas and a host of others.
According to him, “Every country has its own music, so why do we have to leave highlife and chase other genres which do not promote our culture. It is quite sad that we are supporting the promotion of other genres, which is a total deviation.”
He said some of the young highlife artistes who are working so hard to stick to the highlife music are seen as outmoded, outcast, adding that non-highlife artistes have separated themselves from those doing highlife music.
He alleged that Ghanaian artistes who follow every foreign genre are those trying to kill highlife music, but it can never be possible that anyone would be able to kill highlife music.
“Some of the artistes are doing other genres because of the revenue they think they might generate from digital platforms. They can also generate money from highlife music on digital platforms,” he said.
The CEO said that Ghana did not have any BET nominations this year and the reason was that most artistes in the country had lost focus on the music industry.
He, however, called on Ghanaian music stakeholders to preserve, develop and promote highlife as a genre that represents the national identity.