Participants in a group photograph after the conference
The National Folklore Board and the Ghana Culture Forum have jointly held a highlife stakeholders conference to set out a roadmap to getting highlife music listed as a world intangible cultural heritage.
Held at the Accra Tourist Information Centre last Friday, the event was attended by the stakeholders in the creative arts sector, as well as representatives from the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Culture Forum and music producers’ associations.
The participants at the well-attended conference discussed the roadmap by which the music genre could be preserved and safeguarded for future generations.
Some of the musicians who attended the conference include Amanzeba Nat Brew, Bessa Simons, Dada Hafco, Ackah Blay, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Beat Menace, Professor John Collins, Smart Nkansah and a host of others.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku Mantey, pointed out that highlife music represents the second flag of the country with regard to our identity.
According to him, Ghana is known as the originator of highlife around the world, and urged stakeholders to come on board and concretise the agenda of it being enlisted as an “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”
He also announced government’s intentions to establish a Creative Arts Fund for the stakeholder in Ghana’s creative arts industry.
According to the minister, the establishment of the Creative Arts Fund is going to support the industry stakeholders who are using their works to support national agenda to promote Ghana.
The Executive Director of the National Folklore Board, Bernice Dei-Kumah, said it is part of the National Folklore Board’s mandate to protect and safeguard our intangible cultural heritage, hence their role in this project.
“We are to protect, preserve, and promote them and pass them onto the next generation. In view of that, folklore music like highlife music falls within our mandate to promote it,” she said.
The Chairman of the Ghana Culture Forum, Mr. Asare Yamoah, indicated that Ghanaians need to celebrate highlife music as part of our national life.
The Acting President of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA), Bessa Simons, described the conference as historic. The conference was supported by UNESCO.
By George Clifford Owusu