Kaakyire Kwame Appiah
Popular Ghanaian highlife musician, Kaakyire Kwame Appiah, has called on presenters and disc jockeys (DJs) in the country to use their various programmes on radio to promote Ghanaian highlife music.
According to him, highlife music is not getting enough airplay, making it difficult for the musicians to produce new songs, adding that the little airplay given to highlife music was gradually weakening the music genre.
Though he doesn’t have any problems with fellow radio presenters and DJs promoting other music genres like afrobeat, hiplife or dancehall, but rather he thinks highlife is an indigenous Ghanaian music and we will be better identified as a people with it than the other genres.
“Pure highlife doesn’t get enough airplay because the DJs would love to play afrobeats, afro-pop, dancehall, among others and it is understandable because of what the youth prefers nowadays.
“There are not enough highlife DJs in the system now to promote highlife music and it has made us seem redundant but we have lots of unreleased songs,’’ he added.
The highlife musician, who is also film producer said, “We need to push our highlife identity, so that people can identify us with our music.”
He further stated that in recent times when one tunes in to a radio station, most of the songs being played are songs by non-Ghanaians, a situation that keeps affecting the agenda to promote indigenous highlife music from Ghana.
In an interview with GNA Entertainment, Kaakyire Kwame Appiah explained that many of his colleagues had now diverted into other businesses because they felt that the needed airplay had not been given to highlife music on the airwaves.
Kaakyire Kwame Appiah said that there had been calls for collaborations with some modern artistes, but the difference in styles had made it difficult.
Kaakyire Kwame Appiah is expected to release his first single titled ‘Matwere Wodin’ very soon.