Rab’s World

African music is being scrutinized. A few weeks back I posted a review/release about a HipLife Generation CD.

Read Here! Today I will allow African Musical connoisseur and World Music radio jockey of First World Music; Akenataa Hammagaadji laments on the state of what passes off as African music particularly in response to the post mentioned above. Professor John Collins; Musicology and expert of Ghanaian music at The University of Ghana, Legon chimes in to lend analysis to why Ghanaian music and Anglophone African music in general cannot move beyond it’s own nationalities in the twenty first century. Here we go!

Professor John Collins:

“JOHN COLLINS

PROFESSOR OF MUSICOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA, ACCRA,
GHANA
• Current structure and function of the music industry sector in the six countries,in terms of
copyright legislation, collection society institutions, music unions, and technology.
• The potentials for music performances for tourists and domestic sales.
• The case of Ghana as an illustration.
• Piracy of music in Africa, its pros and cons, and policy options.
THE GHANAIAN EXPERIENCE
The cultural differences between the French-speaking West African countries, such as Mali and
Senegal, and the English-speaking African countries are a partly a result of the colonial policies of
the British and the French. The French attached their colonies much closer to the metropolis than the
British who followed a policy of indirect rule. This meant ruling through chiefs, emirates and other
traditional authority figures, while the French had a system of direct rule, ruling the colonies directly
from Paris. This has had a double consequence on the development of African music in the two
areas. After liberation the English-speaking countries went their own way and tried to create their
own industries, whereas in the French-speaking countries, remained tied to Paris. Thus, a lot of
musicians from the Congo, Senegal, Mali etc, for instance, go to France to record.
This has created a situation where the amount of music of French speaking Africa in the world
soundcarrier market is far greater than that from English-speaking Africa. Moreover, whereas both
Ghana and Nigeria tried (and largely failed) to create their own record industries after independence,
the former French colonies didn’t seek to establish local record industries. Musicians from the
colonies simply went to France to record. One further result of this is that the music of artists from
these territories, because they record in France, is often more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan and
more accessible to western audiences.
In Ghana the youth have moved away from live performance to high technology music. They are
convinced that high-tech rap in the local vernacular is the thing at the moment. For young musicians
in Accra (or Lagos or anywhere), do not need to have bands anymore, they can simply go into a
recording studio, buy a pre-programmed rhythm, chant over it and make a rap single. Unfortunately,
although this music sells on the local home African market is very difficult to export this music.
This means that they are missing the huge world market outside the country. The reason for this is
that part of the appeal of World Music in the West is as a reaction against techno-pop itself, that is
music created largely by drum machines, synthesisers and computers. World Music fans prefer
various forms of global folk, live feel and unplugged music to the canned variety. Thus, just as the
youth of America and Europe are becoming interested in African popular and traditional music, that
same music is falling out of favour in Ghana itself. In Ghana live drummers and horns-men are being
put out of work. Synthesisers are replacing them.
The high level of political corruption in the 1970s led to the collapse of the economy so that the major
international record companies pulled out of Ghana and there was an exodus of Ghanaian musicians
abroad. In the 1980s the curfew ended the live music scene for almost three years and then when
the beginnings of economic recovery came in 1985-1986 the government overtaxed musical
activities. They put 160% import duty on musical instruments and dis-allowed tax waivers for private
companies for sponsoring artistic or cultural event. This means there is no encouragement for private
businesses to sponsor artistic events and it had become almost impossible to run live band or clubs
that cater for them.
As a result, music in Ghanaian popular music has moved away from the live recording and
performing format of earlier local popular music styles ( such as highlife) and into two directions. One
strand was cheap to run and perform techno-pop (and mobile discos) which, as described above,
does away with the need to run a full band or employ musicians. The other is the local churches,
which coincidentally have recognised popular dance as a legitimate way of worshipping God.
Moreover they pay no import duty, entertainment tax or income tax - so that around 50 percent of
Ghana’s popular music output has gravitated into the church (as local gospel).
Thus basically the live commercial (cf. sacred gospel) popular music scene has been wiped out and
it is difficult now in the big cities to find live performance venues. The only commercial groups that
ever make it in Ghana now are the techno-pop bands groups that due not have the expense of
buying instruments or paying large groups of musicians. Furthermore they can make foreign money
by going abroad to play to Ghanaian expatriates in Toronto, Washington or wherever (2m Ghanaians
live abroad). However, they are playing the computerised forms of techno-pop, which, although
popular with overseas Ghanaians, are not popular with foreigners’ abroad or those coming to Ghana
as tourists. As already mentioned foreigners interested in World Music want to hear an African
content, real drums instead of drumemulators, real horns instead of synthesisers. So despite of
young Ghanaians having convinced themselves that they have created an international genre – that
uses foreign gadgets and is taken abroad (but only to Ghanaians) , Ghana’s current crop of
computerised popular music ( Burgher Highlife and more recent Hip-Life) is not reaching the booming
world market for African music which is now around 1.25 billion dollars a year.
Furthermore, there is currently a very low Government priority for the music sector and little
appreciation that the current international interest in African and World Music makes Ghanaian
popular music (of the non-computerised variety) a potential export and foreign exchange earner for
Ghana. As it is, and in addition to the lack of tax incentives/waivers for the music industry already
referred to , music has been removed as a core subject from the school syllabus, there is no full
Ministry of Culture ( just a Commission that is not represented at cabinet level) and the performing
arts do not feature at all in the Vision 20/20, programme which promotes the idea of Ghana
becoming a middle-grade income country in 20 years’ time. There is, however, one positive sign of
government interest which is that over the last three years Vice President Mills has set up several
probes into certain area of the music industry concerning copyright.
The administration of copyright itself in Ghana is erratic and has been plagued with various disputes.
One is between the contesting functions of the musicians union and the government Copyright
Administration. Another (described in detail in the full presentation of John Collins) is the creation of
Folklore Board linked to the Copyright Administration that in 1996 began insisting that Ghanaian who
commercially use their own folklore, should be charged and obtain permission from the Government
(i.e via the Board itself). Besides adding yet another tax to the internal music industry this will act as
a dis-incentive to those Ghanaians who want to creatively develop and re-cycle their own culture.
They should rather be encouraged for both internal cultural reasons and because, as noted, there is
an enormous world market for African ‘cultural dance music.
A further problem in Ghana is that although numerous FM radio stations have sprung up in the last
five years or so these rarely pay for the use of copyrighted material and several FM stations do not
even carry announcements about the songs that they play. They rather play the whole record, thus
encouraging people to tape them. As a consequence cassette sales have slumped.
During the later 1980s, there was an attempt in deal with this whole problem of cassette duplication
piracy by legalising piracy through the Tape Recorders Association, which comprised some 1,000
cassette duplicating kiosks-owners who wanted to become legitimate. They briefly made a deal with
the Copyright Administration and one of the local record producers’ unions and actually paid a
considerable amount of money to the Copyright Administration as royalties for composers, artists and
producers. However that attempt to turn pirates into legitimate businessmen and so create a local
cottage music production industry based on an appropriate (ie cassette) technology was not
successful because of the opposition of entrenched interests. And the local Ghanaian music industry
lost these innovative business entrepreneurs to the second hand car parts and other less contentious
trades.”