Rex Omar Questions the Presence of Ghanaian Music Industry
20 October 2020
Photo: yfmGhana
By Naliaka Kitui
Rex Owusu Marfo popularly known by his stage name as Rex Omar has said that there seem not to be a strong Ghanaian music industry as many people describe it to be.
The Highlife musician expressed this in an interview with Y102.5’s NYDJ, as he questioned: “We keep using the words, ‘music industry’. The question I have been always asking myself is, do we really have any music industry in Ghana? Have we had any gatekeepers, producers, or musicians sitting down and deliberately tailoring say highlife and state, ‘we were from here and this is where we are going’?”
“People do things anyhow, fighting themselves; people who don’t even know will sit on social media and say anything. And those who know and will want to educate will be insulted left, right and center. So it’s like nothing is really working. We don’t really value who we are”, he deeply expressed this concerning the music industry
Going straight to the point on Highlife music field, the legendary Highlife musician lamented that Ghanaians they do not see the worth of their own genres until they are stolen from and rebranded for them.
“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 as Ghanaians, we always don’t like what we have. We always want something from outside even if it was stolen from us”. Rex Omar noted
He also went ahead and proposed a solution to this by suggesting that musicians, producers and others who work on music must have a plan, define the music and link it to traditional rhythms
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