Ghanaian musicians should instead concentrate on promoting Highlife rather than competing with Nigerians in the Afrobeats genre, according to sound engineer and music producer Appietus.
He claims that the majority of Afrobeats artists worldwide are from Nigeria, and artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Wizkid, Asake, and Temz are among the genre’s most well-known figures.
According to him, it would be difficult for a Ghanaian artist to become well-known worldwide and that attempting to mimic or blend Afrobeats with other genres—like Amapiano—would also not be successful.
“Nigerians now own Afrobeats and there’s nothing we can do about it. We will just be copycats if we keep on doing that. It’s going to be difficult competing with Nigerians on Afrobeats. It is just like how you can’t take Dancehall and Reggae from Jamaica,” he said.
Appietus counseled Ghanaian musicians to concentrate on Highlife, the genre that best represents their uniqueness, as opposed to vying with Nigerians for the global dominance of Afrobeats.
He went on to say that since Highlife is a historically and culturally based music genre, Ghanaian musicians ought to modernize and promote it.
“Let’s sell ourselves and culture and stop competing with others over their music genres. We have sold our music type before and Nigerians were nowhere close. So, we can do it again,” He continued.
Finally, he counseled Ghanaian musicians to concentrate on using Highlife to showcase their distinct culture rather than trying to outdo one another in genres that are dominated by other countries.
