The Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) has pledged to introduce a national annual highlife music competition for all singers of the genre.
This is part of the union’s agenda to promote and make highlife music, Ghana’s top genre and more relevant across the world.
Speaking in an interview on Joy Prime’s Prime Morning show, Bessa Simons, who is the President of the union, stated that Ghana cannot be distinguished from highlife music, and paying attention to the genre makes it an authentic identity for musicians.
For this reason, MUSIGA has committed itself to projecting the genre by all means and is putting measures in place to inaugurate a yearly national contest among artists within the field.
“We’re going to launch a music competition every year, and the winner will get something very attractive,” he revealed.
Aside from that, Mr. Simons also hinted at the union’s plan to support the highlife category in the Telecel Ghana Music Awards, making sure that the price to be placed on the genre will be appealing to the winner.
This, he said, will draw other artists’ traction towards putting in more effort to produce quality highlife music and creating authenticity from it.
For the veteran highlife singer, if Ghana is able to claim its origins by prioritizing it as a major brand, music lovers across the globe will channel their attention to the genre and listen to Ghanaian music.
“Once we intentionally make highlife a national brand so that wherever you go, you’ll hear highlife, and we’ll channel highlife to Ghana, that will help us because people will come looking for us rather than we, going looking for them.
The MUSIGA President pleaded with all Ghanaians to rally behind and support the highlife genre by listening to it and partaking in its promotion, to encourage all musicians to infuse the beat in other genres.
His plea follows songstress Adina’s recent suggestion for music consumers to develop some love for the highlife genre to encourage a lot of musicians to venture into the category.