Reggie Rockstone | Kekeke | TH4Kwagees | VIP | Tic Tac | Obrafuor | Batman Samini| Okomfuor Kwadee | Akatakyie | Akyeame | Tinny | Buk-Bank | Sass Squad | Obour | etc. Remember any of these names?
I wonder if we’ve seriously studied these contemporary music forms and how Hiplife, for example, has shaped afro-urbanistic sentiments in Ghana within an ever-melting and dynamic force of globalisation. How did we manage the transition from highlife to borga highlife and then to hiplife and its metamorphosis into contemporary forms of youthful artistic expression and cultural vibrancy?
As my brother Nkunimdini Asante-Antwi brilliantly argues “…unfortunately very little thought or structured analysis has been invested into understanding why HipLife became such a successful model of import substitution when, in fact, a substantive public policy of promoting local production and consumption had failed since Economic Recovery Program (ERP) in 1983 …the commercial success of HipLife as a Ghanaian product and export, merits serious intellectual inquiry in order to serve as a pivot for shaping Ghana’s import-substitution strategy at the policy level.”
I love how he draws out the links to local import substitution, business model innovation, ecosystems, disruptive technologies and brand value proposition. Essentially, there is a lot about Hiplife that can be researched and taught by our business schools, MBA students, musicologists, social anthropologists and policymakers.
NB: Hiplife is a Ghanaian musical style that fuses highlife and hip hop. It is also influenced by dancehall and reggae. Recorded predominantly in the Ghanaian Akan language, hiplife is rapidly gaining popularity throughout West Africa and abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Germany.
Read more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-can-government-ghana-learn-from-reggie-rockstone-asante-antwi
– See more at: http://www.theoacheampong.com/writings/exploring-the-nexus-hiplife-as-economic-policy/#sthash.EXULG5Uw.dpuf