Edem gives new life to ‘Sika Ye Mogya’
Hiplife strongly expresses its close affiliation to highlife when the former overtly borrows from the latter and rapper Edem’s vibrant re-working of Pat Thomas’ Sika Ye Mogya classic shows how the two home-grown styles can effectively feed off each other.Edem’s version features Pat Thomas himself. The original piece was done in Fanti but Edem brings a fresh tang to the song with his usual energetic raps. He has also injected a fast club tempo into his version.Sika Ye Mogya was originally recorded by Pat Thomas in 1991 in Ontario, Canada. The recording session included crack Ghanaian instrumentalists like Paa Joe on guitar and Carl Ricky Telfer on keyboards, bass and flute.Edem caught attention largely with his Volta Regime album that included hit tracks such as Bra Freme, You Dey Craze and Nyornuviade. His subsequent Mass Production album offered the public other catchy songs like Ghetto Arise and Over Again.He is an entrenched act on the music scene and trekking back in time to pick on Pat Thomas’ all-time great piece re-enforces the idea that there is a big well of highlife classics that the younger generation can always fall on to keep Ghanaian popular music forever alive.Pat Thomas’ singer daughter, Nana Yaa is also said to have her own rendition of Sika Ye Mogya on her upcoming debut album.
The power of the showbizer
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| Samini |
People in show business are one the most influential if not the most influential in the world because they cause change in the life of a society.It is conceived of showbizers by many as scatterbrains and worthless individuals who are drug addicts, womanizers, debauchees, hooligans or crooks. Despite these brutish descriptions of showbizers, which some however consider as misconceptions, it is a well established fact and a reality that musicians, actors, fashion designers, painters, writers, radio and TV hosts, and other creative artists are powerful to the extent that the ramifications of their actions surpass that of the politician or the clergy.
Showbizers the world over have influenced how people dress. For example, an artiste appears on stage in a particular costume and in no time it becomes the dress code of the moment. Let a TV presenter appear on screen with an outlandish hair style (I mean one that may be considered abnormal) and the next day, it is the latest hairstyle in town. Hip hop and its variant genres have become so strong that it is seen as a veritable culture of some sort. Its followers have their way of dressing and speaking, and many people from all walks of life copy their lifestyle.
Fashion designers like Mawuli Okudzeto, Kofi Ansah, Bee Arthur and others have contributed to the dressing culture of this country. Is it not interesting how entertainment doyen KOD will create and design his own clothing and people will not just admire it but copy him? A few years ago, wearing suits on top of jeans trousers was slovenly and unbecoming for formal occasions but artistes have soon made this dress code acceptable almost everywhere.
Someone would like to have a tattoo on his body just because his favourite actor, singer or footballer also has tattoo on some part(s) of his body.
Showbizers or creative artistes are one the few groups of people whose names are used by their fans to christen their children. In fact, fans do not care whether these celebrity names they are adopting for their kids were created by the artistes or have always be in existence, let alone dig into their meanings. They just revel in the fact that they are naming their children after stars.
Lyrics of a song can be inspirational, derogatory, suggestive, leering or insinuating. Testimonies abound from people whose lives, upon listening to certain songs have transformed for the better. Others also have engaged in unscrupulous activities after listening to some particular songs.
This case is no different from movies. Movies more often than not epitomize the culture of a people. Any adoption of cultural practices of a people into another would bring a change in the lives of the inhabitants of the latter. A case in point is the current use of explicit sex scenes in Ghanaian movies; something that jars with the indigenous culture of Ghanaians.
It could also be said of creative writers like William Shakespeare, Efua Sutherland and Chinua Achebe (may his soul rest in peace) as very powerful and influential personalities because they used their literary works to affect society. While Shakespeare's English was deferred to and used by his contemporaries, Chinua Achebe used satire to critcise people in power in Nigeria. Efua Sutherland would also be remembered for authoring books that portrayed Ghanaian culture.
One other power that showbizers have is creating language. Remember Barima's 'Abuskeleke' song|? 'Abuskeleke was a word that supposedly originated from the Western Region of Ghana or somewhere in Ivory Coast and was used to describe a lady who is kittenish and promiscuous. It was made popular by Barima in his song and was later used to refer to ladies who were indecently dressed and it has since become part of the lexicon of Ghanaian languages.
'Bye bye' is an English world used to bid people farewell. Until recently there had not been a Twi version for it. Not even professors of Linguistics could help Twi speakers out. It took Dr. Duncan, a radio presenter of XFM to couch 'ekyire' to be the Twi version for 'bye bye'. Up till now, 'ekyire' has become part of Twi vocabulary to mean 'bye bye'.
Credit: Kwame Dadzie - Deputy editor-Flex Newspaper
