Who?s Dancing In Lumba?s Shadow?

Lumba is undoubtedly one of the most successful artistes in the country. His 20th album was supposed to be the climax of all his achievements with the likes of Pat Thomas featuring on it but unfortunately, the album isn’t enjoying the usual ‘Lumba-hype’.

?Anybody can assign reasons for the album slump but I’m attributing it to the fact that so many people are dancing in the shadows of Lumba’s success by singing exactly like him. It’s so exasperating and sad to hear a song on radio, knowing very well that, it’s Daddy Lumba’s only to be told by the DJ that the song belongs to a different artiste.

This unwholesome attitude by some of our artistes must not be encouraged. If we’ve got pirating of CD and cassettes, then I guess this is ‘voice-pirating’. Ofori Amponsah would have been the worst culprit if not for his recent album which is somehow devoid of the Lumba element.

Dada K.D. is an excellent artiste but you can’t deny the fact that he sings like Daddy Lumba. On Kofi Nti’s ‘Atea’ which featured Ofori Amponsah and K.K. Fosu, each one of them sang or tried feverishly to sing like Daddy Lumba and I know for sure that, I’m not the only one who misjudged the song as Lumba’s on hearing it for the first time.
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I wouldn’t get so worked up if Daddy Lumba was the only victim, but there are others. You can’t simply say that it’s sheer coincidence that Kwaisey Pee and Ekow Shailo sing like Kojo Antwi and then Kwaku Gyasi who made it big with his debut album, ‘M’Ahyia Agyenkwa Bi’ just because he sounded like Elder Mireku?

Okomfo Kwaadee was heralded for his exceptional style of rap, which isn’t unique anymore because the likes of Okomhyefour and Quata are disrespectfully copying him. What about Screwface who sings exactly like Batman?
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With time, artistes will have a replica and listeners will have difficulty in making them out. It behoves on all, listeners, newspapers, TV and radio to rally against such obnoxious practice.