Ghana Highlife Museum goes Hi-tech

The Daniel Langlois Foundation based in Canada, has sponsored the Ghana Highlife Museum, in Cape Coast, to revitalise its operations through the use of modern technology.

A project titled, ?Ghana?s Highlife Music: Digital Repertoire of Recordings and Pop Art? is currently underway at the Cape Coast Centre for National Culture, stocks old types of gramophones as well as old Highlife records and other materials on highlife music.

In an interview with the Mirror, The Director of the museum, Mr. Kwame Sarpong said that, in collaboration with Professor Camelle Begin, the Chief Director of Culture Studies at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, a proposal for the project was sent to the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, an NGO based in Montreal, Canada, for a grant to support the running of the museum.

The Ghana Highlife Museum was selected from among other centers that wrote proposals to the Foundation for assistance and was the only centre from Africa and one of 18 selected world-wide for the grant. After the museum received the grant, a pilot project began in March 2003.

Apart from the Daniel Langlois Foundation, the museum is also supported by the International Federation of Television Archives and the International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives.

Mr. Sarpong revealed that the archive has compiled old Ghanaian records and recorded them on compact discs. ?The process allows us to store old songs on both records and compact discs?, he pointed out.

The gramophone museum has in stock over a thousand old Highlife records as well as some old manufactured between 1901 and 1960s.
 
Mr. Sarpong has participated in several workshops and seminars in Canada and United States. He has been invited to give a talk on Africa music in Jamaica this month.

He produced Dr Kwame Nkrumah?s speeches on CD and cassettes in1997, during Ghana?s 40th Independence anniversary celebration, with support from the Ghana Information Services.

The Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital, Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey recently paid a visit to the center with some officials of the Ghana Tourist Board.