Letter: Ghana@50 choral flop?

Dear Editor,

Please let GHANA know what some of us professional musicians think of the music component of Ghana @ 50

I am a Ghanaian professional musician with solid international credentials; a pianist and church organist of no mean repute, an arranger and composer of both secular and religious music and wish to question the wisdom in the decision of the Ghana @ 50 secretariat to commission the choral music aspect of the jubilee celebrations.

As was quite evident, the concert was a phenomenal flop as a choral music spectacle. It was quite obvious that very little preparation and research had gone into the selection of appropriate repertoire and selection of singers and you could easily have compared the very ordinary spectacle that was dished out to any run of the mill choral performances that we witness daily in this country in the churches and the charismatic halls of worship with the usual ritual of people forming a 'one-tsentsen-line' to dance like robots programmed to do the obvious. Nothing new: the same old repertoire and the same old choirs.

This could not have been the best Ghana@50 could offer. Any choral music concert of Ghana's jubilee must start from the 'genesis' of Ghana's choral traditions i.e. vocal band repertoire, through the J. T. Essuman era, through the Dwenesie Singers etc., to the Evangel Singers of today. And as for the repertoire, the least said about it the better, How can you celebrate Ghana@50's choral music without J.T.Essuman's Dr. NKRUMAH AYE BI AMAM WOANA NA ONYE NO SE? Are we later going to organize a Muslim Choral Concert? Amazingly a country at 50 years of musical evolution could not commission choral works to be composed to grace the occasion. DADAW NOARAAAAAAAA!

And may I ask the secretariat whether in Ghanaian choral music performances they have ever heard of such names like Mrs. Dinah Rheindorf, Mrs. Tetteh[nee Gbeho] E.C. Bilson Jnr., Kweku Acquaah-Harrison, Moses Kennah etc., etc., Couldn't heads of this calibre be brought together to plan or advise? Thus, no attempt was made to procure a better-rehearsed accompaniment except the mediocre and oft-heard 'feefeefeee organ' sounds.

Ebei ! Ghana @ 50 deserves better than this; our invited guests must hear Ghana's choral traditions in a well-rehearsed and better-accompanied formats than we heard and to add to our gaping, mediocrity-infested wounds we were told that The Senior Minister wanted us to stay longer and continue to be insulted by a lousy spectacle that does not do our musical image any good.

At 50 years of Nationhood, square pegs must no more be put into round holes, no matter what! Simply put, carpenters must not be brought to organize the work of car mechanics. PERIOD! I hope Ghanaians @ 50 are taking note! Long live Ghana.

NANA KWAME ASOBA, Adabraka, Accra