Opinions of Sunday, 6 August 2017

Columnist: Enock Agyepong

Confused leaders confusing creative people

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Creativity started from the beginning when Jah said to his people let us create Man in our own image therefore being created in the image of Jah automatically makes you a Creative Person. The problem now is how we can make money out of our Creative Works and it takes Leaders with Brains to put policies in place to enable the players in it make money from their hard work.

We are living in a country where they can make a law for one person to collect monies from everyone using a car in the country to enrich himself alone BUT we are not ready to pass a law for a whole Creative industry with a lot of people.

If a country loses its culture then that country indeed loses its identity and if you can't be identified then what is your purpose in life. That's why we need to protect our culture come what may and like I said it will take Leaders with brains and will power to protect our culture.

We live in a country where you will be arrested for stealing someone’s plantain but will be left alone when you steal someone’s music. Fact is they are all properties, one is physical property and the other is intellectual property which is more expensive than the physical yet you are left of the hook because of ignorant, selfish and confused leaders.

You operate a radio station and you pay for the electricity and water you use every month yet you don't want to pay for using the most important thing your station needs to survive ie MUSIC.

We prefer to buy soap opera from India and show it to our kids to learn the culture rather than promoting our local movies that portrays who we are as a race. We even translate their language into our local dialect so we can understand their tradition.

We prefer to pose and take pictures with their Stars but tell our Stars to go for cutlasses and weed to boost the Agricultural Sector.

Even when we are telling our people to wear Ghana, we are seen wearing hair from Brazil.

We prefer downloading songs for free instead of downloading it for just 1ghc yet we expect the musician to keep making more songs so that they can die poor as we keep enjoying their songs even after they are dead and gone.

Instead of finding ways and means to put in policies to help in the marketing of our songs and maximising our profits we rather prefer building and ultra modern studio and taking people to abroad to learn how to use the machines in fact who told you that the songs you hear from Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and the rest are coming from ultramodern studios.

Till date I still listen to MEDO from Lord Kenya produced by Zap Mallet in Ghana from a normal studio and it sounds better than most songs coming from our neighbouring countries and even abroad.

All the promises our leaders made have not been fulfilled yet they have the balls to introduce new and misplaced ones.

Like the saying goes the beauty of a bird depends on it furthers therefore the actions and decisions of our leaders will depend on the wise or dumb council they get from people around them.

7 months is too early to launch an attack so I will lay low and wait for a while as I enjoy some Great Music from My Artist. #SumiaAduwa

#VhimMoveMent #HolySunday