The issue of making the study of music an integral part of the educational system has been of paramount importance to most stakeholders in the creative sector.
In tandem with this, Ghanaian rapper, Kwame Ametepe Tsikata, known in showbiz as M.anifest has also called on Ghanaians to pay more attention to popular music.
Speaking at the 2019 Ephraim Amu Memorial Lecture topic “Re-imagining us: the role of popular music in self-actualisation”, he enumerated how popular music has positively affected society and suggested that if more focus is directed to it, the results would be great.
“It is time for us to commit to serious study of popular music. Reducing it as craft of the youth is risking the internet as a tool to shape the society,” he noted.
He further explained to Citi News on the sidelines of the programme his motivation for choosing the topic.
“It is important, it affects the psyche of youth and a lot of things. Today’s lecture is a challenge for academia to say we have to take the challenge for now. Not wait 10 years, 20 years when the dynamics have changed before we try to study it. I am just being the instigator. The policy makers should take it up.
“The arts need to be in schools. People being creative really helps in our imagination. Our lack of imagination is really hurting us in this country. Everyday Accra floods. You see that we are not applying our imagination and creativity in every aspect of our lives and our work, then we will suffer for it.
It is not that everybody who gets involved in it are going to be artistes but everybody has artistic inclinations that need to be nurtured in whatever they do in life.”
The lecture which was organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences took place at their premises yesterday.
