Highlife Music – The Rebirth of the Slick

November ’09. Night with the Stars – Joy FM’s glossy Hiplife parade. There are scores of Hiplife super stars. The chary organisers have sprinkled only one ‘rock’ Gospel star and one jaded Highlife star on the bill.

It began bubbling with a bevy of two buxom ladies bopping on their feet; then four; then eight. Soon, the whole hall was animated, sweetly seduced by Abrantie Amakye Dede and his moulding olden, golden Highlife.

Later events were quick to establish Abrantie on the bill. Now he’s popular enough – again – to own his own glittering gala and wear scarlet-red suits. In little over a year, Highlife music is suddenly slick again.

(Picture credit - musicwithease.com)

This is My Taste

Naughty girls! I always gathered that the attractive assistants at the local convenience shop play girl-games with the men who stride in. Last night, I picked up a whisper: “As for this one, he is my taste.” I was “that one” because I had just walked in. Beyond my dislike of the use of "taste" – instead of “preference” – for the other four senses, I was slightly tickled with their fickle, flirty, flighty fancy.

(Picture credit - eccobistro.com)

The Harm of Formal Education

Let’s admit it – formal education in Ghana and much of Africa is structured to teach young people to read and write, no more.

Fact no. 2 – mass formal education all over the world – whether intentionally or not – kills natural thinking ability and creativity, and teaches humanity to think in a box and stifles their intelligence.

Third, if formal education is not advancing Africa, what shall we do? Perhaps, groups of individuals should come together to think up ways of educating their own children in their own way. They cannot be any worse than the formal system.

The Presents You Didn’t Buy at Christmas

You didn’t buy enough presents this Christmas. The shop shelves are still stacked high. The Commercial Devils will devise methods to clear – yes, that’s the word they use, as if it’s rubbish – the excess through Reduction Sales. Mind you, they are capitalists. They wouldn’t let prices plummet below the profit line. Post-reduction profit suggests they were twice ripping you off raw at Christmastime. What the Sales fail to clear would be rebranded – chocolate, flowers, wine, some soft toys, fragrances – and merchandized to you with guile on Valentine’s Day. The media will be guilty by association – their loot from the heist is advertising money. Discover the pattern for yourself. December to February is just one colossal commercial con! 

Christmas for Africans

It amazes me endlessly how an arbitrarily selected date in history has become a principal religious festival – breaking through (and crushing) cultures North and South, East and West. Nobody knows when Jesus was born – do you? He did not ask the early Christians to do anything to mark the moment of his birth. It is not necessarily wrong – or right – to toast the season. It is just curious. 

The date was hand-picked for reasons of war and peace, empire and power, the State and the Church – no more. And, in Africa, we have seized Christmas as our own, and get more drunk on it than the greedy explorers who exported it here.

(Pic 1 borrowed from - christmaswishes.org.uk)

(Pic 2 borrowed from - iamthewitness.com)

The Real Ali Baba – the Corporate Thief

Double-dealing multinational corporations have always hidden their sordid affair of trying out their bribe-bringing, contract-thieving, energy-greedy, raping-and-ripping off-the-poor practices inside presidential palaces of African countries. Now, Little Big Eye – Wikileaks – has seen you.

(Picture credit - linked2leadership.com)

When Ghosts Come Shopping in the City of Accra

When Christmas comes to town each year, it checks in with chariot-loads of gate-crushing ghosts who swirl and meddle about the business of the living. They tip the natural balance between the dead and un-dead and stanch the tick of the cosmic clock. 

This triples the headcount in the city centre, and causes the viscous traffic and the sweltering heat. This is the explanation of some people on the streets of Makola Market - the ghosts come shopping!

A friend’s mother accepts the phantom theory only in half. She swears that the hellish heat steams out of "the anus of a witch".

Ha ha ha. Merry Christmas.

(Picture credit - clevescene.com)

Ghana’s Crude Oil & the Dutch Disease

Hmm, the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – is saying it believes Ghana’s mining and cocoa industries are so well-managed and well-established that they will not be hurt by the emergence of - and focus on - crude oil.

After all these years, the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – does not understand the Ghanaian culture where novelty gets all the time, attention and money, while old glamour loses all its gloss. Oil & Gas is already the only leading buzz-phrase in Ghana, no?

Shall we count how many times the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – has been hopelessly wrong in its reading of the economy, culture, pulse and climate of an emerging economy? Dig in, then, for we’ll be here till Christmas in 2011.

(Picture Credit - Tehrantimes.com)

The Rape of the Snob

So I was ‘radaring’ for ‘bloggable’ material last night when a Ghanaian movie ‘brought itself’. It was raw, reeking rubbish. A village snob of a woman was taught a lesson by a young lecherous lout through the imperious instrument of rape.


He went unpunished and was even glorified by the girls, while she suffered a drop in social slot. What warped wanton wicked moral was that? Must she be shamed that way because she's a snob? 
Rubbish rubbish movie.

(Picture credit - sexandlasgidi.com)

Diplomatic Passports

What kind of passport is diplomatic? It is issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to diplomats, high-ranking officials, members of the parliament and persons travelling on official state business.

Therefore, I was shocked out of my little body to discover that governments had – over the years – issued diplomatic passports to religious leaders.



As far as I am concerned – somebody please educate me if I’m wrong – there are hardly any clergymen continuously involved in central government business to warrant a diplomatic passport for them.

What, are they going to see the pope, some archbishop or patriarch to help solve Ghana’s economic problems?

Now the diplomatic passports are going to be withdrawn from 375 government ‘dysfunctionaries’. Ghana – non-diplomats travelling with diplomatic passports. Wasting money. I pay my taxes – do you hear me – I pay my taxes. So y’all don’t go acting like big men travelling on undeserved perks on my taxes and those of others!

(Picture credit - cafepress.co.uk)

Staircase Busy

These people never learn.
After the Elevator fiasco
(see post below)
they put this sign, today,
right in front of the same elevator.


Plus, I really wonder what kind of meeting
the staircase was having? 
Or was it watching tv?


(I swear I did not stage this).

Are you Going Up or Up?

On the 2nd level 
of the building 
I work in,
the elevator seems 
to go only up!


(some dumb workman
placed the lower button
upside down after maintenance!)

I’m Tired of the Music in the City of Accra

I have always told critics of ‘senseless’ music to shut up. Music, movies, art – whatever kind of entertainment – does not always have to make sense, edify, educate or be loaded with lessons. It can be thrilling, fun, emotive, escapist for its own sake. But...

But now I am tired. There’s no originality. We’re singing about boobs and booty and sex – with euphemism or not – and unwittingly confirming certain unfair, untrue, bigoted and wicked racial(ist) stereotypes. Mtcheew.

This Christmas – Dear Lord – please let me stumble upon 1 hiplife music video without push-up bras, shirts worn as dresses, shorts only big enough for cartoon characters, scary hair-dos, and tin swinging chains. I stop my request here or they will build a stairway to heaven.

Accra - Stunning as the Crow Flies

Sunday evening was magical if you gazed up in the City of Accra. The golden hologram disc of sun threw no rays – just a yellow glow; wrapping up the sky in an ecru crepe. But street-level surveillance was different – dirt, wrappers, leftover food and polythene everywhere. Accra may be gorgeous as the crow flies – thanks to nature – but what about the streets?

Ghana’s Best Leader(s)

I hallow history – all my ‘peeps’ know that. But when the news for one week is about the best government in Ghana since ’57 – whose was and whose was not – I get sick. If we could solve today’s problems by giving bragging rights to leaders from the past, then Election 2012 should be a contest between – let's see, which of them still alive today – Rawlings and Kufuor. Other politicians can go to sleep kodeeeeeee. Mtcheew.

My Mpotompoto Mind

Accra’s traffic is musk from a skunk on normal days, but the pre-Christmas traffic should make us all get a sanity exam. We have kept Ghanablogging meetings going for 2 years. We are not bored yet, but can you – if you’re not a blogger – suggest what you’d like to see bloggers in Ghana blog about with one voice? Are public hospitals in Ghana as high on professionalism as Lister Hospital? A-holes with ‘big’ cars in Accra avoid the traffic jams by driving in the oncoming lane and waving vehicles to get out of their way. How much will the clergy make in private gifts this Christmas? If they were taxed, wouldn’t it give Ghana enough money to improve education or health or roads?

Monkeys Dancing in T-Shirts

I rarely lose my way – or deliberately foray – into politics, but, sometimes, you cannot ignore visions of monkeys dancing on your nose.

In one of his earliest presidential speeches, the very-English-named president – John Evans Mills – tripped every step and said “ecomini” for “economy”. He was taunted for a while, and then it went away – or, did it?

There have always been rumours – there is an upsurge lately – that the leading opposition politician has dabbled in narcs and psychedelic substances. He ignored these for a long time until he felt compelled to deny it recently. One thought it had gone away – but had it?

This week, monkeys have come out dancing on every Ghanaian’s nose. T-shirts have appeared in town with “ecomini” printed on them. If it was a great commercial idea by some business man monkey, then other business men monkeys have come out with “1960s Funky Weed Days” T-shirts.

What can I say? Sooooooscket!

Laurent Gbagbo – Bush, Crazy Child

Musical chairs. Enfant terrible wriggles his way to the final. When the music suddenly stops, Enfant Terrible is still standing; stunned second. He bawls out to his family, who come to karate-kick the poor winning child off the champion’s chair. Now, Enfant Terrible is perched on the seat. He feels supremely stupid in his skin, but pretends to have retained a speck of self-dignity. Urchin. Vermin. Bush crazy child. Why did not his mother terminate the pregnancy?

Ghana’s 2010 Memorials

2010 has wickedly whizzed by, before our best-laid plans have got grip. If you were quizzed about Ghana’s most memorable moments in this low-yield year, what would you venture? To make matters murkier, let’s exclude football’s fascinating World Cup.

The 5 Which = Me

Well, I was asked this question with the line (a little harmless self-promotion)


Cute


Funny


Creative


Articulate


Kind



What are your 5 best qualities?

Little Litterer Learns

A little girl stood at the edge of the road, holding her father’s hand. Her brother sat on a high bench behind them. It was 7 am, and she was eating from a polythene bag. When she was done, she sneaked her hand behind her. I imagined what she was about to do. As it turned out, her father guessed too. She dropped the bag on the ground. Quick as lightning, her father rapped her on the head. It was a healthy, disciplinary clobbering delivered through her ‘fro. He scolded her and asked her to ‘pick it up’. That was a happy morning for me.

Medofo Pa

Oh Kojo Antwi, you made me cry this morning. In the thick traffic panic, I was seized by your poetry; emotions got clogged, eyes let go, as I sang along with a quivering voice.

Se ofiri adwuma eeba’a, mede amirika n’ebeko akohyia no, na ma ye no awawa tuu. Odo yewu w’aba aa tenase, na me nhwe w’aniwamamu, eno n’ema me awerekyekyere, me hu wo aa na me no ete me, ah odo yewu ee.

Dayum, I’m smitten.

Odo ni ho aa, medaa enda ... Odo ni ho aa, eni nsuo nkoaa ...