Award-winning rapper, Kwame Ametepe Tsikata popularly known as M.anifest has called on Ghanaians to take the creative arts more seriously.

He was delivering an address at the 20th Ephraim Amu Memorial Lecture which came off at the College of Physicians and Surgeons on Thursday, May 30.

M.anifest spoke on the topic “Re-imagining us: the role of popular music in self-actualization” and he touched on how music has affected society positively, urging everyone to focus on that instead on the negatives.

M.anifest also added that if focus was put on its positives, the society and the world as a whole will be a better place.

“Music is important; it affects the psyche of the youth and a lot of things. Today’s lecture was a challenge for academia to say we have to take the challenge for now, not wait for 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,” he said.

M.anifest also suggested that the study of music should be an integral part of the educational system.

“The arts needs to be in schools. People need to be creative and this helps with imaginations, our lack of imagination is really hurting us in this country.

“Every day Accra floods due to certain decisions we take without imagining how the future will be like if it should continue. You see that we are not applying our imagination and creativity in every aspect of our lives and our work, and we’re suffering for it.

“It is not that everybody who gets involved in it is going to be an artiste but everybody has artistic inclinations that need to be nurtured in whatever they do in life,” he added.

Present at the programme were Prof. Joy Henrietta Mensah-Bonsu, Prof.John Collins, Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa, Prof. Anyidoho, Ama Ata Aidoo, among others.

The Ephraim Amu Memorial Lecture was instituted by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences through the initiative of the late Emeritus Prof. J.H. Nketia in 1999.

Source: Graphic.com.gh