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It’s going to be difficult competing with Nigerians over Afrobeats- Appietus
Legendary Ghanaian sound engineer and music producer, Appiah Dankwah, professionally known as Appietus recently shared his thoughts on the global music scene, emphasizing the challenging competition faced by artistes outside Nigeria in the Afrobeats genre.
According to Appietus, the undeniable dominance of Nigerian musicians in the Afrobeats genre makes it tough for other crooners from other African countries to secure a prominent position.
He entreated Ghanaian musicians to abandon the idea of competing with Nigerians over Afrobeats since they have earned huge and global recognition for the music style.
Names such as Burna Boy, Davido, Wizkid, Asake, Temz, all of whom are Nigerian artistes will easily come to mind when Afrobeats artistes are mentioned all around the world
Certainly, it will be difficult for a Ghanaian artiste to make it to the top global list of favourite Afrobeats artistes considering that Nigerian artistes have taken the spots. It is for this reason that the award-winning producer, who has been a strong advocate for highlife, is encouraging Ghanaian artistes to stick to the music style that reflect their originality.
While speaking as a panelist on the Graphic Showbiz X Dialogue recently, Appietus cautioned musicians against merging foreign genres like Amapiano with Afrobeats, as it could undermine Ghanaian artistes’ originality and authenticity.
“Nigerians now own Afrobeats and there’s nothing we can do about it. We will just be copycats if we keep on doing that. It’s going to be difficult competing with Nigerians on Afrobeats. It is just like how you can’t take Dancehall and Reggae from Jamaica.
“And lately, I see people trying to blend Amapiano and Afrobeats to make it Ghanaian, that won’t work too. We will just be copycats if we keep on coming up with that mixture. Let us modernise Highlife the way we want and present it to the world and see what will happen. Let’s sell ourselves and culture and stop competing with others over their music genres. We have sold our music type before and Nigerians were nowhere close. So, we can do it again,” he said.