On Sunday, December 1, 2019, Obiba Sly Collins, one of Ghana’s few authentic highlife musicians took the unprecedented step of launching his latest single on all of Ghana’s social and electronic media platforms.
By this act, the singer ensured that his music was available to all radio and television music presenters and others who have been interested in his progress as a musician in the almost past four decades simultaneously both in Ghana and Nigeria especially.
The music titled Oh Africa is a slight departure from what has been musically associated with this iconoclast in his latest recordings. Though it is true that he is a genius in the highlife train and a master guitarist playing that instrument on all his recordings, he has once a while ‘strayed’ from his favourite beaten highlife track to venture into other musical genres most especially Afro-Pop and reggae as he has done in this pulsating single aimed at awakening the conscience of both the rulers and the ruled.
Rendered in an emotionally charged voice and supported by a rhythm that re-states his concern for the continent, Obiba Sly bemoans the fate of Africa as her leaders pay lip-service to socio-economic development and instead glamorize outright banditry as thieves are crowned chiefs as their subjects struggle to accommodate and feed the idiosyncrasies of these over rated but politically dumb and economically blind politicians who like Nero, are fiddling, wining and dining while their subjects wallow in excruciating poverty.
‘I don’t know why black people are still suffering? We are blessed with gold, but we still hungry, we’ve got diamonds everywhere, but no shelter for workers, we’re endowed with natural resources, but my people are wailing … no good roads … why can’t we be nationalistic and live as one, political colors are diverting our focus, discrimination is destroying my people, …’ he laments and reminded all that the material things accumulated via the state capture will not follow them into the grave. The same goes for the gleaming private jets, the bevy of women some serving as first wife, while others have roles to play in the harem of concubines and side chicks who will eventually abandon you at the cemetery.
Continuing, he said it is only good governance that will inscribe their names in gold in the hearts of citizens, a feat just a tiny fraction of Africa’s leaders have achieved since the dawn of independence from the 1950s till today.
Concluding, he extended his call to Africa’s youth to eschew corruption and fraud but be patriotic citizens as we work to bring Africa back from the brink of devastation into the future with hope and love.
Why Africa (a liberation song) which is the singer’s railings against the continent’s (mis)leaders who have succeeded in putting the continent’s forward march into political and financial prosperity into reverse will receive a lot of airplay as we enter 2020 when Ghana holds another general election in December, a year in which politicians will answer a lot of questions from the electorate.