Ghanaian hip-hop rapper Edem has disclosed he would never do any peace song in an election year since he has composed one that can be replayed every election year.
It has become a norm for musicians to release peace songs to drum home the idea for peaceful polls in every election year in Ghana.
However, Edem, speaking on the Class Drive on Class 91.3FM on Thursday, 25 August wondered why musicians repeated the same peace message in a new song every election year when their previous songs had communicated so.
In his view, artistes needed to put a stop to releasing fresh peace songs if the media would not replay their earlier recordings.
“I did a song for the election four years ago called Warrior For Peace and over the past days a couple of people have been telling me I have to do a song for the election and it’s really something I’m open about. But I keep telling people that if the television stations and the radio stations are not re-echoing the election songs that were done in the past, artistes should stop doing songs every year because the message is peace and once it’s peace, if you do a song in 1989, it should appeal to peace in 2008, so there is no point for people to redo peace songs for it to have a different form of relevance,” he told host Prince Benjamin.
“So I think it’s become corny for artiste to join groups and go and do peace songs because once upon a time people did it. It’s like the song they have for HIV where there is Reggie Rockstone, Black Prophet and all that: it still has the same relevance because it’s about HIV. And so, I think its clichéd and I tell people that I won’t ever do another peace song when there is an election because I have done a peace song four years ago and it should be used for every other election because it appeals to it,” the award-winning artiste added.
The Koene hit maker condemned the practice where some musicians expect payment for releasing peace songs, describing it as “horrible”. “I think it is horrible if you are going to sing for peace and you have to be paid for it because when I did it, I paid for it in the studio myself and I released it myself with no form of influence or agenda,” he disclosed.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
