We walk the lengths and breaths of life with thoughts, opinions, and prejudices about everything around and it’s all for one error the lack of knowledge. As the Great book would say for lack of knowledge my people perish and that has been the crime of humanity “ the sin of presumption.
The value of an object in its positive benefit is often accepted based on it’s value to the buyer and often than not we have failed to look beyond the obvious benefit.
But it takes 2 to tango and one might ask who is to be blamed?
Is that we haven’t told our stories better?
Have we been sidelined because we don’t much? Is our prowess not good enough?
Who’s job is it to tell our story?
And are we stuck in our world so much that we don’t see that the telling of our story is better by us than any other?
Lea Arama
Knowing your enemy is knowing your strategies to best win your battles, unfortunately, we never take the time to know our enemy and so we fight blindly and that adds more fuel to the existing prejudiced mindset of who we are.
Optional King chose the opposite narrative when confronted with the harsh realities of prejudice. He took a step to challenge himself on a platform he didn’t know it’s future but created certainty for himself by proof his worth week by week.
Adjudged with different prejudiced criticism, his only line of defense was to prove he worth the challenge is thrown at him. For him, a little bend in language along with showmanship created a wider audience for the appreciation of his talent and northern Ghana as a whole.
The stories for others like Wiyala, Sheriff Galley, King Ayisoba among others hasn’t been the same. Unlike Optional King, these great acts fought their way to the top and made Northern Ghana proud. The next generation of acts has, however, haven’t done justice to the fight for acceptance into the music industry with language not being a barrier.
Most don’t even venture into other markets because the feast of prejudice would be served even before their songs or acts are appreciated. The Asian movie market became a household family entertainment for its songs, acts, and storyline devoid of the language barrier and today almost all TV stations have one or two and even translated in the local dialect of English.
The demand came because there was a viewing culture, so I ask is it because there hasn’t been enough evidence of our great acts through the various traditional media?
Or we don’t measure up to the demand enough for the platform to sell our acts? The why’s, but’s and maybe’s are many however the taste of good meat can be known not only by the taste buds but also by the hands that do the cooking.
Optional King may have beat the odds but we hope he doesn’t lose his identity as an act based in northern Ghana. Zoblazo from Fredy Meiway didn’t need translation to make a hit. Gandam style didn’t need Korea lessons to be a hit.
It’s the same way we don’t all have to do music in akan, fante, or akuapem to make hits in our acts. But we can sell quality to the world to make our voice known through the quality of our work.
Lea Arama
The opera, ballet, and classical arts are all in different languages but we celebrate the beauty seen in the art and not the language spoken.
Let’s sell quality and standards not just our arrogance often confused with pride. Our pride in the desert is we have gold but it’s not in rocks but in our heartsOptional King
A DESERT GEM WHO ROCKS WITH RHYTHM.
Source: Lea Arama || Featured Article