Nana Ampadu deserves state burial – Ambolley
Highlife musician, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, has suggested a state burial for Highlife legend Nana Kwame Ampadu.
According to him, the ‘Obra’ singer has contributed immensely to the development of the Ghanaian music industry and must be honoured.
“The way Nana Ampadu has contributed to music, he is supposed to get a State Burial, look into it very well, he deserves it,” he said.
However, he harboured fears that it would not happen because other dead Ghanaian music legends were denied such a gesture.
Highlife legend, Nana Ampadu
“For those who contributed significantly to Ghana music, there is nothing for them when they die because when C.K Man died, Papa Yankson, nothing as such happened for their funerals,” he lamented.
According to Ambolley, the music industry is diversified to the extent that musicians have been left to survive independently.
“It has become ‘each one for himself, God for us all’ attitude. Amakye Dede, Pat Thomas and everyone walking their own ways. It can worry us in the future,” he said during the interview.
According to one of the sons, the 76-year-old singer had been ill for 11 months.
Nana Ampadu died at the Legon Hospital on September 28, 2021.
The family is yet to make funeral arrangements public for the musician who was the favourite of many people after Ghana became a republic.
Well-known personalities in the entertainment industry, such as Akosua Agyapong and the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO), Abraham Adjatey, have poured their tributes.
According to the President, the fallen hero believed in his transformation agenda and campaigned for his election in the 2016 presidential election.
“The outpouring of grief by many Ghanaians, following the news of his death, is an appreciation of the impact his music had on successive generations of Ghanaians. Nana Ampadu believed in my vision for the transformation of Ghana, and assisted me tremendously on the campaign trail in the run-up to my victory in the elections of 2016, for which I remain eternally grateful,” he said.
Profile of Nana Ampadu
Nana Kwame Ampadu was born at Adiemmra on the Afram Plains in the Eastern Region of Ghana on March 31 March 1945.
He is credited with numerous popular highlife tracks and composed over 800 songs.
Ampadu’s “African Brothers Band” was formed in 1963.
One of the founding members was Eddie Donkor. He came to prominence in 1967 when he released his song Ebi Te Yie (or “Some Are Well Seated”), a song that was seen as potentially critical of the then-governing National Liberation Council and disappeared from the airwaves, only returning after the end of military rule.
In 1973 he won a nationwide competition in Ghana to be crowned the ‘Odwontofoohene’, or Singer-in-Chief.
His musical career also involved him in electoral politics, including composing a song for Jerry Rawlings’ National Democratic Congress party to use in the 1992 election campaign. Ampadu also released a song critical of an attempt to disqualify Rawlings from the 1992 election based on him being half-Scottish.