According to the Ghanaian twin music group Dope Nation, copying is the foundation of music creativity in Ghana
They emphasized that the majority of what we do now is a modification of the old and that our core values revolve around copying, thus we cannot refer to what we do as new.
“Our fundamentals when it comes to music is copying because when you take our progressions and melodies, they are from old songs. We just bite them and create them into something new,” they stated.
he musical duo added that “We can’t say we’re creating something new; it can’t happen because the keys and melodies are just there and have been exhausted; the only thing that can be done is to make them evolve.”
According to the twin brothers, “The new sounds we have now are piano and afrobeat. We didn’t do well with the growth of Afrobeat especially when it was coming in Ghana. We should look out for what is happening.”
Dope Nation used the opportunity provided by TV3 Newday to discuss the idea for the new sound they are developing, which is named “Ghanapiano.”
“The world is now listening to Africa. The world is literally listening to piano so we feel like this is the time… The uniqueness is already there; we just need to research into it and use our instrument to design our own tune,” they noted, adding that “The thing about this is it’s a fusion. We are taking different genres and fusing them into that.”
When the host Berla Mundi questioned them about their confidence that Ghanaians will enjoy what they are working on, they responded in the affirmative, pointing out that some of their earlier recordings already had the term “Ghanapiano”; the only difference is that it is now receiving a name.
“Yes. Well, they already have. We jam to ‘Gboza’ and ‘Clap’. We are already jamming to it. It’s just that we are bringing people’s minds to it,” they mentioned.
