Come Saturday, June 25, some selected Ghanaian music icons will thrill their fans at the National Theatre in Accra at an event dubbed Prof. Nketia @90 concert.
The concert, being organised by Media Excel, is to celebrate Professor Kwabena Nketia’s 90 th birthday and will feature some selected music icons which include DSP Kofi Sarpong, Kwabena Kwabena, Bernice Offei, Winneba Youth Choir, Tema Youth Choir, University of Cape Coast choir and a host of others who will thrill music fans with their various hit songs.
The choral concert is expected to attract friends of professor Nketia, as well as a large number of stakeholders in the music industry.
The concert, which will also be used to launch the Professor Nketia Music Foundation, according to the organizers, is going to be the biggest and most authentic choral musical concert which will also bring together families, corporate institutions, individuals and lovers of highlife to celebrate genuine Ghanaian live band music.
Professor Kwabena Nketia is a renowned Africanist, teacher, ethro-musicologist, composer and poet and a former director of the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana and the International Centre for African Music and Drama (ICAMD), Ghana.
Professor Kwabena Nketia was born on June 22, 1921 at Mampong in the Ashanti region. He received his first musical education, and eventually trained as a teacher at the Presbyterian Training College, Akropong Akwapin, where he later taught and was appointed acting principal in 1952.
At 23, a very young age to go abroad in those days, Kwabena, through a Ghanaian government scholarship, went to the University of London to study for a certificate of phonetics at the School of Oriental and African studies.
He went on (1949) to Birkeck College, University of London, and Trinity College of Music, London, to obtain his Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1958 he went to the United States, attending Columbia University, Juilliard School of Music, and Northwestern University to do courses in musicology and composition.
After a year in the United States, he returned to Ghana, where he rapidly rose through the ranks at the University of Ghana, Legon – from Senior Research Fellow (1962), to Associate Professor, and finally a full professor in 1963. Two years later, he was appointed Director of the Institute of African Studies.
Prof. Nketia’s concept and interpretation of time and rhythmic patterns in Ghanaian and other African folk music were revolutionary, and became standard for researchers and scholars around the world.
Today, many scholars around the world have found Nketia’s theory very useful in transcribing African music. Prof. Nketia’s work to reconcile the melodic and rhythmic elements of folk music with contemporary music spurred a new kind of compositional technique for African musicians and academics worldwide.
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