Highlife musician, Afriyie Wutah, has put out a classic musical piece on leadership and the struggles of ordinary citizens.
Titled ‘Country Hot’, the song takes on the model of a typical Fela Kuti Afrobeat style, tinged with prominent highlife elements.
‘Country Hot’ was produced by Afriyie Wutah himself, and composed in Key F# minor.
Appietus helped to put finishing touches to the sound. The beautiful lead guitar strums were done by Odikro, while Padmore and Steven Arthur did justice to the keyboards and bass guitar respectively.
The song talks about how the leaders of the country have shirked their responsibilities by not ensuring that the right things are done.
It ties into the recent ‘Fix The Country’ campaign that was greeted with the phrase ‘Fix Yourself’ by those in disagreement.
“The song was inspired by yesterday’s event, today’s event, and the repercussions tomorrow if nothing is done to correct the situation. It’s a situation we’ve lived with for so long that it’s become sort of a permanent screw, and I feel we all have a role to play to change the narrative,” he told Citi News.
“We often blame politicians and people in positions of power for our problems yet these same people are not aliens, they are not strangers. They are our fathers, our brothers, our sisters,” he said.
According to Afriyie, he chose to drum home his message through music because it is a very effective tool of communication.
He explained that he wanted the song to sound as original as possible so he decided to do something that represents Ghanaians.
“I wanted to bring back that sound that is missing in our music lately, so I decided to do something that can be marketed outside, experimenting with new sounds, fusing some jazz, funk, and highlife melodies,” he noted.
Afriyie Wutah, one-half of the defunct Wutah duo has solo projects such as ‘Love of My Life’, ‘I Do’, ‘Here to Stay’, among others.
Together as a group, they produced mega-hits such as ‘Goosie Gander’, ‘Big Dreams’ and ‘Bronya’.
Stream ‘Country Hot’ by Afriyie Wutah below: