Ghanaian highlife artiste Bisa KDei has refuted claims by ethnomusicologist Professor John Collins that he sampled the guitar work in his hit song Brother Brother, released in 2015.
Prof Collins, a respected scholar of African popular music and a key figure in documenting and promoting Ghanaian highlife, had suggested in an interview that Bisa KDei may have copied the highlife guitar pattern of Brother Brother from an old highlife record.
“What Bisa KDei did in Brother Brother was that he picked the typical guitar band [I don’t know] sample. I don’t even know which band he got this thing but it was very distinctive. He didn’t get a guitarist to play it. He just looped it and used it occasionally,” he claimed.
Reacting to the comment, Bisa KDei took to his Instagram story to stress that he never samples in his work and played the guitars himself.
“The fact that I got it so perfect doesn’t mean I copied it. I never sample. None of my songs is cause I understand originality very well. I produce and play the guitar too. The guitars in Mansa and Brother Brother I played it myself and I understand highlife so I play according to flow. Someone tell Mr Professor to do a proper research next time. lol,” he wrote.
Prof Collins is widely recognised for his extensive research on Ghanaian music, having worked with highlife greats such as Ebo Taylor, Koo Nimo and Fela Kuti, and for setting up the Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation.
Bisa KDei is one of Ghana’s leading contemporary highlife musicians, known for blending authentic highlife rhythms with modern production.
His catalogue includes songs such as Mansa, Baba, Asew, Jwe and Metanfo.Apart from singing, Bisa is also an instrumentalist and music producer.
By Kwame Dadzie
