Ghana’s legendary rap originator, Reggie Rockstone has made interesting revelations concerning the slave trade and its consequences on Ghana and Africa in general.
In a post on social media, the musician has indicated that Ghana’s former name, the “Gold Coast” was not because of the Ashanti Goldfields, but because of the many profits derived from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Reggie Rockstone has also taken on successive governments for maintaining forts used for the slave trade as museums and queries why a Ghanaian must pay to go and see bad things that went on during those days.
Reggie Rockstone’s full post is below:
MY country Ghana is located in West Africa, a region Europeans once termed the “Gold Coast”, not because of the Ashanti Goldfields, but because of the “chaw” profits derived from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
European Nations ruthlessly and without pity exploited the flesh of Africans to lay an economic foundation for the wealth they enjoy today Na lie? Na true!! Then as now, some Africans helped make Europeans presence in Africa a profitable one by selling not only the Black flesh of their tribal adversaries, but by prostituting African culture, art, and music to Europeans. The question is what has changed after all these centuries? Seemingly not much.
This is the real deal:
After Africans were stolen from their villages, marched to the Coast and sold into the Slave trade, and arrived in America and elsewhere, the first thing our Obroni captors did was to forbid us from playing the Drums!!! The Beat was forbidden under the penalty of death. Playing the music of their mother cultures was forbidden as were the African’s spoken word and language!! (Till today if u speak badly bleh in GH u are laughed at! Prez and all smh) de “cultured” Christian White man called African Music “devil worship” and African languages gibberish. The essential rhythm of the beating heart as symbolized by the Drum in all cultures was taken from African slaves and replaced with the soulless music and symphonies enjoyed by their white slave masters.
Not much has changed since then. The slave forts are still here, now museums the government charges us admission to go in there smh (imagine charging a Jew to go peep the history of Auschwitz? Oh hell no!!) These slave forts are testimony to Europe’s foul trade in human flesh for profit, and the conquest of our ancestors by Europeans who didn’t even consider Black African human beings, least of all our Musical traditions.
I bet you did not know some Europeans in Ghana today still perpetuate the same thing right under the noses of Ghanaians and Ghanaians accept it(not saying all so don’t get excited lol)
There are places in Ghana, right here in Accra, where Ghanaian music is forbidden or played under orders and with a specific dosage! Clubs and lounges practicing a Secret racist policy that excludes Ghanaian music, in general, are popular with white tourists and European visitors eager to get away from Africans in Africa – us! (not generalizing) Places Where European electric “techno” and Acid-rock are the only permissible noise to be heard, and where only the Ghanaian Rich “dadabee” kids who think their money gets them respect from these Europeans hang out with. So you mean to tell me none of you have noticed there is no trace of your motherland’s sounds in here? Jokers! Dancing to music you probably don’t like but you are shucking and jiving because you are in the company of some “oyiboz? Insulting! In your car, you are playing Shatta sark and lumba on the down-low huh
Just like the segregated shithouses in South Africa and AMERIKKKA that forbade people of African ancestry from sitting next to a white man to take a dump, there are places here in GH that has secret policies that we do not know about and would be surprised if we knew!! COONS and UNCLE TOMS from among us who love everything European and consider Ghanaian music low life, and artless patronize these places!! U-turn your house negro heads and say nothing. We are quick to challenge each other but slow to challenge cultural white supremacy in our own country?
It is one thing to like a particular type of music and goes to places that play that type of music, but it is quite another thing when the pop music of an African nation is boycotted by people who are in that nation as guests, workers, and visitors and whose ancestors participated in the demise of Africa!! Some will get mad at GRANPA and some will think this through! I am no armchair revolutionary and know this all ways! Hiplife was created to beat all of your colonial vibes and kill the bull I used to know once in this country! When there was a time The GHANAMAN was laughed at for speaking “vernacular” and if you could not speak the “Massa” language (English) you were looked down on! Today kids are proud to do the AZONTO and more!! Straight off the plane from the UK, or Yankee regardless of being born there. New-gen! We won’t stand for no bull!
Source: Mybrytnewsroom/Kwabena Nyarko Abronoma
