Two veteran Highlife musicians, A.B. Crentsil and Sidiku Buari have apologized for using vulgar lyrics in their hit songs. The two are top officials of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA), which recently announced a ban on songs that contain vulgar lyrics.
A.B. Crentsil and Sidiku Buari were prolific songsters in the 1970s and early 1980’s. They both possess the skill to inject witty expressions in their songs that got their fans addicted to their kind of music.
But the two musical nuggets strayed a little from the norm when they both released hit songs that contained vulgar language; A.B Crentsil’s hit song, 'Moses', contains sexually explicit language that draws analogy from the biblical exodus of Moses and the Jews from Egypt to Canaan through the red sea.
Sidiku Buari’s track, 'Feed my body' on his Disco Soccer album, suggests images of vulgarism with the lyrics including, “Do it, push it, forward, backwards, sideways, any way you want it." He sung in the song released in 1979 with the photograph of bare-chested woman on the cover of the LP.
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation refused to play the song because it was too vulgar.
The two leading musicians, who are influential members of MUSIGA apologized for the lyrics they used in their songs. This follows recent criticism against songs like Borax and Daddy Lumba’s ‘Asee Ho’ ( Down There), even from members of MUSIGA.
Sidiku Buari told JOY FM that he used vulgar lyrics because of the youthful exuberance and commercial interest as “most of my songs at the time were produced in America and at the time we were being childish. The producers wanted commercial music to make money but now we don’t want the younger musicians to make the same mistakes we made those days.”
A. B. Crentsil on his part said he now sees the release of the song, ‘Moses’, as one of the biggest mistakes he ever made in his life, “there is a proverb that once in a man’s life, man causes a blunder and I think this is one big mistake I made and I regret so much and if it was possible to retrieve retrieve all the CDs and cassettes of that song, i will”.
Meanwhile, in January 2014, the ace musician, A.B. Crentsil, said he has not regretted making the song ‘Moses’ which generated so much controversy in the country.
“If you read about Moses and the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, you’ll know the song has a biblical base, he said, smiling. I was only creative, using the bible story for a song,” he told Times Weekend in an interview.
A.B. said he always felt touched whenever he heard politicians and other notable people singing the song, “It shows it's still a great song.”
