This year’s Afrochella festival has been set aside to celebrate Ghanaian music with the introduction of the Afrochella Music Museum set for December 23, 2021, to January 4, 2022.
The Project Manager, of Afrochella, Kadijat El-Alawa noted that music is a major pillar of Afrochella, and for this reason to help put more spotlight on our music, “we decided this year to do the Afrochella Music Museum.
She explained that the focus is on Ghanaian music, telling the journey of Ghanaian music from pre-colonial days till now.
“We aim to start more conversations, educate more people and tell more people about where our music has come from and where our music is now. We believe that will help us have a clearer vision and clearer direction of where our music is heard,” she observed.
Also, the occasion is deemed to be an opportunity to “appreciate all our musicians and all our stakeholders so musicians, producers, engineers, record labels, and the whole value chain including media, DJs, radio and TV producers, and everyone that has helped in getting our music out there.”
To this end, Kadijat El-Alawa who was speaking in an interview, at the launch of the Afrochella Music Museum, said “with the help of Jam Jam, we put this together to bring the idea to life.”
She mentioned Joe Oti Agyeman, who is the main writer and Prof. John Collins, also as the contributing writer.
“We were able to bring all this to life and we hope that people will come through, we learn, we will appreciate it and moving forward we want to have a more permanent space that people can come in to share the experience,” she said.
Furthermore, the Project Manager said “this a pop up for this year so we are hoping that from next year we will have a permanent space.”
“We will have a music museum; we will update it as our journey and to tell our story and continue as it evolves as the music industry that we know, and we are also hoping to have a Hall of Fame so that we can remember the backbone that we had and the people that had built the industry.”
Afrochella is a project that started in 2017 that focuses on propagating and projecting Ghanaian culture, and the other African culture as a whole through music concerts among others.
Observing COVID-19 protocols
As part of efforts to ensure that all the COVID-19 protocols are strictly observed, the organisers partnered with Alabaster Laboratories, a well equipped private medical laboratory situated within the campus of Action Chapel International, Accra Ghana, to screen participants.
The Managing Director, Alabaster Laboratories, Samuel Logton, explained that this was being done to help stop the spread of the virus.
“This is being done against the background that events like this can trigger the spread. One person going in with the virus can infest a lot of people,” he stated.
“We have been in the system for about 4 months and was launched by Archbishop Duncan Williams. We do not only antigen tests, but we do also PCR tests for travellers, we have your travel certificate for you then you can travel with any problem anywhere you want to go.”
The Laboratory has been inspected by HeFRA (Health Facility and Regulation Agency) and also certified.
