“Reviving Azonto Music Is Very Possible If…” – Guru Speaks To Sarkodie & The Rest
Ghanaian Rapper, Guru has said that it is possible to revive Azonto Music if the industry will collectively push the agenda and not ridicule it like we did before.
In an exclusive interview with Sammy Flex on Showbiz Agenda on Zylofon 102.1 FM, he said industry players did not pay particular attention to the importance of azonto music trends when it came up. He also argued that, the trend has made impact than any Ghanaian genre including high life music.
“It is possible to revivie azonto. If there’s any genre, dance or a music trend that has sold Ghana to the world, that has made much impact around the world then it is Azonto. If you argue that it is highlife, today highlife has been rebranded to Afrobeat so the world doesn’t remember the impact of high life music as the father of Afrobeat. Do you know the problem? The reputation and impact they built are fading away. That is the hard truth” he explained.
He further added: “That’s what I have observed based on analysis. Now, today if we are looking for one of the biggest in Africa, the only person that is mentioned is Fela. The Osibisa, Nana Kwame Ampadu, Amakye Dede and the Daddy Lumba’s impacts are fading away. What hurts me the most is the fact that we are looking on for it to fade off. All the works of these great musicians are weak. This is what is happening. With Azonto, we lost our guard. We felt we were bigger than the Azonto agenda we were pushing. We were never serious with the azonto agenda. We thought it was easy so we looked down on the artistes who were doing azonto music. It was just the fans taking it to the next level. We were not making something serious out of it. Then Wizkid came to pick it up and repackaged it. Then we saw Chris Brown came through with his vibe. Because we felt when you represent that side, it makes you weak as an artiste. So it is possible but it will take all of us to make that happen and not just a single person”.
According to him, people ridiculed artistes with Sarkodie’s “Bring Back Azonto”. He said it became a troll of a sort instead of putting much seriousness into it. “People will tag you and go like it is in your lane now. They tagged Gasmilla with that and that for me is like trolling. I don’t know what they were trying to achieve with that. It is like that for me because it feels like you have limited your creativity to just azonto songs. Gasmilla is a serious hip pop rapper but when it comes to commercial music, it doesn’t matter which beat you ride on. And we should look at the bigger side of it, which is, at the end of the day, people are doing whatever they can to put the name of Ghana out there. So if you belittle their creativity, it makes them feel bad. And that is how we presented azonto. So we trolled and ridiculed ourselves with it” he said.
Guru has released his new jam titled “No Noise” two days ago and already has 5K views on Youtube.
Listen to the full interview here.
Story by: Reagan O.O.Osarfo (Nana Reagan)