Album covers exhibition opens in Accra
It is not every day that one comes face-to-face with album covers of Ghanaian music across the years. The good news is that an upcoming artistic event offers lovers of art and music the chance to see, feel and reminisce over the covers of album that have serenaded us over the ages.
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Starting off at Alliance Francais this evening, April 25 is Album Covers Recollection, an exhibition that showcases cover art on Ghanaian highlife albums. This is the first exhibition on album art of highlife music.
The purpose of the display, which is based on sample covers, introduces highlife music audience to the unique artworks that adorn some ‘apaawa’ covers as well as some of the legends of this music genre.
For many of us, we enjoy Ghanaian highlife music without knowing most of the musicians involved and/or the artworks that adorn their albums.
Album Covers Recollection demonstrates that the creativity of highlife musicians goes beyond their music. This exhibition is important because it subtly makes the case that contemporary artists pay as much attention to the cover art of their works as they do to their music.
Patrons will feast their eyes and memories on covers of albums by Ramblers, Sweet Talks, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, King Bruce, CK Mann and many more.
‘The motivation is to achieve a roll-call of what passed for album covers and see the beauty and the trends for ourselves”, said Dr Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, curator of the exhibition.
A lecturer at the Department of Arts and Sciences, Ashesi University College, Oduro-Frimpong, is a media anthropologist whose research focuses on Ghanaian popular media and culture.
His prior exhibitions in Ghana, which have been the first in the country if not on the continent, showcased hand-painted movie posters and Ghanaian political cartoons.
The content materials of the exhibition come from the digital archives of Dr Oduro-Frimpong. Alliance Francais is sponsoring the cost associated with the entire exhibition.
Album Covers Recollection opens at 6.00pm tonight with a cocktail reception. The entire show will run for a week.