What You Do Not Know About Ghana @ 56..........pay Attention Everybody

Today is 56th Independence day in Ghana......What a day for all Ghanaians!!......Is our history only in politics? What happened to all those ancestors who sacrificed their lives and time to found many of the towns and cities we reside in today in Ghana? What happened to our pre-colonial history? Isn't there a way that our national history have been recorded by invisible set of people that we rarely think of as worth remembering? Do you know any Ghanaian folk song? What do they tell us? Do you know the history behind Atsia-Agbekor music and dance from Volta region; Adowa and Kete from Ashanti; Bamaaya from the North, Fumefume, Kple, Gome, Kpanlogo from Greater Accra; Kundum from the West; Our festivals and their histories? Aboakyer, Bakatue, Akwambo, Odwira, Akwasidae? Our traditional architecture "atakwame house"? Well, so which group of people are being left out?...... The hard working artist? The Ghanaian folk and modern artist is anybody but only an entertainer but are we really paying attention to the important roles that they play in recording our history from a genuine and quality perspective?

HISTORY: it is what we make happen. WHAT HAPPENS to us, to you, to me and everyone. To the historians we entrust the care of public memory, of ourselves as a nation. What we think of our Ghana political history and cultural heritage is shaped in part by what historians have told us and are telling us; and by our own experience in the way our society functions.

Historians traditionally focused on the people who ruled -kings, presidents, men and women of women and power. A new trend is being opened the study of history from the bottom up. Reserach continues to reveal the part "ordinary" people play in our history-people of every age, occupation, color, ethnic origin.

But rarely have historians opened their pages to Artists i.e Poets, Fine Artists, Architecture Experts and Musicians. Yet their sense of the past, as well as the life around them, can do much to extend and even deepen the range of our own experience. For the artists have an intensely personal vision of life. They say to us " Here is our view of what we have seen and shaped the moment of living, a view of life .

At a time like this, why dont we all take time to reflect on the other part of history that we are ignoring: Look to our music and its rich history, the fine arts and buidling designs. Are we not so rich with more history than what we are bombarded with everyday?

As we congratulate all Ghanaians for a good day, we want to encourage everybody to do SOMETHING small for Ghana in whatever one has an expertise to help move Ghana forward. Let stop fault finding and suggest alternatives to help solve national challenges.

STAY IN STRONG LOVE and be righteously blessed.