Gramophone Museum Established At Cape Coast

The Gramophone Records Museum Research Centre to Ghana has begun a ¢ 250 million project aimed at digitising colonial Ghanaian highlife music on the Internet.

Mr. Kwame Sarpong, Curator, told newsmen when they inspected equipment at the Museum.

The Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Art, Science and Technology based in Canada is sponsoring the project, “Ghana’s Highlife Music, a digital repertoire of recordings and pop art”.

It involves the digitisation of musical works of over 700 Ghanaian artists and groups aimed at preserving the country’s cultural heritage in the area of sound and images and music to make them accessible.

Mr. Sarpong said the National Library of Canada assigned its Chief Audio Conservator, Mr. Gilles Laurent, about three weeks ago to assemble the equipment and train staff of the Museum. The first phase of the project, which involves the assembling of plant and design of website, integration of the content including audio, test and visual text, as well as database search interface had been completed.

According to Mr. Sarpong, the management of the Museum would donate the collections in the future to the people of Ghana to serve as the nucleus of a National Sound Archive.