Breaking: Highlife Legend Nana Kwame Ampadu Is Dead

Information reaching our desk has it that iconic Ghanaian musician Nana Kwame Ampadu has kicked the bucket.

The news came up earlier today and later confirmed on Hitz FM, a Ghanaian radio station, by family members of the musician.

He was 76 years.

Nana Kwame Ampadu is credited with numerous highlife songs and regarded as one of Ghana’s legends in the music industry with over 800 songs to his credit.

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He came to prominence in 1967 when he released his song Ebi Te Yie (or “Some Are Well Seated”), a song that was seen as potentially critical of the then-governing National Liberation Council and disappeared from the airwaves, only returning after the end of military rule.

In 1973 he won a nationwide competition in Ghana to be crowned the Odwontofoohene, or “Singer-in-Chief”.

Ampadu’s “African Brothers Band” was formed in 1963. One of the founding members was Eddie Donkor.

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His musical career has also involved him in electoral politics, including composing a song for Jerry Rawlings’s National Democratic Congress party to use in the 1992 election campaign.

Ampadu also released a song critical of an attempt to disqualify Rawlings from the 1992 election based on him being half-Scottish.

The doyen was born on 31 March 1945 at Adiemmra on the Obo Kwahu in the Eastern Region of Ghana. He was named Kwame Ampadu after his father, Opanin Kwame Ampadu, the then head of the Asona Clan of Obo Kwahu in the Eastern Region of Ghana, and madam Mercy Afua Ntiriwaa, a devouted presbyter also of Obo Kwahu.

SOURCE: GhanaCelebrities.Com