Prof. Fish, Mark-Millas

Mark-Millas Fish is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Music Education Department at the University of Education, Winneba, specialising in Popular Music. He is a multi-instrumentalist, composer-arranger, founder-member, and lead vocalist for Highlife and Afro-fusion band Bigshots GH, with three music albums to his credit. Having spent his early professional life as a bass player for prominent Ghanaian artistes and bands such as Cindy Thompson, Bob Pinodo, Bonze Konkoma, Local Dimension, and legendary Ebo Taylor, he developed a keen interest in highlife music scholarship. He earned his PhD in Music (Creative Ethnomusicology) from the University of Education, Winneba, where he contributed to highlife and Ghanaian popular music scholarship by exploring indigenous Ghanaian children’s rhymes and games as a resource for creating neoclassic big-band highlife music.

As a researcher, he has shaped studies on highlife music with a seminal work, Redefining Ghanaian Highlife Music in Modern Times, which stimulates debates on highlife music as a material essence rather than a social construct. Similarly, his groundbreaking research, Health Sustainability of Popular Musicians in Ghana, promotes a discourse on sustainable health and the careers of popular musicians. 

As a performer, he has toured and performed his musical works in the USA, Europe, and other parts of Africa. He won Africa’s Best Young Musician for the American Roots Music Program for Jazz Musicians in 2010, presented by the U.S. State Department and the DeVos Institute for Arts Management of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2014, he performed with the Ghana Bigshots Band at the African Studies Conference in Bayreuth, Germany, and the Afrikafestival in Hertme, Netherlands. He also won the Audience Choice Award for the Yamaha E-Band Competition with the band BSB in 2018, organised by Yamaha Music Gulf FZE in Japan.

He reviews for reputable scholarly journals such as the Journal of African Arts and Culture (JAAC), Journal of African Identities (Routledge), Popular Music Journal (Cambridge University), and the African Journal of Theatre, Music and Dance Studies (AJTMDS). His research interests span a broad array of issues in popular music and performance. Interestingly, he is one of the few personalities in Ghana with academic proficiency and professional expertise in popular music. His contributions to popular music practice and scholarship in Ghana are hard to overstate, as shown by his extensive publications, presentations and performances on highlife music and Ghanaian popular music at local and international conferences and music festivals. 

https://www.youtube.com/@bigshotsgh2458