(Re)Thinking Popular Music Studies in Public Universities in Ghana

Popular music permeates every society’s socio-cultural, religious, political, and economic life, thus, leading to the introduction of popular music programmes in some academic institutions across the globe. However, in Ghanaian public universities’ music departments, it is the least-studied genre. Despite its introduction to Ghana’s universities almost three decades, its impact on the music industry is inconsequential. It is becoming a challenge for these music departments to boast of significant contributions in human resources to the music industry over the years. In this study, we review the place of popular music within the undergraduate music programme of three public university music departments in Ghana. We also assess the socio-economic and academic relevance of the popular music courses taught in the three universities to Ghana’s music industry and make recommendations to fill the gap and break the myth of the ivory tower. Using content analysis, we realise that studying popular music in the three music departments is skewed towards historical and socio-cultural perspectives, thus, ignoring the structural and theoretical dimensions that will guide compositional and performance trajectory. Hence, we conclude that the popular music courses taught in the three music departments are not practically beneficial to the popular music-oriented student after graduating, consequently affecting the Ghanaian music industry. We, therefore, recommend that Ghanaian academia create a pathway programme in popular music with more industry-based popular music courses with the academic structural and theoretical approach to meet the socio-cultural and socio-economic needs of the students and the country. This study is expected to add to the ongoing discourse in popular music education.

Keywords: Course manual, Ghanaian universities, music departments, music industry, popular music