It’s shameful to put dancehall and reggae together….. Nana Fynn

Highlife musician Nana Fynn has lambasted the industry players for fusing dancehall and reggae genres together, insisting they are completely different.

“Reggae and dancehall are two different genres, people are always putting them together because our music award scheme people put them together you understand, they have their own reason why they do that, I don’t want to tell them that it is because they do not know. It is like putting ‘azonto’ and ‘ndwomkro’ in one genre because both of them originated from Ghana” Nana Fynn fumed.

Speaking to MzGee on Hitz FM, Nana Fynn indicated there’s a distinction between reggae and dancehall.

“The rudiment of dancehall and reggae is completely different. I don’t want to sound too technical. The difference between highlife and azonto is even closer, much closer than reggae and dancehall just that they all emanated from the Caribbean specifically Jamaica so people can be excused.”

“There is a kind of music that is in between, they call it Reggae-dancehall that is a particular way of presenting a DJ in Jamaica and the Caribbean. The basic rhythm suggests reggae which we are not doing much in Ghana but the people, they don’t sing like the way Steve Paul, Bob Marley and Tyrus Riley will sing, they do what they would have done on a reggae beat, on top of that reggae rhythm and it started being called reggae dancehall like a bridge but the basic rhythm suggests reggae but dancehall is completely different genre…. if any award scheme should hear that in Ghana, we put reggae and dancehall together in the same category, well we can be excused because they respect the name Ghana but I feel ashamed sometimes to see that.”

The artiste who calls his brand “fynnomenal contemporary African” hinted he has plans of fusing the dancehall genre in his new project as his love for reggae dates back to his first album.

“People do not know I have a reggae background, people who bought my first cassette would realize I did a little bit of reggae on the side B whiles side A had highlife….every album featured at least two or three reggae tracks.”

Nana Fynn maintained he would rather sing his dancehall in Ghanaian local dialect Twi than in patois as is the norm.

“Patois is a language from somewhere in Jamaica and my personal philosophy (is that) I will not do anything in languages I didn’t grow up with. Look I started speaking patois since I was in class four. At the time people didn’t even know we were listening to I-Roys ( Roy Samuel Reid (28 June 1944 – 27 November 1999), known as I-Roy, was a Jamaican DJ who had a very prolific career) and U-Roy (Ewart Beckford OD (born 21 September 1942), known by the stage name U-Roy, is a Jamaican vocalist and pioneer of toasting) but I started having bad grades in English language before Common Entrance.”

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