By Hannah Dadzie
The Ghana Highway Authority, GHA, is collaborating with Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, GBC to explore ways to use music to promote national development. The partnership will among other things make use of patriotic songs to raise awareness of citizens in protecting national assets.
To this end, the GHA has inaugurated its choir, the Asphaltic Voices. President of the Interim Steering Committee of the group, Cecil Obodai Wentum, said though the group is fairly new, with commitment and determination, it hopes to achieve much on the local and international choral music front.
“For an organization like this, it’s a very heavily projectized environment, we have a lot of engineers here, but after moving into GHA to head the Public Affairs section, I noticed that there were a few things that were missing to make the environment complete and whole, and one of such was that there was complete absent of a formidable choir and so I decided that I will team of with one or two of my colleagues here to see what can be done. We started on a smaller note but today in less than three months we have a bigger choir that can compete with other international choirs”Mr. Obodai Wentum noted
He explained the choice of the Asphaltic voices.
“It’s a choir for the road sector, so it’s not limited to only GHA workers. The name Asphaltic was something that came up to me and I said ok let’s see what can be done. This is an industry where we use Asphalt which is a composite material, it contains bitumen and aggregates, that is gravels, sand, crush stone mixed together. And I said to have a formidable choir, we need to bring the voices and instrumentalists together, and so the it dawned on me that we should pick Asphalt hence, the Asphaltic Voices” he indicated.
The Chief Executive of the Ghana Highways Authority, Christian Nti, congratulated the group and pledged the support of the Ministry for the choir to compete in the choral music industry.
“We are trying to have a complete organization that will help us have a complete spiritual growth, that’s why when this suggestion came we gave them all the support they need. We are ready to support so that anytime there is any key function concerning the Ministry u will be there with your smooth Asphaltic voices. I’m happy for this initiative, we are praying that you will be able to stand the test of time” Mr. Nti said
The Asphaltic Voices will partner the Evergreen GBC Choir for the festival of nine lessons and carols on the 22nd of December, 2022. There were some soothing renditions from the choir including “Oye” by James Varrick Armaah, “We celebrate our God” and the hymn, “This is the day the Lord has made” as it joins the industry for barely three months.
