Veteran Highlife musician Gyedu-Blay Ambolley is sounding the alarm on the music industry's over-reliance on technology.

On Joy Prime's Prime Time show, he criticised young artistes for prioritising speed and convenience over creativity and depth. 

Ambolley argued that the ease of digital music production is leading to a lack of musical skill and meaningful lyrics. "Shortcuts in music are not good," he emphasized. “It makes your music ‘sharp sharp’; it doesn’t last.” The term “sharp sharp,” he explained, refers to the fast-food style of music production that lacks soul, substance, and staying power.

Ambolley, whose career spans several decades and includes early experimentation with rap-infused highlife in the 1970s, expressed concern that many artists are now bypassing the learning process altogether. 

For him, music should be treated as a craft that requires discipline, mentorship, and cultural grounding. 

He noted that in earlier times, musicians had to learn to play instruments, study music theory, and perform live: skills that taught patience and fostered originality. 

But in today’s digital-driven industry, a beat can be downloaded, lyrics quickly patched together, and a song uploaded within hours, often without much human interaction or creative collaboration. (Read Lumba's one week held, date of burial not announced)

He also pointed out how the lack of communication between collaborators is becoming increasingly common in the age of remote recordings. 

Ambolley shared his own experience working with younger artists who send him tracks to feature on, only to release the final version without any follow-up or feedback. 

“When they send the music, I do my part, but after that, they don’t come back for me to listen to the entire song. Before I know it, it’s on air,” he said, calling it a symptom of how impersonal and fragmented music-making has become.

Though deeply critical of the technological shortcuts being taken, Ambolley acknowledged that not all hope is lost. 

He praised artistes like Kofi Kinaata for staying true to the core values of songwriting and storytelling, and for resisting the pressure to follow trends driven by algorithms and online hype. 

“If you don’t have good people around you, there’s no one to advise you when the path you’re taking is not the right one,” he noted.