Ghanaian highlife musician Bisa KDei has dismissed claims by ethnomusicologist Professor John Collins that his 2015 hit song Brother Brother was built on a sampled guitar loop.
Prof Collins, a respected scholar of African popular music and a key figure in documenting Ghana’s highlife tradition, suggested in a recent interview that the popular track may have borrowed its guitar pattern from an old record.
“What Bisa KDei did in Brother Brother was that he picked the typical guitar band sample. I don’t even know which band he got this from, but it was very distinctive. He didn’t get a guitarist to play it. He just looped it and used it occasionally,” Prof Collins claimed.
Responding to the assertion, Bisa KDei strongly refuted the allegation, insisting that he never samples in his music and played the guitar parts himself.
“The fact that I got it so perfect doesn’t mean I copied it. I never sample. None of my songs is sampled because I understand originality very well.
I also produce and play the guitar. The guitars in Mansa and Brother Brother I played myself, and I understand highlife, so I play according to flow. Someone should tell the professor to do proper research next time. lol,” the highlife star wrote on his Instagram story.
