Winneba Masquerade Festival : The First Party Of The Year In Ghana

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If you want to start your New Year with colour, celebration, and pure energy, there is only one place to be on 1st January, Winneba . While everybody is still sleeping after 31st Night, Winneba is already awake. Drums, brass band, costumes, masks. This is the Winneba Masquerade Festival, locally called Fancy Dress. It is the first major festival in Ghana every year. And it is the second biggest festival in Winneba after Aboakyer. There is a morning in Winneba that does not feel like any other morning in Ghana. By 7am, you can hear it. The brass band far away. The drum, shouting and the crowd. If you are in Winneba on that day, you cannot stay in your room. The sound will drag you out. I remember the first time I followed the sound. I thought something had happened. I thought maybe there was a funeral. But when I reached the road, I saw something I had never seen before. Men wearing masks. Big, colourful, scary, beautiful masks. Some looked like animals. Some looked like old white men ...

Yaw Dhope

 Stanley Asiedu known by the stage name Yaw Dhope is an afrobeat and afrodancehall artist and songwriter from Greater Accra of Ghana. He is noted for his lyrical dexterity in terms of unique rhyme schemes and has invented his on way of known as the Raggarap. His passion and love for music runs deep and goes back his school days when he first began to write and compose his own music.