Music career and sustainability: the strategies of a hiplife musician

ABSTRACT Despite the challenges musicians face in different music cultures, the question of how musicians sustain their careers is often not highlighted in music and sustainability studies. This article focuses on the strategies adopted by Okyeame Kwame (OK), one of the pioneers of hiplife music, to sustain his career in the Ghanaian music industry. From an ecology of music viewpoint and twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, this article explores the factors influencing hiplife and musicians within the Ghanaian music industry to enable music career sustenance. This article argues that sustainable music careers are linked to and necessary for the sustainability of music cultures. It also contributes to the ongoing discourse on music and sustainability, particularly about music careers. Overall, the article offers lessons to help musicians and ethnomusicologists explore career sustainability strategies in various contexts and work towards a theory and practice of music career sustainability.