Benewaah Boateng is building bridges, from Ghana to the world.
Benewaah converts music into audience & income.
In the fourth installment of our interview series, Senior Music Editor at Spotify and cultural strategist Benewaah Boateng talks about how betting on herself and trusting God’s timing helped her build a career connecting Ghana to the world.
It was Benewaah Boateng’s audacity that led her to start Harmattan Rain. As she tells it, in the summer in of 2015, she was deeply enthralled with the music bubbling out of underground corners of the Internet as artists across Ghana and Nigeria shared their diverse projects and loose singles on platforms like Soundcloud and Limewire. The intimacy of social media at the time made it easy for her to reach out directly, asking artists about their creative process and the steps behind their music.
With the help of her right-hand and partner Burma, she started a music magazine named Harmattan Rain, born from their passion to document the rising alternative music scene in West Africa, which traditional platforms were ignoring. Her mission was to champion the underdog: “We knew we didn’t want that—we focused on emerging artists creating alternative sounds.”
When creating Harmattan Rain, Benewaah had never imagined herself as a music curator. She didn’t even know such a role existed, and for a long time, she struggled with labels and trying to find her place in Ghana’s growing music scene. She had no backup plan; music was one of her earliest passions, and she felt driven to document the progress of young Ghanaian artists and how they were transforming the country’s sound.
“For a long time, I didn't know what to call myself. You know, when you meet people like, oh, ‘So what do you do?’ I run this magazine because I didn't know if I should call myself a music editor, editor-in-chief, a production manager, like, I just do this thing, right?”
It was her same overflowing self-confidence and belief in herself that also led her to create Rain Labs, the music label services arm of Harmattan Rain, where she helped monetize the global star power of artists like Gyakie, KiDi, and MAUIMØON from Uganda. While doing this, she was juggling a full-time role in advertising while working for Oglivy, which started feeling repetitive and left her seeking a greater challenge.
Her next challenge came in the form of a role at Universal Music Group, a role she landed through networking with her peers in the music industry in Nigeria. One friend she kept in touch with in particular happened to be Tomisin Akinwunmi (whom we have previously interviewed on this newsletter). Benewaah went on to serve as Country Coordinator and Marketing Lead at UMG, all while continuing to nurture her passion projects, Harmattan Rain and its creative extension, Rain Labs.
Community requires patience, nurturing, and sacrifice. Benewaah knows this very well as she has leaned on the power of her peers to navigate an uncertain industry. As she tells it, horizontal networking has paid off each time. Throughout her career, Benewaah has remained dedicated to a single vision of increasing awareness, celebration, and respect for Ghanaian genres and African music while exploring new sounds with curiosity and inquisitiveness.
“It was a definite yes to Spotify, not because it's the first and premium audio music platform in the world, but also because I see it as the company values and my values relating to music. It's making sure that artists are seen and heard and make money off their art.”
Read an excerpt from our interview and listen to the full episode below.
On why she started Harmattan Rain
"Harmattan Rain really started from me listening to productions because I liked the beats more than the lyrics. Both Burma and I were very big into production."
On the Soundcloud music era
"One of the key things that made SoundCloud so interesting was how collaborative it was—an artist from Ghana could work with a producer from Nigeria without ever meeting."
On finding titles while building new systems
“When I started Harmattan Rain, I had no idea there was like a job, like music curation. It didn't even make sense to me… For a long time, I didn't know what to call myself. You know, when you meet people like, oh, ‘So what do you do?’ I run this magazine because I didn't know if I should call myself like a music editor, editor-in-chief, a production manager, like, I just do this thing, right?”
On trusting your timing
“I was in Ogilvy, and I was like, I don't want to do advertising anymore. It's starting to get boring. I'm doing the same campaign because this brand wants the same thing that you did for this other brand. I met with a couple of people from UMG when they came down to Ghana. I think a couple of months down the line, one of the leads hit me up and said, “We have this opportunity. I think you would be great for the JD. Check it out and see if it's something that you would want to do.”
On the importance of horizontal networking
“I think that the other thing I've learned also is your network is everything, like the people that you know and interact with, and share ideas and stuff with, your network does, because a lot of the opportunities I have had have come from my network.”
On keeping a physical record of your work
“Document everything. I think that's one of the things that I will tell my younger self is to document everything. There's a lot of things that I did and even still do that I take for granted, or I took for granted, and I just let it, you know, pass by like it was just another thing, and I didn't document it or put it in the space that was easily accessible.”
On the women who inspire her
“I heard Issa Rae describe it as connecting horizontally. Instead of trying to network with people, higher network with people who are on the same or similar path as you. Because, like I said, a lot of my opportunities and stuff came from my relationships with other people, but more especially, my relationships with people who I considered my peers more than the people who were like the higher ups, the “oborobos” or whatever.”
On misogyny in the music industry
"It’s frustrating when men blur boundaries, approaching romantically instead of keeping it professional. This is business, not personal."
On the role of a Spotify editor
“An editor is a fancy word for somebody who creates the playlist. That's a majority, the bulk of my work. It's a lot of listening and categorization and doing what we can to help nurture, grow, etc., and this involves artist campaigns. Essentially, artist development, artist education, which, for our market, is very, very important, yeah, essentially, that's, that's what I do.”
On the Spotify philosophy
“We pitch to everybody else, and everybody else figures out their stuff. There's a philosophy at Spotify, like autonomy. That's why we have our artist and label partners, separate from like, our editors, because you want to give people the chance to create specifically for the audience and not to be biased by the industry or the labels or relationships.”
On the diversity in African music
"Africa is so diverse that it’s difficult to capture everything at once. It’s a huge bedrock of art, beauty, and potential. There’s just so much, and people are slowly starting to recognize how unboxable and rich it is."
Famous last words
“There are no rules to this thing. So, whichever way you want to document, do that. Photography, writing, recording, and podcasting. Just record and document as much as possible. If you want to document in your local language, do it, because nobody cares. Everybody's figuring this thing out. Nobody knows what they're doing.”
Listen to the full interview below and head to our Instagram (@tellitourway) to learn more about Benewaah Boateng.