The Department of Music holds an iconic status on the continent, with a history that traces back to the country’s independence. It prides itself on being the “Gateway to African Music.” The department embraces a 'big tent' philosophy, where scholarship and creative expressions across all traditions of music are encouraged and transmitted. It is underpinned by a solid grounding in the fundamentals of music and how these are expressed either as culture or within its cultural context.

In the 1950s, a small group of academics at the new University of Ghana shared a passion for music and would meet to discuss and play or hear music performed. This group included renowned Prof J.H. Kwabena Nketia and E.F. Collins, Atta Annan Mensah, Robert Sprigge, and the legendary Ephraim Amu, today considered the “father of Ghanaian art music.” The group was formalized in 1958 as the Ghana branch of the African Music Society (also called the “Ghana Music Society”) and maintained an affiliation with the South African branch of the African Music Society, which published the widely respected “Journal of the African Music Society” to which members contributed. The founding group held weekly meetings where topics such as ‘The Development of African Instrumental Music,’ ‘Professionalism in the Musical Practice of Ghana,’ ‘African Dance Drama,’ and ‘Problems on Publishing’ were discussed, and featured performances of local musicians and guitar highlife bands including those of E.K.Nyame, ‘King’ Onyina, and Yamoah. Students were also welcomed at the gatherings, and several became notable musicians or scholars, including Ambassador Kwadwo Donkor, T.D.B. Adjekum, and Kwesi Wiredu.

In 1961, the Institute of African Studies was established at the University of Ghana to promote the study of African culture, history, society, and thought. Then-President Nkrumah eagerly championed Its establishment. Music scholarship has featured heavily within the Institute from its genesis. Nkrumah himself was a pianist and avid fan of music – having endorsed and been supported by numerous highlife bands, seeing the value of traditional music in reinforcing the new nation’s identity and in seeing the potential for African art music to explore uncharted territories.

The Department has produced significant scholarship across a broad range of domains, including leading in ethnomusicological scholarship across the continent, faculty composers who have written symphonies, concertos and for orchestras of traditional instruments and had their works performed across the world, music theorists with revolutionary ideas and who have defined entire genres of scholarship such as Willy Anku on the study of African rhythms with his Structural Set Theory and John Collins on the study of highlife music in the academy.

The Department continues to remain at the forefront of developments in African and global music and, in 2023, hosted the world conference of the International Council of Traditional Musics (ICTM). It followed hosting the council's African Musics Study Group in 2018.