Highlife is a Ghanaian music genre that originated along the coastal cities of present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its history as a colony of the British and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions of African metre and western jazz melodies.[1] It uses the melodic and main rhythmic structures of traditional African music, but is typically played with Western instruments. Highlife is characterized by jazzy horns and guitars which lead the band and its use of the two-finger plucking guitar style that is typical of African music. Recently it has acquired an uptempo, synth-driven sound.[2][3]
Highlife gained popularity and the genre spread throughout West African regions. Pioneers like Cardinal Rex Lawson, E.T. Mensah, Victor Uwaifo, all perfected this sound by infusing traditional Africa drums and western "Native Blues".[1] After the war its popularity came back within the Igbo people of Nigeria, taking their own traditional guitar riffs and the influence of the diverse culture and flavor of Nigeria, mixed and perfected it to form Igbo highlife which became the country's most popular music genre in the 1960s.[4]
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Highlife has remained a part of popular music for Ghanaians and their diaspora globally through its integration with religious institutions and the positive effect it had on immigrating Ghanaians leaving their homeland.[5]
The following arpeggiated highlife guitar part is modeled after an Afro-Cuban guajeo.[2] The pattern of attack-points is nearly identical to the 3-2 clave motif guajeo as shown below. The bell pattern known in Cuba as clave is indigenous to Ghana, and is used in highlife.[3]
Palm-wine music, also known as maringa in Sierra Leone, was one style that originated on coastal locations when local musicians began using portable instruments brought by traders and fused it with local string and percussion instruments. It was usually played in a syncopated 4/4 metre. This music was played in low class palm-wine bars at ports where sailors, dock workers, and working class locals would drink and listen to the music. Eventually this genre worked its way inland and a more Africanized version came containing 12/8 polyrhythms, this would be known as the "Native Blues". This style would gain popularity up until World War 2 when production of the records were stopped.[1]
A style of highlife that resembled western brass bands in European forts across West Africa. The military would use local musicians in their brass band regiments and taught them linear marching music. After these musicians saw how the West Indian regimental bandsmen practiced traditional music in their spare time it inspired them to do the same. The fusion of linear marching music with polyrhythmic local music created a danceable style called adaha, as well as a style with cheaper, local instruments called konkoma. This fusion was similar to the birth of jazz in New Orleans.[1]
In the 1920s, Ghanaian musicians incorporated foreign influences like the foxtrot and calypso with Ghanaian rhythms like osibisaba (Fante).[4] Highlife was associated with the local African aristocracy during the colonial period, and was played by numerous bands including the Jazz Kings, Cape Coast Sugar Babies, and Accra Orchestra along the country's coast.[4] The high class audience members who enjoyed the music in select clubs gave the music its name. The dance orchestra leader Yebuah Mensah (E.T. Mensah's older brother) told John Collins in 1973 that the term 'highlife' appeared in the early 1920s "as a catch-phrase for the orchestrated indigenous songs played at [exclusive] clubs by such early dance bands as the Jazz Kings, the Cape Coast Sugar Babies, the Sekondi Nanshamang and later the Accra Orchestra. The people outside called it the highlife as they did not reach the class of the couples going inside, who not only had to pay a relatively high entrance fee of about 7s 6d (seven shillings and sixpence), but also had to wear full evening dress, including top-hats if they could afford it."[6] From the 1930s, highlife spread via Ghanaian workers to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Gambia among other West African countries, where the music quickly gained popularity.
In the 1940s, the music diverged into two distinct streams: dance band highlife and guitar band highlife. Guitar band highlife featured smaller bands and, at least initially, was most common in rural areas. Because of the history of stringed instruments like the seprewa in the region, musicians were happy to incorporate the guitar. They also used the dagomba style, borrowed from Kru sailors from Liberia, to create highlife's two-finger picking style.[4] Guitar band highlife also featured singing, drums and claves. E.K. Nyame and his Akan Trio helped to popularize guitar band highlife,[7] and would release over 400 records during Nyame's lifetime.[4] Dance band highlife, by contrast, was more rooted in urban settings. In the post-war period, larger dance orchestras began to be replaced by smaller professional dance bands, typified by the success of E.T. Mensah and the Tempos. As foreign troops departed, the primary audiences became increasingly Ghanaian, and the music changed to cater to their tastes. Mensah's fame soared after he played with Louis Armstrong in Accra in May 1956, and he eventually earned the nickname, the "King of Highlife".[4] Also important from the 1950s onward was musician King Bruce, who served as band leader to the Black Beats. Some other early bands were, the Red Spots, the Rhythm Aces, the Ramblers and Broadway-Uhuru.
Economic problems led to a mass migration of Ghanaians in the 1960s looking for more opportunities and after that political instability in the '70s and '80s would cause more people and many prominent highlife musicians to leave and create clusters of communities across the west with Germany being a preferred destination because of its relaxed immigration laws.[5]
Ghanaians in Germany created a secular style of highlife that combined the genre with funk, disco, and synth-pop. It is believed it was called burger highlife because the largest communities of Ghanaians resided in Hamburg. The music became associated with migrants who would travel between Germany and Ghana. It also would become defined by its use of modern technologies; by the late '90s, productions used solely electronic instruments.
Considered one of the most popular music genres to both Ghanaians and its diaspora, gospel highlife has outlived burger highlife because of its success in blurring the lines between religion and pop culture. This genre is similar to burger highlife but its inspiration comes from Charismatic Christianity and Pentecostalism. Its significance within the communities stems from the religious institution's ability to provide social and cultural infrastructure for the Ghanaian diaspora in Germany.
E.T. Mensah and Kofi Ghanaba were important musicians in Ghana. From the late 1950s, famous jazz musicians began to visit Ghana, such as Ahmad Jamal and Louis Armstrong who played in Ghana (1956 and 1960). Armstrong's All Stars member Edmond Hall came to Ghana in 1959 to set up a short-lived jazz in Accra.
Guy Warren was one notable musician who played with E.T. Mensah and the Tempos before moving to America and working with musicians such as Red Saunders to record the album Africa Speaks, America Answers, as well as playing with Duke Ellington in Chicago for a short time. Warren is credited with introducing highlife to the United States in an attempt to bring African-American musicians back in touch with the music of Africa, as awareness of African influence on Afro-American music was lacking before the "African musical renaissance" of the late '50s.[8]
Highlife was associated with the local African aristocracy during the colonial period. Highlife spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia and Nigeria via Ghanaian workers, among other West African countries, by the 1930s.
Though the Ashanti uprising against the British was initially unsuccessful, it was their assertiveness which led to the creation of an art powerful enough to hide in plain view what it was intended to express. The Ashanti people wanted to be free and this shared objective gave rise to a musical union. Traditional African instruments such as the seperewa harp-lute and the gankogul bell were combined with European harmonies and guitars as people expressed themselves through song. Perhaps, even the appearance in which the genre took its name is indicative of the cultural displacement effected upon the colonizing forces.
It is very popular in Liberia and all of English-speaking West Africa, although little has been produced in other countries due to economic challenges brought on by war and instability. The prevailing popularity of traditional artists like Koo Nimo, King Sunny Ade despite the influx of American influence in the 1990s, shows that the affinity with the sound transcends the normally fickle forces that guide the music industry.
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Good evening great steemien, Hope you guys are all good?
Have you ever imagine a world without music?.. hmmm I've learnt a whole lot in music.
I love highlife music, its reminds me of the older days and also the things we have learnt and heard from our forefathers.
I gat a little piece I played to pass in a meaningful message to you all..
In this video I play a bass guitar and I also sang a song in my local dialect (ibibio)
" se owo edi di ke eribot Ami, se owo edi di yak ayen kufre Abasi"..
It's simply means in English " whatsoever you're in this world, you should never forget about God"
Highlife music has not been a single movement, it has not been a statement of political intent, of uprising or the idealism of a particular group; no use of it to channel a particular message has subsumed its sound. No one group has made it their own, and therefore it has remained a wonderfully rare example of free spirit and expression of the human experience. 152ee80cbc