Highlife

Ghana's dance tradition, in brass-band and guitar-band forms, with a bell pattern linking port and ballroom

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ModernAcoustic GuitarCross-rhythm

Highlife is Ghana's dance tradition, in brass-band and guitar-band forms, joining African bell rhythm, European harmony and port-town steps.

Origins and era

In the late nineteenth century local musicians in Accra, Cape Coast and Sekondi played European military music and dance music, adding African drums and call-and-response until the style came to be called highlife. In the 1920s and 1930s bands such as Jacob Sam's combined guitars, brass and local melody, and ballrooms and records made the brass band the main urban entertainment; in the 1950s E.T. Mensah and the Tempos became a national sound in the Nkrumah years, while E.K. Nyame's guitar bands took another road through cheap records and theatre tours. In the 1970s it gave way to afrobeat and disco, and in the 1990s it returned to radio as hiplife.

What you hear

The meter is 4/4, the tempo roughly 100 to 130 BPM. A bell or scraper sets out a cyclical timeline, and drums and bass interlock around it. In guitar-band versions two guitars divide the work, one playing a bass line and one arpeggios, so the parts interlock; the drum kit is light, a small drum and a bell, easy to carry to small venues. Brass versions use two or more trumpets and a saxophone in unison, with singing in Akan or Ewe and a chorus answering. Melodies are mostly major and phrases end in short repeats.

Key figures

E.T. Mensah was called the king of highlife, and his All For You became a West African hit in the 1950s; E.K. Nyame joined guitar bands to theatre, Kwaa Mensah kept a more classical vocal style, and Jerry Hansen's band enlarged the ballroom line-up; in later generations Pat Thomas and Obo Addy carried it into world music.

Lineage

Akan osibisaba, sailors' and harbour songs, Caribbean calypso, European military music and church harmony feed in; afrobeat, hiplife and contemporary Ghanaian pop come out. It put two very different band formats under one name.

Common misunderstandings

Highlife is not afrobeat, which is slower, longer and more political. Nor is there only one line-up, since brass bands and guitar bands are parallel paths. Hiplife is its descendant, not the same thing.

Sources

• John Collins, Musicmakers of West Africa（Three Continents Press, 1985），用于核对加纳舞曲与吉他乐队
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Highlife，用于交叉核对年代与编制

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.