TheFu 
Kwesi 
Yankah DHAVE TO BEGIN 
giving thanks 
organisers and 
sponsors of the Highlife 
Month, the initiative of 
John Collins and the 
sponsorship of Goethe 
Institute. For once, the world 
has been invited to focus on 
highlife music, over a period of 
one month... bringing the topic 
of highlife under close 
contemplation, through exhibitions, 
films, live performances, 
and a symposium 
such as this. 
This is probably the first ever public 
symposium on highlife music. The big 
irony being that it took a culturally sensitive 
foreign sponsor, and a hardworking 
Oburoni highlife scholar and historian to 
make this possible. 
A symposium of this nature, should 
have had a proud location in a National 
Commission of Culture, or Musician Union 
of Ghana, or Entertainment Critics and 
Reviewers Association of Ghana 
(ECRAG), who have specialised in 
promoting the arts only through awards, 
some of which are of doubtful merit. 
ECRAG 
ECRAG over the years has become 
less and less valued by artists, due to 
inconsistency in criteria used in giving 
awards.... Actor of the Year award this 
year has been given to an actor who has 
hardly acted in Ghana, let alone over the 
past year! To ECRAG, the dancer of the 
year need not have danced in the past 
year... There is the need for a major 
overhauling of ECRAG to bring it in line 
with contemporary award institutions, 
where recipients are of contemporary 
relevance.... 
Collins 
I also wish to salute the efforts of 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
VoLl/N03 
John Collins, the leading scholar of highlife 
music, for his tireless efforts in selling the 
scholarship on highlife at home and 
abroad. The discussion of a theme such as 
the future of highlife need not dwell 
exclusively on the content, style, and 
performance of highlife music. One needs 
to emphasise here the socio-political matrix 
of highlife, not just as music and dance, 
but as a social institution, that has been 
nurtured and sustained within a social 
context. 
There is the need for occasional 
emphasis on the exegesis of highlife, and 
the intellectual traditions in which it is 
anchored and preserved. It is possible 
today to announce that a highlife scholar 
and historian, Dr. John Collins, has been 
officially brought into the fold of the 
University of Ghana, at the School of 
Performing Arts. This is a quiet assurance 
that regardless of what happens to the 
future of the music, at least highlife or 
popular music could for once be the focus 
of serious academic contemplation in a 
university. At least one can talk of the 
bright future of a highlife academy. To 
date I know of two or so doctoral 
dissertations on highlife music. 
One needs to go further than that in 
recognising the effective role of highlife in 
world music. The immediate future calls 
for the construction of a Highlife Hall of 
Fame, where the past and present 
guardians of the highlife tradition are 
recognised in monuments befitting their 
status and artistic eminence. In other 
places, not only do we have a Rock & Roll 
Hall of Fame, monuments have been built 
for individual popular musicians, such as 
the John Lennon Cultural Centre in 
Liverpool, England. 
In such monuments lie the future of 
highlife. Under these circumstances then. 
ighlife 
one need not express the fear of losing 
authentic highlife music under the force of 
modernity. Highlife becon,°« a permanent 
monument intrinsically withstanding the 
ravages of time. 
State of flux 
But we need to go a step further. 
The Issue of the future of the music itself 
cannot be adequately addressed without 
reference to the present state of highlife, 
the extent of its resilience and the artistic 
transformations under which it has 
undergone over the years. 
These transformations range from 
rhythm, theme, performance, 
instrumentation, to language, resulting in 
a broad range of modes: typically falling 
under the rubric of burger highlife, derived 
from the Music of Ghanaians in Hamburg 
and other European cities. This term, 
probably has itself outlived its usefulness 
over the years, and has moved beyond 
the George Darkos, Lee Duodus to a 
rhythm one can as well call the Lumba 
Highlife, after Daddy Lumba. 
The features of current highlife 
clearly depart from the normative 4-4 time 
line, and sometimes qualifies only vaguely 
as highlife... highlife only in the sense of 
the Ghanaian language expression 
utilised. This could be relevant particularly 
if we should consider the term highlife as 
a broad rubric, encompassing Ghanaian 
popular music as a whole. 
The highlife variety has in it a 
substantial dose of the western popular 
rhythm, brought about by migration of 
Ghanaian musicians to the West. This 
rhythm is a clear departure from the range 
of indigenous musical idioms whose 
synthesis constitutes the original highlife 
beat. 
Significantly, the instrumental 
ensemble of such groups constitutes a 
hybrid between the typical dance band 
highlife, and the guitar band. Hybrid in
the sense that despite the rustic, 
idiomatic content of their lyrics, and the 
extensive use of the guitar (typical of 
guitar bands), there is an occasional horn 
intrusion that gives them the character of 
the typical dance band. Since its exponents 
grew out of the guitar band tradition, their 
lyrics have high proverbial and idiomatic 
density. They are virtually nuggets of 
narrative poetry. 
Besides the pronounced rhythmic 
departure, there appears to be a gradual 
de-emphasis on raw instrumental talent of 
the musician, and greater reliance on 
instrumental and technological gadgetry. 
Musical instrumentals are gradually 
becoming reduced to single piece 
equipment, capable of producing the effect 
on an entire ensemble. One-man 
orchestras and choruses are no longer 
fictions. They have become a virtual reality 
in current day music, considerably 
reducing individual artistic creativity. 
But the evolution of highlife music 
over the years cannot ignore a slight in the 
character of ownership, that has 
considerably affected the stability of 
highlife music. 
Big Band Highlife received a big 
booster in the early seventies through 
corporate ownership. Private and Public 
enterprises gave their public relations a 
further booster through the ownership of 
bands. The Tema Food Complex had a 
Complex Dance Band, the Cocoa 
Marketing Board, the Sweet Beans, Talk 
of the Town Hotel, Sweet Talks, Continental 
Hotel, Continentals, Ambassadors, 
Expensive Stars, Medican Lantics owned 
by state hotels. This was besides Forces 
bands from Navy, Armed Forces, Police, 
etc. 
These, of course, were besides the 
more stable privately owned bands like 
Ramblers, Black Beats, Uhuru, Tempos 
Band, etc. 
But Big Band highlife was to suffer 
a decline in the eighties, to be outstripped 
by the booming business of spinning 
groups, that charged less and played 
only copyrighted music. Spinning groups 
are gradually fading away, and there 
appears to be a gradual resurgence of 
live dance band music. 
But highlife music has not quite 
gone astray as people would think. 
Tradition goes on 
1) Its traditional exponents are still alive, 
in all their manifestations a) guitar band 
music;b) dance band music c) traditional 
ensembles, d) brass band. 
There still exists a resilient core group of 
highlife musicians and their art 
There is no need, indeed, to fear what 
appears to be 'contamination' of highlife; 
for highlife itself has always been a 
syncretic art form: a combination of local 
rhythms played with western musical 
instruments; and so long as the basic tenet 
of highlife is syncretic, one leg stepped 
within the western dynamic art, further 
Ramblers 
3uper Sweet Talks 
h A. B Crentsil 
George WiUiams Aingo 
| ril IB* T. Mensah 
l| Rex Lawson 
Victor Olaiya 
\ \ Eddy Okonta 
Sammy Kofi (Okukuseku) 
Eric Agyeman 
Bobby Benson 
westernisation is unavoidable. 
But highlife should not be considered 
inert, completely insulated from the forces 
of modernity. The world is growing smaller 
and smaller, and much as we must strive 
to preserve our distinct musical/cultural 
heritage, as a mark of our spiritual identity, 
we need not make ourselves a cultural 
island, completely insensitive to changes 
around us, in the world of technology. 
2) The current state of flux of highlife, 
may hurt the romantic nationalist, or 
cultural purist, but it provides a welcome 
bridge for the completely alienated youth 
of today, who are otherwise completely 
immersed in the Western funk musical 
Enrichment 
It is, of course, easy to panic and 
raise alarm over the threat of extinction of 
highlife music. The reality is that highlife 
music cannot just go away. It is being 
enriched daily by a multiplicity of forms, 
and variations partly influenced from the 
west, but also influenced from within 
through adoption, adaptation, and 
transformation of basic indigenous 
rhythms. The motivation is partly artistic, 
but also partly survivalist. Highlife music 
need not be seen as inert idiom; itchanges 
its form sometimes for its own sake, and 
sometimes as a survivalist strategy. 
Not only do we have to accept the 
idiom. Westernised highlife draws in the 
youth (who otherwise would be repelled); 
and once drawn in by the rhythm, the 
process of enculturation is facilitated; social 
messages are still imparted, morals are 
still learned. Except for the 'alienated' 
highlife music of today, our youth would 
be completely lost. 
3) We have not completely lost the 
prisitine highlife idiom, contrary to what 
others may think: its practitioners and 
adherents are still going strong, and are 
passing on their traditions: the timeless 
highlife cassettes and compact discs now 
on sale, displaying the music of E.T. 
Mensah, Ramblers, Black Beats. This 
makes the original highlife beat almost a 
timeless phenomenon, providing a 
rhythmic frame within which 
the archetypal forms are 
defined. 
We still have the guitar band 
consistency of Kwame 
Ampadu, the narrative 
character of his music: a 
combination of song and tale, 
specialising in the sung tale 
metaphor. Neither have we 
lost the consistency of the 
palm wine guitar exponent, 
Agya Koo Nimo, with his 
emphasis on percussion and 
acoustic guitar, the strong 
narrative component of his 
lyrics, which are anchored in 
the mmoguo tradition of 
storytelling. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arti 
VtlllNOi
dynamics of highlife as a natural artistic 
phenomenon, we also need not panic 
about the imminent death of pristine 
highlife idiom. These are timeless, and 
can never go away. 
What we need to do is to further 
educate the youth on the original state of 
highlife, and take them through the 
process of its evolution. 
Education , 
In Britain, one of the best 
programmes on television depicts music 
of the sixties (Beatles, Rolling Stones, 
etc). Every primary school child in Britain 
at least knows about the Beatles. There is 
a sense of documentation and history... 
a continuous playback of old rhythms 
and the pioneers of popular music. 
What is more important is the 
perpetuation of knowledge about the 
genesis and evolution of highlife. 
Currently one of the most popular 
programmes on radio in Ghana here is 
old time highlife: Joe Mensah, Ramblers, 
Nona Ampadu, E.T. Mensah, King Bruce, 
Uhuru Dance Band, Broadway.... The 
popularity of the programme itself 
demonstrates the resilience of highlife 
music.
What we need to do is indulge in 
an exercise of retrieving the residues of 
pristine highlife music lodged in GBC, 
and Ghana Film Industry Corporation. 
Old records need to be rendered on 
compact discs. 
There is the need for proper 
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African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
-I VoLUNO3 
Veteran of 'pristine' highlife: E.T. Mensah 
documentation of old musicians, their 
biographies, life histories, and their art.... 
Bob Cole, Kwaw Mensah, E. K. Nyame, 
Kakaiku, etc. departed without intensive 
documentation of their lives and art. 
highlife renaissance; continuous ploughing 
back into the modern idiom, of more and 
more traditional elements. Highlife may 
be rejuvenated not necessarily through 
adoption of western modes, but adoption, 
adaptation, and reformation and 
combinations, of old indigenous rhythms, 
boosted by modern technology to broaden 
its appeal. GR 
And finally, we need an endowment 
fund for research into highlife music, fo, 
this is one art form that has pervaded 
West Africa for over one century. The 
future of highlife? I foresee a kind of 
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