Highlife
It was 1951 when Ghanaian trumpet and saxophone player E.T. Mensah embarked on a tour of Nigeria with his band the Tempos. They headed east with guitars, a full horn section, conga drums and a plethora of percussion. Their mix of indigenous dance grooves, lilting guitar and triumphant horns spoke to the people of Nigeria, moved their feet and sang to their hearts. The story goes that the Tempos were such a financial success that a triumphant Mensah was eventually forced to leave due to excessive unpaid tax bills. This legendary tour sparked the global explosion of what we now call Highlife music. This breezy, effervescent sound remains massively popular across West Africa, the continent and the whole world over.
Sepewera
The story of Highlife is one of fusion and adaptation, the Africanisation of colonial sounds. One key to the magic of its popularity may lie within the rhythms and melodies of the Seperewa.
A small, harp type instrument, the name of this beautiful, mythical seeming instrument translates as a combination of ‘to speak’ and ‘to touch’. Seperewa performers say this instrument speaks when played. You can hear strong echoes of the mesmerising Seperewa sound throughout Highlife’s story. It was this harp cross fingering technique, playing with thumb and forefinger, translated onto imported Portuguese guitars using western chords which created the hybrid Highlife guitar style we know and love today.
Palm Wine music
Towards the end of the 19th century Portuguese, German and British colonists still controlled most of West Africa. The abolishment of slavery had seen a boom in the palm oil trade and the expansion of many ports along the West African coast (at the time known as the ‘Gold Coast’). This rush to capitalise on trade brought a wealth of international migrants to Ghana and the neighbouring countries. The sailors brought with them sea shanties and folk songs but most importantly, they brought guitars. When native musicians started playing this ‘box guitar’, a new type of sound was created.
So called ‘palm wine music’ was a fusion of Spanish style classical guitar, indigenous Ghanian music formed around drums and accapella voices and the lilting style of Trinidadian Calypso. In Ghana the music was named after the palm wine drink consumed at gatherings where people would pay guitar and percussion. In Sierra Leone this music became known as Miranga and further afield as ‘African Blues’. Although described as ‘roots’ music, there’s very little primitive about guitarists and singers like S.E. Rougie of Sierra Leone or Kwame Asare of Ghana. Palm Wine is the roots of Highlife but this music is in itself an incredible fusion of ancient traditions and international sounds.
Concert parties, how Highlife got its name
The musical landscape of Ghana in the 1940s was dominated by cultural imperialism. During the second world war, large numbers of British and Americans were stationed in Ghana and they brought swing music with them. High society would attend ‘concert parties’ where European settlers or native Akan musicians would play ragtime and foxtrot dances in-between comedy shows. It was at these ‘concert parties’ that musicians such as E.K. Nyame and E.T Mensah amplified and modernised the palm wine guitar sound by bringing it to a more sophisticated, respectable audience. These bands would replace English lyrics with Twi, the language native to the Akan people.
Highlife got its name because most people saw it as an aspirational music of the sophisticated elite. Yebuah Mensah, brother of trumpet player E.T Mensah, says
“the people called it Highlife as they did not reach the class of couples going inside, who not only pay a relatively high entrance fee.. but also had to wear full evening dress, including top hats if they could afford it.
Highlife may have begun as top-hat wearing music, but it was destined to bloom in popularity. The musical textures it grew from were indigenous and soulful so the fusion of that history with ‘high’ society jazz was too powerful for it to remain exclusive for long.
‘A music of free expression based on native tunes picked up from the streets’
E.T Mensah: the King of Highlife
The king of modern Highlife, E.T Mensah, got his first job as hired muscle carrying instruments for the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra. The orchestra played regimental marching band tunes for dances and a sprinkling of swing jazz. In 1947 he formed the Tempos with a group of disaffected jazz musicians. With his buoyant trumpet playing, Mensah set out to develop what he called a ‘A music of free expression based on native tunes picked up from the streets’. He knew that to make any great dance music you need a good beat and is credited as the first musician to start using Afro Cuban instrumentation like bongos, maracas and congas. The Tempos music relied less on western dance steps and was more akin to the rhumba and cha-cha dances that were sweeping across West Africa at the time. This Latin percussive flare and a looser, more wild and sensual dance style encouraged the music to evolve. Mensah helped found the Ghana Musicians Union and supported his musicians with a respectable fee. At a time when musicians were hardly paid at all, this helped cement him as a heroic figure across West Africa.
Ghanaian independence and the cultural revolution
President Kwame Nkrumah saw Highlife as key to the cultural revolution that was in full swing in the 50s during Ghana’s fight for independence. Nkrumah would take Highlife groups such as Dr. K. Gyasi and his Noble Kings on official trips and involve music at the forefront of campaigns. Highlife’s association with both sophistication and roots made it extremely valuable to spreading revolutionary zeal across the country.
In a move to imbue national pride into the cultural fabric of the country, Nkrumah encouraged musicians to swap their tuxedoes for traditional dress and if they performed on the radio it was mandatory to play at least one traditional song. Following independence in 1957, Highlife was named the official music of free Ghana. There was even a move to re-name the music ‘osibi’ - its Twi name, but by then Highlife, an undeniably fantastic name, had already stuck.
African Brothers International and Guitar Band Highlife
It is important to make a distinction between dance band and guitar band Highlife. Dance bands like Mensah’s Tempos were responsible for spreading Highlife across the continent and their popularity is not to be understated. However, to Ghanaians in the 60s and into the 70s, their music still carried heavy colonial baggage. Whilst dance bands were large and more akin to orchestras, guitar bands were smaller and played everyday music for the people.
Nana Kwame Ampadu, leader of African Brothers Band felt this distinction keenly. African Brothers was formed in 1963 and Ampadu refused for a long time to include horns in his arrangements. He says,
‘The guitar-band man is close to the people, much closer than the dance band'
There is a sense of urgency to African brothers fast and stylish playing. The bass lines are infectiously danceable and the guitar riffs juicy and wild. The vocals are also uncomfortably loud on these early recordings, hot and distorted, threatening to burst through the speakers. This music is incredibly special, steeped in tradition but determined to speak directly to the people. No longer concerned with wearing top hats at fancy events, Ampadu’s guitar melodies are full of soul, what guitar music does best.
Nigerian Highlife
In Nigeria, a kindred evolution was happening. Bobby Benson is credited as the first musician to play electric guitar in Nigeria, having been playing big band calypso, samba and blues since the late 1940s. After seeing E. T. Mensah’s legendary tour of Nigeria in 1951, a former member of Bobby Benson’s Jam session orchestra, Rex Lawson went on to create his own Eastern Highlife sound, unique to Nigeria. During the 60’s Ghanaian musicians were faced with a declining recording industry at home. Meanwhile, Nigerian musicians were updating their tradition-focused Yoruba music and blending it with African American influenced funk and soul. This super cool scene started to attract musicians from across west Africa. They were entranced by the forward-thinking attitude of modern Nigeria which often included platform shoes, fast cars and English lyrics.
New wave pioneer Prince Nico Mbarga was another ex-jazz band leader determined to bring Highlife into the future with an electrifyingly cool guitar band sound.
Prince Nico’s 1977 hit ‘Sweet Mother’ is one of the most enduring songs of the Nigerian Highlife renaissance. Sung in English, it remains one of the biggest Highlife hits of all time.
Victor Uwaifo
Another pioneer was Victor Uwaifo, an internationally adored guitar hero who sadly passed away last year. Known as ‘the guitar boy’, Uwaifo played guitar with intense, expressive slides and skronky solos reminiscent of surf rockers like Dick Dale or soulful shredders like Jimi Hendrix. Uwaifo’s flashiness is enticing, and his live performances are the stuff of legend. Uwaifo mixed the carefree palm wine sound with an abrasive rock and roll attitude, bringing the guitar into the forefront as a fiery, electrified, solo machine. A loyal follower of E.T Mensah, Uwaifo loved to incorporate horns picking up the vocal lines in his music. This era of Highlife leaves behind the rivalry of dance band versus guitar band music and embraces a joyous pan African heritage.
Afrobeat: Fela Kuti and Tony Allen
The Highlife spirit of Fela Kuti’s music presents most explicitly in Koola Lobitos’ output from 1963 to 1969. The band was formed with drummer Tony Allen and they played a new fusion of jazz and Highlife. Fela was a visionary, famously driven to create world changing sounds. Fans of his later, grittier output with Afrika 70 would be well served listening to Koola Lobitos’ early recordings. This music is a synthesis of everything brewing in the decades prior. Fresh, fast and free, this is Highlife at a crucial turning point.
Fela’s drive to innovate saw him visit Ghana and the United States in search of new sounds. Tony Allen, who died in 2020, writes in his 2013 autobiography Master Drummer Of Afrobeat about how hearing African American jazz musicians such as Elvin Jones, Art Blakey and Mach Roach shaped his unique stuttering drum patterns,
‘It was like magic to me.. the way they were drumming, it had all the spirituality and spirit in it, it wasn’t English, it wasn’t Western…they were telling a story on the drums.’
Allen is credited as ‘the man who put the beat in Afro Beat’ and his drumming is a fascinating mash-up of styles. Rooted firmly in African traditions but open to so many influences, Koola Lobitos marked the start of this stylistic journey. Without Highlife, there would be no Afrobeat.
Likewise, the legacy of Allen’s drumming and Fela’s unique experimentation can be felt throughout an abundance of contemporary music. It seems only appropriate that the legacy of Afrobeat would also encapsulate the essence of Highlife, a music founded on fusion and adaptation.
Highlife’s Legacy
The vinyl revival of the 2010’s saw music bloggers and labels such as Awesome Tapes from Africa, Strut and Soundway digitising old recordings and bringing classic Highlife, Afrobeat, funk and soul back into heavy rotation. Artists such as Uwaifo and the Lijadu Sisters enjoyed fame with audiences in Europe and North America recently as a result of the seminal Strut compilation Nigeria 70 - The Sound of Funky Lagos. The Lijadu sisters took what Fela and Allen were laying down and ran with it. They made streamlined funky jams like ‘Danger’ and ‘Life’s Gone Down Low’. I’ve seen these decidedly modern Afro-pop hits fill sweaty dance floors in Glasgow and London. As is sadly the case with many music histories, female voices and musicians are notably missing from the Highlife hall of fame. In interviews the sisters hold themselves with poise and grace, claiming their space as female artists in a tough industry.
Today, white Western musicians continue to emulate this ebullient music. Bands like Vampire Weekend have seen massive success with their polyrhythmic, trebly guitar lines that mimic a confabulation of African styles. Habitual borrower of musical sounds, Paul Simon took the melody his song ‘Spirit Voices’ from the Palm Wine tune ‘Yaa Amponsah’. The legal debacle that followed saw Simon inadvertently sparking a debate over the state ownership of Ghanaian traditional art and song. Such arguments over cultural appropriation continue to rage.
Highlife still thrives amongst contemporary West Africans and musicians across the African diaspora. Exploring cultural heritage, many black musicians look to Highlife as a melting pot that inspires innovation and pride. Whether discovering this music for the first time or growing up in homes that have never stopped buzzing with horns and guitars, Highlife evokes nostalgia for a more hopeful time. Little Simz’s song ‘Point and Kill’ features London-based Nigerian artist Obongjayar and is drenched in painfully cool 70s style. The song has a delicious trumpet hook that throws back to the days of E.T. Mensah’s Nigerian tours. Skepta samples Prince Nico’s ‘Sweet Mother’ on his crowd pleasing 2008 song of the same name. Contemporary Nigerian groups like The Cavemen also look to the past with nostalgic nod, warming the hearts of multiple generations of West African parents and children alike.
Illustrations by:
Aleesha Nandhra is an illustrator and printmaker from London.
Their work often revolves around: Nature, culture, mental health, music, storytelling and everyday life.
Written by:
Rachel Aggs is multi-instrumentalist and songwriter based in Glasgow. Aggs has achieved international acclaim with collaborative projects Trash Kit, Shopping and Sacred Paws. Creating zines and co-ordinating workshops that encourage women, non-binary people, and people of colour to form bands, Aggs has galvanised the DIY punk scene in London and Glasgow and toured widely in Europe and North America.
They have guest-edited She Shreds magazine and written for The Guardian.
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