Highlife, type of West African popular music and dance that originated in Ghana in the late 19th century, later spread to western Nigeria, and flourished in both countries in the 1950s. The earliest form of highlife was performed primarily by brass bands along the Ghanaian coast. By the early 20th century these bands had incorporated a broader array of instruments (primarily of European origin), a vocal component, and stylistic elements both of local music traditions and of jazz. Highlife thus emerged as a unique synthesis of African, African American, and European musical aesthetics.It borrows from the Akan and Kpanlogo musical traditions of Ghana but it intersects with many popular music genres including jazz, rock, hip-hop, and Afrobeat.
The majority of West Africa’s highlife bands fall into one of two categories: dance bands and guitar bands.
Highlife dance bands: Dance bands—which are popular in urban areas of Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Nigeria—feature orchestras reminiscent of American brass bands. They combine West African traditional music with calypso, swing, and Afro-Cuban dance music imported from North America and the Caribbean.
Highlife guitar bands: Guitar bands, which are more popular in the rural parts of West African countries, emphasize guitar and other string instruments. Guitar-based highlife songs borrow from Black American blues traditions.
Notable Highlife Artists
The highlife music genre has produced many notable artists.
1. E.T. Mensah (1919–1996): Widely regarded as the “King of Highlife,” E.T. Mensah was the biggest star of the dance-band highlife scene that dominated West African cities in the mid-twentieth century. He famously dueted with Louis Armstrong and introduced West African audiences to American jazz traditions.
2. E.K. Nyame(1927–1977): E.K. Nyame was to rural guitar-band highlife what E.T. Mensah was to urban dance-band highlife. Along with his Akan Trio, Mensah tapped into longstanding string music traditions in rural West Africa and went on to cut over 400 highlife recordings.
3. Bobby Benson (1922–1983): A talented saxophonist, pianist, and guitarist, Benson was born in Nigeria but spent several years in Europe during World War II. There he learned various types of Western jazz music, which he brought back to Nigeria and incorporated into highlife. Benson’s “Niger Mambo” caught the ear of New York-based jazz pianist Randy Weston, who included it on his 1963 record appropriately titled Highlife.
4. Fela Kuti (1938–1997): Fela Kuti was a Nigerian highlife artist who helped create the Afrobeat genre by combining highlife with jazz, funk, and Nigerian jùjú music.
