Highlife

Assembled from 30 blocks · 2 evidence · 31 related

1. Story
2. The West African popular form, developed principally on the Gold Coast and in southern Nigeria from the early twentieth century, in which imported instruments and Atlantic-circulated repertoire were absorbed into local rhythmic and melodic practice. Two strands run in parallel: an urban dance-orchestra strand playing for elite ballroom audiences — which is where the name comes from — and a guitar-band strand growing out of dockside palm-wine playing. The guitar strand is the one that closes this Journey's circle. Kwame Asare, known as Jacob Sam, born at Cape Coast in 1903 and taught guitar, according to retrieved accounts, by a Kru seaman, formed the Kumasi Trio and travelled to London in 1928 to record for Zonophone's West African series; the sides they made, among them "Yaa Amponsah", are the first highlife guitar recordings. The instrument was European, the recording company and the studio were in London, the technique came off the seperewa by way of a ship, and the music is Akan. Every layer of that sentence is a leg of the same Atlantic circuit read in the opposite direction.
3. Knowledge
4. Guitar
5. West Africa
6. Highlife
7. Connections
8. The Kru seafarers
9. West Africa
10. Guitar
11. The Kumasi Trio record in London
12. Kora
13. Ngoni
14. Akonting
15. The West African drum ensemble
16. The Middle Passage
17. The trans-Saharan routes
18. The trans-Saharan routes
19. The Kru seafarers
20. Highlife
21. The transatlantic trade in enslaved people operates
22. Jefferson names the banjar and its origin
23. European lute
24. Blues
25. Highlife
26. W. C. Handy hears a guitarist at Tutwiler station
27. The Kumasi Trio record in London
28. Evidence
29. Kwame Asare, known as Jacob Sam, born at Cape Coast in 1903, formed the Kumasi Trio and recorded in London for Zonophone's West African series in 1928, including "Yaa Amponsah" — the earliest guitar-band highlife recordings; his picking style derived from the two-finger technique of the seperewa and he was taught guitar by a Kru seaman. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to this collection description and corroborating reference entries; the collection page was not opened, no disc or matrix number was checked, and retrieved sources differ on how many sides were recorded.
30. Kru seamen of Liberia and Sierra Leone worked aboard European vessels, acquired guitars, and from the First World War onward spread a two-finger picking technique — reported to derive from Akan seperewa playing — along the West African coast through Krutown settlements, giving rise to dockside palm-wine music and thence to guitar-band highlife. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary from music-history sites rather than from ethnomusicological literature; none was opened, and the seperewa derivation rests on oral tradition reported at second hand.