Highlife

node · earth · Ghana and Nigeria

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.