Highlife

Highlife

During that time, Ghanaian musicians incorporated foreign influences like the foxtrot and calypso with Ghanaian rhythms like Highlife- a genre that moved Kpanlogo music of the Ga people in Ghana, onto Western instruments. The earliest form of highlife was performed primarily by brass bands along the Ghanaian coast. Highlife was associated with African aristocracy and was played by numerous bands including the Jazz Kings, Cape Coast Sugar babies, and Accra Orchestra. 

From the 1930s, highlife spread via Ghanaian workers to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Gambia among other West African countries, where the music quickly gained popularity. 

In the 1940s, the music diverged into two distinct streams: dance band highlife and guitar band highlife. Guitar band highlife featured smaller bands and, at least initially, was most common in rural areas. Because of the history of stringed instruments like the seprewa in the region, musicians were happy to incorporate the guitar. They also used the dagomba style, borrowed from Kru sailors from Liberia, to create highlife's two-finger picking style. Guitar band highlife also featured singing, drums and claves. E.K. Nyame and his Akan Trio helped to popularize guitar band highlife, and would release over 400 records during Nyame's lifetime.

By the 50s, Highlife had become West Africa popular music that later spread to western Nigeria, and flourished in both Ghana and Nigeria.

Osibisa was a highly influential Afro-rock band that originated in the late 1960s. They blended traditional African rhythms with psychedelic rock,jazz, and funk, creating a unique sound that was highly popular in the UK and beyond. Their success paved the way for other Ghanaian musicians to gain international recognition, and the highlife scene in Ghana flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. However by the mid 60s, highlife had lost most of its audience to guitar-centered genres like juju, which gained widespread international recognition by the 80s.

(According to Britannica Encyclopedia) When highlife reached Nigeria, it experienced an important transformation: asymmetrical drum rhythms derived from traditional drumming practices of the Yoruba people were combined with syncopated (displaced-accent) guitar melodies to accompany songs sung in either Yoruba or English.