The word highlife emerged in Ghana after 1914, when many ballroom-dance orchestras were set up by and for the local elites; these included the Excelsior Orchestra, the Jazz Kings, the Accra Orchestra, and the Cape Coast Sugar Babies. At first these musicians did not play local music, but by the early 1920s they began to orchestrate some of the adaha, osibisaaba, and other local street songs. In fact, the name “highlife” was coined not by the well-to-do performers and audiences of these prestigious orchestras but rather by the poor who gathered outside for free shows on the nearby streets and pavements: the sailors, fishermen, ex-soldiers, migrants, and area boys who were the original purveyors, and audiences for, the existing forms of local popular music.6
Cape Coast Sugar Babies Orchestra and fans in Enugu in 1938.
British officer training a Gold Coast marching band in the early 1900s.
The Ghanaian Kumasi Trio guitar band in 1928, composed of three Fanti musicians based in Kumasi. The leader, Kwame Asare (a.k.a. Jacob Sam), is on the right.
Juju band at Lido nightclub opposite the old Africa Shrine, 1974.
Tempos band with its leader E. T. Mensah seated in the middle.
During the Second World War Allied troops were stationed in many African countries and they brought swing-jazz records with them. In Ghana this resulted in a new type of highlife band modeled on a small swing combo that replaced the earlier large and mostly symphony-like ballroom-dance orchestras. It was the wartime Tempos dance band that pioneered this development.
The Tempos initially consisted of Ghanaians and white army musicians who played swing for the thousands of Allied troops stationed in Ghana between 1939 and 1945. But when the white soldiers left, the Tempos survived as an all-Ghanaian band, and under the leadership of Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren), and then E. T. Mensah, this outfit made the breakthrough into a new sound, which fused highlife music with jazz, calypso, and Latin music. By the early fifties other dance bands modeled on the Tempos were appearing in Ghana, such as the Red Spots, Joe Kelly’s Band, the Rhythm Aces, and Black Beats. In 1951 the Tempos, now under the leadership of E. T. Mensah, made their first trip to Nigeria.
It was largely through the 1950s tours of the Tempos that highlife dance-band music spread from Ghana to Nigeria. There musicians like Bobby Benson, Rex Lawson, Victor Olaiya, Bill Friday, Roy Chicago, Eddie Okonta, and Zeal Onyia quickly Nigerianized highlife, which became entrenched in western, midwestern, and southeastern Nigeria.
All this development of dance-band highlife in Ghana and Nigeria was going on in the early fifties and was being put together by young musicians who supported the independence struggle. As a result, their new sound that employed Western jazz instrumentation but played African music became the “sound symbol” or “sound track” for the early independence era of both of these two countries.
For instance, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah used highlife music for state and international functions, set up government highlife bands, and encouraged these bands to Africanize their music.7 On the eve of Nigeria’s independence in 1960 irate Nigerian musicians marched with their union through Lagos to demand that highlife be played at the National Independence Dance, rather than the planned performance by the British Edmundo Ross band. According to the Ghanaian guitarist Stan Plange,8 who was in Lagos then as guitarist with Bill Friday’s Downbeats band, almost a thousand members of the Nigerian musicians’ union marched from the Empire Hotel, Idioro, to Government House to petition the prime minister, Tafawa Balewa. He agreed that local highlife rather than imported Latin and swing music should be played. So local highlife artists such as Victor Olaiya, Zeal Onyia, and Chris Ajilo played at this important national event.
Bobby Benson and E. T. Mensah in the early 1950s.
During the 1960s Western pop music began to be picked up by the youth of Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries in Africa. First came rock ’n’ roll and the associated “twist” dance, followed by soul music of James Brown and Wilson Pickett. At first local artists simply copied this imported music. Rock bands in Ghana included the Avengers and Psychedelic Aliens; then from Gambia came the Super Eagles (led by Badou Jobe and Paps Touray); from Sierra Leone, Geraldo Pino’s Heartbeats (that included Francis Fuster); and from Nigeria, the Clusters, Segun Bucknor’s Hot Four, and Sonny Okosun’s Postmen. Local soul artists and bands included Elvis J. Brown, Pepe Dynamite, and Stanley Todd’s El Pollos of Ghana and the Hykkers and Tony Benson’s Strangers of Nigeria, with Joni Haastrup being acclaimed as Nigeria’s James Brown. Even earlier, in Sierra Leone, Pino’s Heartbeats switched from pop to soul music and became West Africa’s first homegrown soul band. They then promptly left Freetown for Ghana and then Nigeria, taking live performances of this black American dance music with them.
Geraldo Pino, leader of the
Sierra Leonian band The Heartbeats.
By the late 1960s there was a creative explosion among African musicians who had been influenced by rock and soul music introduced through records and films. First, early rock ’n’ roll and its associated twist dance became a craze with urban African youth. This was followed by the progressive and psychedelic rock music of the later Beatles, Eric Clapton’s Cream (that included the drummer Ginger Baker), Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, as well as the Latin-rock fusion of Santana—all of which fostered a more experimental spirit among young African pop musicians. Enhancing this impact on African musicians was that both Ginger Baker and Paul McCartney worked in Nigeria in 1971 and 1973, respectively, while Santana played in Ghana in 1971. At the same time soul music and its “funk” offshoot with their extended dance grooves and associated “Afro” fashions became the craze of urban African youth. Soul also spread an Afrocentric “roots” message as found, for instance, in the “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” lyrics of James Brown. In fact his records became so popular that he and his J.B.’s band toured Nigeria in 1970.
As a result of the back-to-roots and innovative energy contained in these new forms of imported popular music, many young African artists who had been copying rock and soul music began to dig into their own indigenous musical resources and develop various new forms of Afropop music, such as Afro-rock, Afro-soul, Afro-funk, and Afrobeat. Afro-rock was created around 1969–70 by the London-based group Osibisa that included Ghanaian, West Indian, and Nigerian musicians and was led by three Ghanaian ex-highlife dance-band musicians: Mac Tonto, Sol Amarfio, and Teddy Osei.
Their international success encouraged numerous other Afro-rock bands that formed in the early and mid-1970s, such as South Africa’s Harare and Juluka (Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu), Thomas Mapfumo’s Hallelujah Chicken Run Band and Acid Band in Zimbabwe, Ebenezer Kojo Samuels’ Kapingbdi group in Liberia, and the Super Combo of Sierra Leone. In Ghana there was as Boombaya, the Zonglo Biiz, Hedzoleh, Basa-Basa, and the Bunzus. Nigeria saw the formation of Tee Macs Afro-Collection, BLO, Ofege, Sonny Okosun (his ozzidi style), Ofo and the Black Company, Mono Mono, and the Funkees.