Highlife originated in Ghana in the 20th century—it uses similar melodies to traditional Akan music, but it utilises Western instruments, especially horns and guitars.

It first began in the 1920s when it was associated with the local African royalty during colonisation, and along the coast, bands such as the Cape Coast Sugar Babies and the Accra Orchestra played. It’s called highlife due to the fact that high-class audience members enjoyed it.

Throughout the 1930s, the genre spread across West Africa through Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Gambia, where it gained more popularity.

The next decade saw the genre split into two subgenres—dance highlife and guitar band highlife. Guitar band highlife was initially more common in rural areas, whereas dance highlife was more common in urban highlife. Guitar band highlife also featured smaller bands, and they used the “dagomba” style from Kru sailors in Liberia to create highlife’s two-finger picking style.

After the war, dance highlife saw the decrease of larger bands and the increase of smaller and more professional bands. As foreign troops began to leave Ghana, the primary audience began Ghanaian, with E.T. Mensah & The Tempos growing in popularity as they played with Louis Armstrong. This earned Mensah the nickname ‘The King of Highlife’.

Artists:

• Ofori Amponsah
• Kwabena Kwabena
• King Bruce