highlife

West African popular music that comes in two main styles: guitar-band highlife, which focuses on storytelling songs; and highlife dance music, played by larger bands that include brass instruments. Highlife has been popular throughout English-speaking West Africa since the 1920s.

Highlife originated with the importation of guitars in the early 20th century and subsequently combined diverse traditional forms with external influences (jazz, calypso, reggae, disco, soca) to create different substyles. The rhythm of the first big highlife hit, ‘Yaa Amponsah’ by Ghanaian Kwame Asare (1927), was repeatedly reworked in later decades. Ghanaian E T Mensah (1919–1996) introduced Afro-Cuban rhythms and electric guitars with his Tempos Band from 1948. Prince Nico Mbarga (1950–1998) revitalized Nigerian highlife with Zairean guitar style in the 1970s.