Highlife & Ghanaian nationalism

Highlife Music & the complex relation between Western music, nationalism, and identity in Ghana following WWII.

Ghanaian popular music is involved in many of the ironies, in which American culture (via Pan-Africanism and African American popular culture) -- inheriting from diverse African traditions -- plays a formative role in the constitution of Ghanaian nationalism, in its attempt to unify diverse ethnicities...themselves gathered in a post-colonial situation (i.e. Ghana = ex British Gold Coast).

Following WWII, ideas of liberation and African independence arose, generating musical forms of political and social expression.

Professor John Collins notes that:

“It is only really after the Second World War with the rise of the mass CPP independence movement and Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism, compounded by Afro-centric ideas coming in from the black Americas, that Ghanaian popular artists began indigenizing their performances in a self-conscious ideological way”.

One of the most popular Highlife bands was the Tempos.

Bob Johnson notes: “The Tempos jazzy highlife sound became the sound-symbol or zeitgeist of the early independence era as its use of a western jazz-combo format to play African music reflected independence itself, when the western socio-economic colonial format became Africanized”.

Mensah went on to compose over forty highlife tunes in support of Nkrumah, provide music at major CCP rallies and accompany the leader on State visits to neighboring countries.

E.T. Mensah composed the following songs in support of Ghanaian nationalism, utilizing the highlife idiom, strongly influenced by jazz, even as nationalism was influenced by African-American intellectual figures, such as WEB Dubois.

Ghana Freedom

Ghana, we now have freedom

Ghana, land of freedom

Toils of the brave and the sweat of their labours

Toils of the brave which have brought results

Kwame is part of Ghana

Nkrumah is part of Ghana

Ghana, Guinea, Mali

Ghana, Guinea, Mali Union

Has laid down a strong foundation

For redemption of Africa

For which we’ve been strongly fighting

Africa’s strongest foundation

The nucleus of their Great Union

Has now once been laid forever

First it was Ghana, Guinea

Then it was Ghana, Guinea, Mali

Soon it will be all of Africa

The achievement of our great destiny

Africa is now awakened that unity can save her

All leaders of Mother Africa

Are called to join this great union

While Highlife was initially criticized as "low culture", Kwame Nkrumah understood the importance of popular music as a means of mass communication and mobilization, via dissemination of affective ideals unifying the country.

When he came to power to lead free Ghana in 1957, Nkrumah established many national bands, including an orchestra, reinvigorated the study and performance of traditional Ghanaian music and dances, and used the trans-ethnic style of highlife to preach a broad message of Ghanaian, as well as African unity. He also encouraged non-state highlife music produced by workers associations, recognizing highlife’s appeal to be trans-ethnic, and thus a key tool in nation building. He created national and regional arts festivals, established Arts councils and Cultural Centres, and founded the Ghana musician’s and Ghana performer’s unions.

Another song, “Freedom for Ghana”, greatly concerned the British authorities:

Freedom is in the land, friends let us shout long live the CPP, which now controls Africa’s destiny…they called us veranda boys, they thought we were just a bunch of toys, but we won the vote at midnight hour, came out of jail and took power…the British M.P. Gammans was rude by his dog-in-the-mangerish attitude, but like an ostrich we know this man can go and bury his head in the sand.”

Nkrumah’s party ordered 20,000 copies of it.