Musical forms of political and social expression

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 (Convention Peoples Party) 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 of this period 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”.