Difference between revisions of "Highlife & Ghanaian nationalism"

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[[E.T. Mensah and the Tempos]]  
 
[[E.T. Mensah and the Tempos]]  
  
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[[Highlife and Nkrumah]]
  
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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.
 
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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.
 
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Another song, “Freedom for Ghana”, greatly concerned the British authorities:
 
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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.” 
 
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Nkrumah’s party ordered 20,000 copies.
 
  
 
''(with thanks to Eilis Pourbaix & John Collins for their research)''
 
''(with thanks to Eilis Pourbaix & John Collins for their research)''

Revision as of 12:07, 25 September 2007

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

Ghanaian popular music is involved in many ironies, in which American and Cuban 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 & British Togoland). Tracing these ironies helps illuminate the complexity of the Ghanaian post-colonial situation.

The big picture: Political structures resulting from reassembly of shards of colonial period are cemented by mass-media popular music (e.g. Highlife) and political ideas (e.g. Pan-Africanism) which are themselves significantly influenced by cultural-political currents coming directly from the West, though these currents can indirectly be traced back to Africa. Such a picture is very complex indeed!

Sketch of Highlife

Musical forms of political and social expression

E.T. Mensah and the Tempos

Highlife and Nkrumah


(with thanks to Eilis Pourbaix & John Collins for their research)

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