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 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, even if 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

Music and Nkrumah

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