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 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).
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”.
For an example of highlife's social commentary, incorporating American-Cuban musical inflections, listen to the Media:Inflation Calypso.
Mensah composed over forty highlife tunes in support of Ghana's first leader, Kwame 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, 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.
(with thanks to Eilis Pourbaix & John Collins for their research)
