Throwback Thursday: How Nigerians Adopted Highlife Music

Throwback Thursday: How Nigerians Adopted Highlife Music 

Highlife is a music genre that originated in Ghana at the turn of the 20th century and incorporated the traditional harmonic 9th, as well as melodic and the main rhythmic structures in traditional Akan music, and married them with Western instruments. Highlife was associated with the local African aristocracy during the colonial period. By the 1930s, Highlife spread via Ghanaian workers to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia and Nigeria. In Ghana, this music was played by the Ramblers Band as well as the Uhuru Dance Band amongst other notable bands. In fact, it was in Ghana that the name Highlife was coined. This name prescribed a social class for the music –upper class—and understandably so. Highlife music was a deliberate deviation from the ballroom waltz, foxtrot and chacha.

In the late 40s, there was a Ghanaian pharmacist who set up a band called Tempos. His name was Emmanuel Teytey Mensah and he is widely regarded as the father of Highlife music. He popularised his brand of Big Band Orchestra and toured in Nigeria in 1950. That tour changed our music space for good. Interestingly, it was the journey of Highlife music into Nigeria that brought about its vertical mobility within social classes. The name Highlife became a misnomer in the sense of social standing and a new meaning began to lend itself to this music, it became music of good times as well as the music of the people. A bevy of hitherto ballroom musicians dumped the western sounds they were playing and began to mine traditional tunes.

A widespread subculture evolved and every ethnic conglomerate contributed the richness of their experiences to the body of Highlife music by bringing something about them into the music. In this way, Highlife music became international as well as regional; in every culture and pole of Nigeria, people were doing Highlife music and they could rightfully own the sound they made. Of course Lagos and Ibadan were at the centre of this renaissance.

Hotels had dance rooms as well as resident bands that played Highlife on special days. A good number of these hotels, like many practitioners of Highlife music itself, are now extinct but Gondola bar in Yaba still exists albeit in its own ruins.