The genre changed and grew during the ‘burger’ years but it kept its Ghanaian soul
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.ighlife is the “soul” of Ghana. More than just a sound, highlife is an institution that provides an anthology of Ghanaian nationhood.
However, the late 1970s would see the decline of the popular live music scene due to the incoming military regime, a devastating economic crisis, and the rise of a new sound in popular music. This generation of émigrés included many of the country’s foremost musicians who were inspired to remake the irresistible rhythms of highlife out of their own social and cultural experience, incubating a uniquely global strain dubbed burger highlife.
As the decade progressed, the musicians of the diaspora would colour more and more outside the lines of traditional highlife., a track originally released in 1985, Amoah reinvents highlife as a more limber, light-footed serenade. The arrangement deftly nicks Latin piano progressions and multi-percussion, and uses a bass synthesiser in lieu of a typical walking bass line, to give the instrumental a deep club sound, evoking the familiar appeal of funk and R&B.
Was their music funk, soul, pop or something else? It was all and none of those things but mostly it was still accepted as highlife. Purists deemed them less authentic than the classic highlife of the past and, for the masses who embraced and popularised the sound of the future, the challenge was to stand out. More than ever, it was important to make a record that would catch on back home.
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