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Afrobeat is a music genre that involves the combination of elements of West African musical styles such as fuji music and highlife with American jazz and later soul and funk influences, with a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion. The term was coined in the 1960s by Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who is responsible for pioneering and popularizing the style both within and outside Nigeria.
Highlife is a music genre that started in present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its history as a colony of the British Empire and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions of African metre and western Jazz melodies. It uses the melodic and main rhythmic structures of traditional Akan music and Kpanlogo Music of the Ga people, but is typically played with Western instruments. Highlife is characterized by jazzy horns and multiple guitars which lead the band and its use of the two-finger plucking guitar style that is typical of African music. Recently it has acquired an uptempo, synth-driven sound.
There are many styles of traditional and modern music of Ghana, due to Ghana's worldwide geographic position on the African continent. The best known modern genre originating in Ghana is Highlife.So many years, Highlife was the preferred music genre until the introduction of Hiplife and many others.
The music of Nigeria includes many kinds of folk and popular music, styles of folk music are related to the multitudes of ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments, and songs. Little is known about the country's music history prior to European contact, although bronze carvings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries have been found depicting musicians and their instruments. The country's most internationally renowned genres are Indigenous, Apala, Fuji, Jùjú, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Afro-juju, Waka, Igbo rap, Yo-pop, Gospel. The largest ethnic groups are the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. Traditional music from Nigeria and throughout Africa is almost always functional; in other words, it is performed to mark a ritual such as a wedding or funeral and not to achieve artistic goals. Although some Nigerians, especially children and the elderly, play instruments for their own amusement, solo performance is otherwise rare. Music is closely linked to agriculture, and there are restrictions on, for example, which instruments can be played during different parts of the growing season.
Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance, and costumes with origin in many islands across the English speaking Caribbean every Boxing Day and New Year's Day. These cultural parades are predominantly showcased in the Bahamas where the music is also mainstreamed, and competition results are hotly contested, There are also Junkanoo parades in Miami in June and Key West in October, where local black populations have their roots in the Caribbean. In addition to being a culture dance for Afro-North Carolinians and the Garifuna people, this type of dancing is also performed in The Bahamas on Independence day and other historical holidays.
Palm-wine music is a West African musical genre. It evolved among the Kru people of Liberia and Sierra Leone, who used Portuguese guitars brought by sailors, combining local melodies and rhythms with Trinidadian calypso to create a "light, easy, lilting style". It would initially work its way inland where it would adopt a more traditional style than what was played in coastal areas.
Hiplife is a Ghanaian musical style that fuses Ghanaian culture and hip hop. Recorded predominantly in the Ghanaian Akan language, hiplife is rapidly gaining popularity in the 2010s throughout West Africa and abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Germany.
The music of West Africa has a significant history, and its varied sounds reflect the wide range of influences from the area's regions and historical periods.
Mustapha Tettey Addy is a Ghanaian master drummer and ethnomusicologist. Addy is the founder of The Obonu Drummers, which performs creative drumming composed by Addy that is based upon the royal Obonu drumming of the Ga people and other Ghanaian drumming forms. He has recorded many albums and has performed extensively in Africa and Europe, and briefly in North America in the early 1970s and late 1990s.
John Collins is a UK-born guitarist, harmonica player and percussionist who first went to Ghana as a child in 1952 for a brief period and later became involved in the West African music scene after returning to Ghana in 1969.
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work and for religious ceremonies of birth, naming, rites of passage, marriage and funerals. The beats and sounds of the drum are used in communication as well as in cultural expression.
Emmanuel Tettey Mensah, was a Ghanaian musician who was regarded as the "King of Highlife" music. He led The Tempos, a band that toured widely in West Africa.
Ebo Taylor is a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer and arranger focusing on highlife and afrobeat music.
Teddy Osei is a musician and saxophone player from Ghana. Osei is best known as the leader of the Afro-pop band Osibisa, founded in 1969. Born in Kumasi, Osei was introduced to musical instruments while still a child. He began to play the saxophone while attempting to create a band with his college friends in the coastal city of Sekondi. After graduating from college, he worked as a building inspector for a year before creating a band called "The Comets." The Comets enjoyed brief popularity before Osei traveled to London in 1962. He received a grant from the Ghanaian government to study at a private music and drama school for three years, before being forced to leave by a regime change in Ghana. In 1969, he founded Osibisa along with several other musicians. The band remained popular through the 1970s, before experiencing a decline, although it continues to perform today.
Orlando Julius Aremu Olusanya Ekemode, known professionally as Orlando Julius or Orlando Julius Ekemode, is a Nigerian saxophonist, singer, bandleader, and songwriter closely associated with afrobeat music.
Cape Coast Sugar Babies was one of the first highlife orchestras from Cape Coast.They were also known as the Light Orchestra. Their style of music is known as West African Highlife music.
Ghanaian highlife emerged in the 1980s as a mixture of West African rhythms from Europe by Black people from south and North America. There were three forms of Ghanaian highlife:
Emmanuel Kofi Nyame, best known as E.K. Nyame, was regarded as one of the "godfathers" of modern Ghanaian highlife music. He was a Ghanaian composer, guitarist, founder of E.K. band and the Akan Trio. He is noted as the pioneer of highlife songs in Akan language on concert stages.
Kwame Asare, best known as Jacob Sam, was the first to record Ghanaian highlife music and was the first highlife guitarist.
Ghana's concert party theater is a known traveling theater performing in rural and urban cities with itinerant actors staging vernacular shows and a tradition of the twentieth century in West Africa.
References
- ↑ Collins, John (1985). Musicmakers of West Africa. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89410-075-8.
- 1 2 "Grooving to Ghana's Highlife Music". Christine Bedenis. 2017-11-17. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
- ↑ Appiah, Venessa (2020-05-12). "GLOCAL HIGHLIFE". Medium. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
- ↑ "The story of Ghanaian highlife". 2004-09-28. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
- ↑ Collins, Edmund John (1987). "Jazz Feedback to Africa". American Music. 5 (2): 176–193. doi:10.2307/3052161. ISSN 0734-4392. JSTOR 3052161.
- ↑ Collins, John (1989). "The Early History of West African Highlife Music". Popular Music. 8 (3): 221–230. doi:10.1017/S0261143000003524. ISSN 0261-1430. JSTOR 931273.
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