GHANA
POPULAR MUSIC 1931-1957
"Ghana Popular Music 1931-1957" features a cross-section through the
popular music of southern Ghana of the late colonial period as it was then
recorded and distributed on 78rpm Shellac records by the Union Trading Company (UTC)
of Basel, Switzerland. A compilation of 21
songs will take you on a fascinating journey of discovery through a rich and
complex metissage of influences, rythms, instruments and stiles, ranging from
the rurally oriented palm wine music to the urban swinging dance bands of the
50s. The 20 page booklet contains an introduction to the popular music of Ghana
written by Highlife specialist Prof. John Collins
of the University of Ghana and the Bokoor
African Popular Music Archives Foundation. The songs or the titles are
translated and commented upon. The compact disc results from a pilot project which aims
at preserving and digitising an important collection of music from Ghana and
Nigeria held at Basel, Switzerland. This is to make this music accessible again
both to people in its countries of origin and to the interested public in
general.
The origins of Highlife
Featuring different forms of popular music such as palm wine music, church
choirs, singing bands, swinging dance bands and also art music, "Ghana
Popular Music 1931-1957" documents the roots of the modern dance music of
Ghana, which came to world wide fame under the name of Highlife.
The
West African coast has for centuries been a melting pot, where music stiles and
practices from various origins met. For example the Kru sailors of Liberia used
to travel the whole of the West African coast right down to the Congo both in
their own canoes and as hired crew on European and American trading vessels.
They transported instruments and stiles, such as the guitar and the concertina,
the shanty tradition and guitar riffs, which met with the local rythms and
stiles. Both guitar and concertina spread into the rural areas in the form of
the so called palm wine music. Often it was a trio consisting of guitar,
percussion (box drum and clips) and vocals that performed at venues where palm
wine or its distilled form the cheap Akpeteshi were sold and also offered for
the musician's motivation.
A rapidly growing migrating labour force
shaped and transported also new forms of popular dances like the Ashiko or
Osibisaba. These spread like wildfire across southern Ghana at the end of the
19th century and much to the dislike of missionaries and churches attracted huge
crowds. But mission churches themselves with their chorals and teachings had a
huge influence on the shaping of Highlife.
Church choirs with their slow
dragging hymns and the more popular church singing bands were very mobile within
the network of churches. Singing bands increasingly developed a live of their
own, independent of the churches but rather tied to a specific town or
conductor. The songs as well were no more exclusively religious in content.
A further influence were the regimental brass bands of the colonial
military forces which became a major attraction. And with time at many places
rich and influential Africans would set up a band of their own, through it
displaying their wealth and influence. Churches as well could have a brass band
of their own.
Palm wine trios often developed into larger guitar bands
and even performed popular theatre. In the so called concert parties the
musicians performed also as actors, the show and concert lasting the whole of
the night.
Finally there were the dance orchestras which played for an
upper class audience in the ball rooms of the southern Gold Coast. More and more
they fused the western stiles like Cha Cha Cha, Foxtrott, Waltz, Calypso and
Rumba with the local rhythmic patterns. Had it first been a music for the elites
only (thus the name High-life), dance band Highlife developed into a national
music in the years of the independence when E.T. Mensah and his bands performed
at the party rallies of Kwame Nkrumah. Their international tours brought
Highlife to international fame and the recording industry helped in spreading it
further.
UTC Junction, Accra, © mission21
The Union Trading Company of Basel
Soon after the introduction of the gramophone the music industry spread
around the world - also to Africa (click
here to learn more about this boom industry). In Ghana for example all the
major trading companies sold records and gramophones. At first only recordings
of European and American music were available. But this foreign music was
already met with a lot of interest by the local market. When in the late 20's
the label Zonophone did the first recordings of Ghanaian popular music in London
the West African market developed into an Eldorado.
The Union Trading
Company (UTC) of Basel, which had developed out of the economic activities of
the evangelical Basel Mission Society and which was one of the big trading firms
on the coast, was fast to hop on the running train. Between 1931 and 1957 the
company recorded some 728 titles expanding its activities to Nigeria in the
50's. This booming business was only interrupted by the world economic crisis
and WWII when the use of the raw materials was restricted and the transport
routes were interrupted.
The UTC approach was quite simple. In the 30's
it relied on the technicians of Zonophone/Regal for the recording. The records
were produced in England under the Parlophone label for the exclusive
distribution by the Union Trading Company. When UTC re-entered the African
market after the second world war, it decided to employ one of their own staff
to do the recording. He received a basic training by EMI and a mobile recording
unit. Instead of doing extensive market research, UTC relied mainly on its
African staff to point out interesting musicians and bands. This is one of the
reasons why the UTC recordings cover the full range of Ghanaian popular music.
Digitising the UTC-records
All these different music stiles are contained in a collection of more than
900 shellac records (78rpm), which was transferred to the archives of Mission21
when UTC stopped its activities roughly a year ago. It features 619 titles
recorded in Ghana during the 30's and 50's and 108 titles recorded in Nigeria
during the 50's. Thus the collection is part of the Ghanaian and Nigerian
cultural heritage and it is desired to make it accessible to people in these
countries and the interested public in general. In West Africa the access to old
time music is limited and even the Ghana Broadcasting Company suffers from a
serious lack of music from those days. It is planned to digitise the whole of
the collection, assuring its preservation and rendering the music accessible.
The compact disc "Ghana Popular Music, 1931-1957" was produced as a pilot
project for this digitisation. In the process an inventory of the collection was
made and more than 100 shellac records were digitised. On the 4th of January
2002 the disc "Ghana Popular Music, 1931-1957" was launched with an outdooring
ceremony at the W.E.B. DuBois Centre at Accra and copies of the digitised
material were handed over to specific archives and public institutions in Ghana.
This project received support from the following institutions and companies: WELINVEST, AFRICA IN BASEL - BASEL IN AFRICA, NESTLÉ GHANA LTD., FONOTECA SVIZZERA, MEMORIAV, MISSION21.
As at now the project
team is setting up a comprehensive digitisation project based on the experience
gained in the pilot project. For this undertaking it is again looking for
funding and is glad about every hint to a funding body. To learn more about the
proposed procedure please downoad our project description and proposal as pdf-document
and for further information contact Veit Arlt
or Serena Dankwa.
See also German articles by Veit Arlt in Basler
Magazin and Afrika
Bulletin or by Marc Krebs in BaZ Online 28.12.2001.
See
also:
A
Celebration of Highlife Launching ceremony at the W.E.B. DuBois Centre
for Pan-African Studies at Accra on the 4th of January 2002
Workshop on
Highlife and Palm Wine Music in Witten (18.-23.11.2002) and Basel
(02.-07.12.2002)
Historische
Klänge aus Ghana (mp3 file, 5:31, 2.6 MB) - DRS2, 29.08.2002,
19:45-20:00
African
Night: a replica of a Ghanaian Club of the early independence years was
an attraction of the Basel Museumsnacht of January 17th 2003. On display were a
number of life-size
photographic reproductions depicting Ghanaian and Nigerian Highlife Stars of the
50s to 70s. These are on sale at a moderate price.
Yaw Ofori Singing Band, ©
Mission21
©
2003 Scientific African
/ Veit Arlt
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