Abstract:
During the independence era many highlife bands supported the nationalist struggle. Concert parties (highlife opera groups) like the Axim Trio staged pro-Nkrumah plays whilst one of the earliest uses of the word ‘Ghana’ itself was used when the Burma Trio changed their name to the Ghana Trio in 1948, the very year of the Christiansburg shootings and boycott of European shops. Highlife artists like E.K. Nyame, Kwaa Mensah, and E.T. Mensah released many pro independence records and played at CPP functions. Indeed the brilliant and innovative blend of highlife and swing created by E.T. Mensah’s Tempos dance band from the late 1940s became the optimistic sound-symbol of the early independence era throughout Africa. It is therefore not surprising that when Ghana became independent Nkrumah began establishing numerous state highlife band and concert groups, took highlife bands on official visits abroad, built a government recording studio, included local popular on radio and TV and facilitated the creation of popular performance unions. Furthermore, some highlife bands wrote songs and staged plays that supported Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist socialist policies. Examples are the Tempos ‘Guinea Ghana Mali’, Onyina’s ‘Destiny of Africa’ and Bob Coles Ghana Trio concert party the staged pro-CPP propaganda.
So this state support for the popular arts was partly a quid pro quo for its positive role in the independence struggle. However, there are three other reasons why Nkrumah boosted highlife and other local popular performance. Firstly and despite the name, ‘High Life’ was actually the product of the urban masses and rural peoples involved with the cash-crop economy, precisely the very layers of society that the CPP, as a mass political party, drew its support. Secondly, highlife is historically a product of the Akans, Ga’s and to some extent the Ewe people. Being a trans-ethnic art form (as compared to traditional ethnic music and dance) highlife was the perfect home-grown vehicle for projecting national rather than ‘tribal’ ideals. Just as jazz, samba and the calypso had become the national music of the US, Brazil and Trinidad, so Nkrumah used highlife to project a Ghanaian identity. Thirdly and with the popularity of highlife in other African countries, highlife had become to some extent Pan African – and could therefore musically project the Ghana at a continental level. In conclusion it should be noted that towards the end of the Nkrumah period some highlife artists (like E.K .Nyame, the African Brothers and K. Gyasi) began to reflect political disenchantment with the CPP government. Nevertheless and despite these musical criticisms and ultimate anti-CPP coup of 1966, the Nkrumah period firmly established the notion that fostering the popular music of the masses, (as well as traditional performance and Ghanaian intellectual art-music) was important to nation building and the creation of Pan Africanism and the 'African Personality'.