12/10/2018
A Brief Intro To Highlife
12/10/2018 share 
Claudia Okyere-Fosu
Shake That Booty
Are you prepared to shake that booty because wall flowers need not attend. Seriously, you’ve come this far on this new adventure why not go all the way? Highlife or Hi Life as it is sometimes written, is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced. A fusion of melodies - it’s a journey in amongst itself and with that said let me waste no time introducing it to you.
One Track
One of the first things I noticed about a highlife record, yes I’m talking about vinyl records. Anyway, back to what I was saying, this record was different because it didn’t have the usual groves. You see as one track ends and the next track starts, the groove seems to thicken in that section so as you stepped back you could count how many tracks were on that side of the record. Yes they had ‘sides A’ and ‘B’ back then too. Not so with a highlife record, one side was one track. Seriously, I’m not joking.
OK so the longest track lasted twenty minutes, I was a kid back then that was a long time. I used to wonder in my young mind, just how they did that? Especially whilst my feet were getting sore from dancing and I was struggling to keep up with my parents! Yes, experience had taught them to exert themselves gradually as the tracked play on, knowing all the familiar rhythms and shouts. Clap here, step there, yes they knew it well. My siblings and I struggled on until we were falling asleep on our feet.
Wonderful Chaos
So it starts with a fantastic rhythm guitar riff or organ keyboard that almost sounds like its singing, followed by clicking rim shots, swiftly joined by a booming bass that seems to lift your woofers off the floor as they jiggle into submission. The instruments keeping adding to their numbers, you now have the ‘big band’ sound as a whole array of trumpets and brass clap back showing the others ‘who’s boss’.
My favourite thing of all were all the percussions sounds as they were often instruments that I didn’t recognise, hand crafted especially in Ghana. Some of them sounded like cow bells but that doesn’t do them justice really. This wonderful chaos just delightfully hits your ears, lifting your spirits and causing you to lose all your inhibitions in a sheer moment of bliss. There’s a part of you that doesn’t want the music to end.
Beautiful Arrangements & Broken Hearts
I could catch the odd word here and there in Twi but often didn’t understand what was going on. I sometimes catch my mum take a break from dancing to mingle or top up her drink so I’d ask her what the guy was singing about. Often she’d say he’s talking about a past love, lost love or worse, unrequited love. That’s odd, I thought to myself, I never once thought that these singers would be singing about heartache. All those beautiful arrangements and broken hearts were at the core?? No wonder they went on and on…
My father was often the DJ at these house parties so he couldn’t always chat to me as he was busying entertaining, but even then I’d catch him in a morose mood listening as he sipped his beer. I’m not familiar with highlife artists to be so bold as to compile a top 10 list of the best albums. What I can tell you is how you’ll feel when you first hear one, how your body won’t know what to do at first but will eventually find its own rhythm, and you’ll learn from the masters how to make the best out of an imperfect situation.
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