Electric Highlife. (Sound Recording Reviews).

Electric Highlife. Naxos World 76030, 2002.

The designation "highlife" is one that covers a variety of Ghanaian pop music genres, and that may be applied to everything from acoustic bands in the rural "palmwine" tradition to elite dance orchestras. But to most Western listeners familiar with the term, highlife usually means music made by the guitar-based bands that came to prominence in Ghana (and, to some extent, in neighboring Nigeria) in the 1960s and flourished through the 1970s and into the 1980s. This is music characterized by fast and intricate contrapuntal guitar parts and close vocal harmony, both undergirded by gently percolating drum parts and basslines that are scarcely less complex than those of the guitars. It is this particular variety of highlife that is presented in the present generous collection, which offers almost an hour and a quarter of carefully selected performances ...