A Social History of Ghanaian Popular Entertainment Since Independence
2005; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0855-3246
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
Resumomusic of foreign seamen (such as the Kru of Liberia) and the ragtime and musical comedies of American and British vaudeville, minstrelsy and music hall. There was a subsequent and gradual Africanisation1 of these genres up until the Second World War, sometimes linked to the spread of popular music genres from the coastal urban centres to the provincial and rural hinterlands. This resulted in such popular music forms as adaha and konkoma marching band music, the coastal osibisaaba and Yaa Amponsah and more rustic odonson 'palmwine' guitar styles, the comic opera of local itinerant 'concert parties'2 and the 'highlife' of the local elite ballroom dance orchestras. By the 1940's 'highlife' became the generic term for all these new forms of Ghanaian music, whether played by brass bands, guitar bands or dance orchestras. Furthermore and due to the impact of the swing music, popular with British and American troops stationed in Ghana during the Second World War, the relatively large dance orchestras were transmuted into the smaller jazz-combo sized highlife dance bands, pioneered by E.T. Mensah's Tempos band.
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