The Returning Case of the Gha-Nigerian Mellow Madness

We've gone quite some time now without a dose of the mellow madness that is 60s/70s highlife from Ghana and Nigeria... and summer is the perfect time to get mellow.

As usual, I'm going to kick off with dem old-timey sounds. I feature a few tracks today from a brand new compilation on the Soul Jazz Records label ("Nigeria Freedom Sounds"). Ghana and Nigeria were the only 2 countries in Western Africa colonized by the British, and you will hear that early highlife tended to follow English language musical forms fairly closely, either in the form of brass band jazz or in the form of Caribbean calypso. 

By the mid 60s, musicians in these countries (like seemingly every other country in the world) were looking for ways to inject more local culture and authenticity into their popular music. The result was the emergence of highlife as a more original style that blended elements of indigenous African drums and motifs.

Like "Palm Wine" music, highlife started as a slow-tempo style for relaxing and slow dancing at social gatherings. Perhaps the mellow style of the music reflected, in part, an emotional desire to escape the civil war that raged in Nigeria in the late 60s. By the early 70s, Fela Kuti's Afrobeat style had again revolutionized the musical scene in these 2 countries, and the addition of Western drumkits laid the groundwork for rock and disco sounds that prevailed in the early 80s.

Most of the show today focuses on those mellow sounds that prevailed in the late 60s and early 70s.