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22.06.2018 Celebrity

Professor John Collins Reveals The Real Origin Of Highlife

By MyJoyOnline
Professor John Collins Reveals The Real Origin Of Highlife
22.06.2018 LISTEN

Legendary guitarist and renowned professor, John Collins, says he has evidence pointing to where highlife was born.

According to his research, highlife originated in Ghana’s Cape Coast in 1925.

“The older generations of Nigerians all know that it comes from Ghana,” the British-born Ghanaian told Joy FM’s Daniel Dadzie on the Super Morning Show Friday.

“When I was in Nigeria in the 70s, whoever I met, whether it was Bobby Benson or Fela Kuti, they knew it came from Ghana.”

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Collins currently heads the University of Ghana's Music Department

He recalls comparing notes with a Nigerian professor who dug up his earliest evidence of highlife in 1938. The Nigerian professor’s proof was in form of a newspaper advertising the Cape Coast Sugar Babies, a popular highlife band who were set to perform in the country.

Highlife has evolved immensely since it first swept throughout Ghana. The widespread genre is credited for its eclectic infusion of guitars, horns and drums. Since its inception, highlife has stretched to parts of Nigeria, amounting to international critical acclaim.

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"The youth now aren’t rejecting everything African. They’re embracing it,” Collins says about highlife in Ghana's current musical climate.

In its early stages, highlife served as the backbeat for Ghana’s bourgeoning political power on the continent, and provided a platform for musicians to express their nationalism, specifically during the height of Kwame Nkrumah’s reign as the country’s new leader.

“If you go back to the late 40s you’ll find concert parties where artists would say things like ‘Nkrumah is a great man,’ or ‘Nkrumah will never die’ and then you have people like Kwaw Mensah writing songs in favor of Nkrumah,” he said.

John Collins & Bokoor Guitar Band performing "Yaka Duru"

Its influence, he says, was immensely pervasive at the time. It represented the common folk, who were desperately attempting to break free from Britain’s rule.

“Highlife was a movement of the masses. It was the soundtrack of Ghana’s independence.”

However, he maintained that the genre wasn’t necessarily in protest of the British. It simply reflected the general mood of people at the time.

“There was never a record released that didn’t mention something in regards to independence.”

Highlife’s name, he said, holds a similar theme.

“A lot of people are tricked by the name highlife. They think its elite music that trickled down to poor people.”

But it’s not. Highlife was a genre created by urban and rural locals who coined the name in context of the rich. Essentially, it was “poor people’s music.” It’s what attracted Nkrumah to it.

Decades later, hints of highlife still pervade Ghana’s musical climate with new genres surfacing like Afropop and Afrobeats, and he acknowledges that today’s artists will determine its fate.

The previous generation didn’t cling to highlife, but “the youth now aren’t rejecting everything African. They’re embracing it.”

“He warns, though, that if the youth miss the opportunity to preserve highlife in its music, the genre “will be finished.”

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Zaina Adamu | Email: [email protected] | Twitter: @ZainaAdamu

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