Redefining Ghanaian Highlife Music in Modern Times

Highlife, Ghana’s first and foremost acculturated popular dance music has been overstretched by practitioners and patrons to the extent that, presently, it is almost impossible to identify one distinctive trait in most of the modern-day recorded songs categorised as highlife. This paper examines the distinctive characteristic traits of Ghana’s highlife music, and also stimulates a discourse towards its redefinition for easy recognition and a better understanding in modern times. Employing document review, audio review, interviews, and descriptive analysis, the paper reveals that the instrumental structure, such as percussion, guitar, bass, and keyboard patterns, is key in categorising highlife songs. The paper, however, argues that categorising modern-day recorded highlife songs based on timeline and drum patterns alone can sometimes be confusing and deceptive. The paper, therefore, concludes that traditional guitar patterns such as the mainline, yaa amponsah, dagomba, sikyi, kwaw, ᴐdᴐnson among others should be the chief criterion in recognising and categorising modern-day recorded highlife songs.