Highlife Giants

Highlife Giants: The Pioneers Who Changed West African Music

Before Afrobeat conquered the world, highlife created the sound of a new West Africa.

Highlife Giants by Professor John Collins is an intimate history of the musicians who shaped West Africa’s most enduring form of popular music.

Drawing on rare interviews, photographs and first hand experience, the book follows highlife from its early development in the 1920s to its lasting influence today.

Readers meet the singers, instrumentalists and bandleaders who transformed local rhythms, brass bands, jazz, swing and guitar music into a remarkable African sound.

Meet the Legends of Highlife Music

This book places the pioneers at the centre of their own musical history.

It includes interviews and stories involving E.T. Mensah, Kofo Ghanaba, King Bruce, Bobby Benson, Victor Uwaifo and Ignace De Souza.

Readers also encounter Eddie Okonta, Koo Nimo, Kwaa Mensah, S.K. Oppong and other musicians who helped highlife travel across West Africa.

These were not simply performers entertaining crowded dance halls.

They were innovators creating new sounds during a period of political and cultural transformation.

Highlife Giants preserves their memories, personalities and achievements before these important stories disappear.

From the 1920s to the Independence Era

Highlife developed through encounters between African musical traditions and sounds arriving from Europe, the Caribbean and the United States.

Traditional rhythms met brass instruments, jazz arrangements, swing, calypso and guitar music.

Musicians did not simply copy these imported styles. They reshaped them around African rhythms, languages and social experiences.

By the independence era, highlife had become an unmistakable symbol of confidence and possibility.

Its horns, guitars and dance rhythms filled clubs, hotels, radio stations and public celebrations.

Highlife Giants charts this transformation with the knowledge of someone who experienced the music from inside its world.

The Soundtrack of West African Independence

Highlife flourished as Ghana and Nigeria moved towards independence.

The music expressed the optimism of societies imagining futures beyond colonial government.

Bands performed for political celebrations and international visitors. Their songs also commented on love, money, work, leadership and everyday life.

Highlife helped create a modern cultural identity that was both African and international.

It allowed audiences to recognise themselves within a sound that could travel beyond national borders.

The book shows why the history of highlife music cannot be separated from the political history of twentieth century West Africa.

Ghanaian and Nigerian Highlife

Ghana and Nigeria became major centres of highlife innovation.

Musicians travelled between Accra, Lagos and other cities, exchanging rhythms, instruments and performance styles.

Ghanaian dance bands developed sophisticated horn arrangements, while guitar based styles travelled through towns and rural communities.

Nigerian musicians adapted highlife to local languages and musical traditions.

Eastern Nigerian performers created distinctive sounds, while Lagos became home to influential bands, clubs and recording activity.

Highlife Giants explores these differences while showing how musicians created a shared West African musical identity.

Rare Stories from Behind the Music

Some of the book’s most memorable moments happen away from the formal stage.

Readers discover encounters between West African musicians and international stars.

One remarkable story recalls Louis Armstrong giving Nigerian trumpeter Eddie Okonta an instrument with a golden mouthpiece after watching him perform.

Such moments reveal the confidence and international reach of highlife musicians.

The interviews also capture the practical realities of professional music.

Artists discuss forming bands, developing new styles, finding performance spaces and sustaining careers through political and economic change.

From Highlife to Afrobeat and Hiplife

The influence of highlife extends far beyond its golden age.

Its rhythms, horns and guitar patterns contributed to the development of Afrobeat and other modern African genres.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s early musical career was connected to the highlife tradition before he developed the sound now recognised as Afrobeat.

Contemporary hiplife combines highlife influences with hip hop, rap and electronic production.

Afrobeats artists continue to draw from the melodies, rhythms and performance traditions established by earlier musicians.

Highlife Giants helps readers hear these connections and understand the foundations beneath contemporary African popular music.

Music as Protest and Social Commentary

Highlife was created for dancing, but it was never separated from the societies in which it developed.

Musicians used songs to comment on politics, relationships, inequality and public behaviour.

Lyrics could praise national leaders, question social changes or offer sharp observations about everyday life.

The apparent lightness of dance music often carried serious cultural meaning.

The book examines how performers entertained their audiences while participating in larger conversations about African identity and freedom.

Photographs, Interviews and Musical History

Highlife Giants combines historical explanation with direct testimony from the people who made the music.

This gives the book a personal quality that conventional music histories often lack.

Readers do not encounter the musicians only as names, dates or recordings.

They meet working artists with ambitions, rivalries, friendships and strong ideas about their craft.

The photographs add another dimension by preserving the clothes, instruments, bands and performance culture of different periods.

Together, the visual and written material create a valuable record of West African cultural history.

Why You Should Read Highlife Giants

• It traces highlife music from the 1920s onwards.
• It includes rare interviews with pioneering West African musicians.
• It explores the musical connections between Ghana and Nigeria.
• It explains highlife’s importance during the independence era.
• It reveals the foundations of Afrobeat, hiplife and modern Afrobeats.
• It contains memorable stories from behind the music.
• It examines music as entertainment, protest and social commentary.
• It preserves an essential part of African cultural history.

Who Will Enjoy This Book?

Highlife Giants is essential reading for fans of highlife, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, jazz and African popular music.

It will also appeal to musicians, record collectors, DJs and readers interested in Ghanaian and Nigerian history.

The book is suitable for libraries and university courses exploring African music, popular culture, postcolonial history and Pan African identity.

Older readers may rediscover the musicians and songs that defined an era.

Younger readers will discover the creative foundations behind many of today’s most successful African sounds.

About Professor John Collins

Professor John Collins is a musician, music historian, researcher and producer with decades of experience in Ghanaian and Nigerian music.

He has performed and recorded with musicians including E.T. Mensah, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Koo Nimo and Victor Uwaifo.

He also led the Bokoor highlife guitar band and established Bokoor Recording Studio near Accra.

This practical experience allows him to write about highlife as both a historian and a participant.

Learn more through Cassava Republic’s Professor John Collins author page.

Explore More African Cultural History

Readers interested in African culture can also explore Longthroat Memoirs, Yemisi Aribisala’s award winning exploration of Nigerian food and identity.

Discover more history, memoir and cultural criticism in Cassava Republic’s African and Black Nonfiction collection.

View the book’s detailed contents and library record through Stanford Libraries.

Order Highlife Giants Today

Highlife Giants is an indispensable celebration of the musicians who gave West Africa one of its most influential sounds.

It connects treasured memories of the independence era with the music shaping African culture today.

Order your copy and meet the artists, rhythms and stories behind the extraordinary history of West African highlife.