TWENTY-FIVE YEARS on from the release of Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-1981, a second volume — Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora, 1980-93 — features almost two hours of Ghanian highlife, jazz and funk.

According to Songlines magazine’s special publication, Songlines Presents The Music Of West Africa, under the leadership of Ghana’s socialist president Kwame Nkrumah indigenous music, notably highlife dance band music flourished. He provided state funding for dozens of bands and travelled to neighbouring countries with a highlife band as a “signifier of national identity and a major cultural export.”

The overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966 sent Ghanaian music into decline: clubs and music venues were closed and popular bands were forced into semi-retirement, and many musicians left the country. The booklet notes refer to the coup lead by military officer Jerry Rawlings in 1970 as being responsible for many musicians leaving Ghana. 

Rawlings was part of the Free Africa Movement, a dedicated follower of Nkrumah and a complex character. He lead two coups and subsequently restored Ghana to democracy, becoming the country’s elected head of state. Ghana’s flourishing music scene had been in decline for over a decade and the lure of recording opportunities, gigs and a better standard of recording technology elsewhere was probably the reason many artists headed to work in other West African countries, Canada, the UK (including key members of the Afro-rock band Osibisa) and Germany, creating the diaspora referred to in the album’s title.

Those musicians that established themselves in Germany later created a fusion of West African highlife, jazz, funk, soul and reggae which became known as “burger highlife.” The name has nothing to do with fast food — burger is the German for “citizen” — and the underlying concept was to make a people’s music.

This album features artists such as keyboard player Ernest Honny formerly of the The Noble Kings; the “Golden Voice Of Africa,” singer Pat Thomas, who was one of the the first artists to land in Berlin and later worked in London before he moved on to Toronto, a hotspot of Ghanaian migration, where he recorded with Kwashibu Area Band (also featured); and drummer Charles Amoah, one of the best known burger highlife artists of the time who moved to Germany in the early 1980s and immediately created a hit with his debut album Sweet Vibration. His song Fre Me featured here, is from a 1985 EP. Amoah recalls: “My philosophy was to please the world, that was the idea. In fact, what you guys call ‘burger highlife,’ I called ‘ethnopop’.”

Multi-instrumentalist and guitarist George Darko, who died in March this year, had been on the Ghanaian music scene since the 1960s also moved to Germany and formed the soulful disco based Bus Stop in 1982, while the relatively unknown Pepper, Onion, Ginger & Salt had their origins in Freiburg in southern Germany. Led by Annette Lorenz, who had developed a passion for percussion and African rhythm, they provide one of the highlights of the album MC Mambo. 

Using state of the art studios and instruments the new sound was initially met with disapproval back home in Ghana but it became the soundtrack  for a new and modern Ghana and this set stands as a vibrant tribute to the legacy of this ground-breaking music.

Dubbed the Cuban Rhythm Machine, Orquestra Akoken have released their third CD, Caracoles. Making their album debut in 2018 the collective have established themselves as the number one recreators of classic pre-revolutionary 1940s and ‘50s Cuban mambo — the infectious music of Benny More, Machito and Perez Prado.

Bringing together a big band of musicians (including nine piece-horn section) from Havana and New York, they returned to Cuba and cut this album at Abdala Productions studios.

With producer and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Plasse at the helm and singer Kiko Ruiz leading the vocals, the band play swaying, danceable, intricate and driving rhythms. Fans of classic Buena Vista Social Club should check them out.

Ghana Special 2 is released by Soundway; Caracoles is released by Daptone