A CENTURY OF CHANGING LOCATIONS OF GHANAIAN COMMERCIAL POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT VENUES

by JOHN COLLINS  (6,500 words)

 

 

Paper for Historical Society of Ghana Annual Conference August 2006, Accra. Updated version of a paper read at the International Conference ‘Les Lieux de Sociabilite Urbaine dans la Longue Duree en Afrique’ organised by SEDET (Universite Paris 7 Denis Diderot) & CEAN (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux),  Paris, June 2006.

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 This paper looks at the changes of the venues of the highlife popular music of Ghana over the last century or so in connection with social class, urban-rural migrations, the independence ethos, government polices and the impact of new media technologies.

Before the Second World War the venues were mainly located on the Ghanaian coast where highlife originated, and was divided along class lines. There were   high- class clubs where   the westernised local elites were entertained by local versions of imported vaudeville and ballroom dances. Then there were low-class dockside bars frequented by sailors, stevedores and local fishermen who came to listen to guitar and accordion bands. During the 1930s both the coastal vaudeville and guitar band music percolated into the rural hinterlands resulting in an indigenisation process of the two genres.

During the Second World War the British and American troops were stationed in Ghana brought swing music with them that influenced the highlife music of the period. Many night-clubs also sprang up catering for these foreign troops that became the model for the  dance venues of  the urban masses during the early independence era. Due to the important contribution of popular performance to the independence struggle, Ghana’s first leader,  Kwame Nkrumah,  established many state sponsored local popular music and drama groups linked to state organizations and hotels.

From the late 70’s through to the late 1980’s the   live popular music scene and night-life in Ghana suffered a decline due to various economic and political reasons, including corruption, coups and curfews. As a result new forms of ‘techno’ highlife appeared that did away with the need for skilled instrumentalists and large an expensive run bands.  Simultaneously new forms of mass- media appeared that allowed local popular music and theatre to reach their public through nation-wide television, cassette and video.

 Whereas live highlife music performance declined during the 1980’, popular local ‘gospel highlife’ dance-music moved into church premises – which also resulted in many women entering the popular performance field. With the stabilization of Ghana from the late 1980’s many venues for commercial folkloric groups have appeared that cater the large number of foreign tourists and ‘world music’ fans now visiting Ghana 

 

INTRODUCTION

This article will present  the changing venues and locations  of Ghanaian popular music and drama since the late 19^th century in a historical sequence that will also touch on the social class background  of  the performers and their audiences. And the first point to make is that there is a consensus amongst writers that the artists, actors and participants in early Ghanaian, and indeed sub-Saharan popular performance and art generally[1], have usually come from what are called the ‘intermediates’ social groups that have emerged in Africa in between the national bourgeoisie and the vast class of subsistence farmers.   These ‘intermediates’ were neither elite nor peasant, neither fully westernised nor fully traditional, but were  rather cash-crop farmers and  newly urbanised Africans  who were semi-literate and perform semi-skilled work. Often these intermediates were highly mobile:  as railway workers, taxi-drivers, messengers, postmen, migrant workers, fishermen, seaman and stevedores. Also important were African soldiers who served in the colonial armies abroad. Yet another intermediate group were young Africans who received some education and workshop experience from Christian missions. In southern Ghana for instance   ‘gentlemen drinking clubs’ such as the Young Tigers of Winneba sprang up from in late 1860’s that were critical of traditional authority.[2] After the cocoa boom began in the 1870’s mission trained ‘scholars’ participated  in early forms of popular trans-cultural music and dance (such as ashiko and osibisaaba),[3]   but were criticised by missionaries for  drinking, using  perfume and singing obscene songs. [4]

 

LATE 19^TH CENTURY ADAHA  BRASS BAND MUSIC: FROM CASTLE TO LOCAL STREET

The very earliest documented form of Ghanaian trans-cultural popular music was ‘adaha’, an Africanised forms of fife-and-drum and brass-band music that appeared on the Fanti coast of Ghana in the 1880’s. The British had set up Ghanaian regimental ‘native orchestras’[5]  at Cape Coast Castle as  early as the 1830’s, but these did not lay local music. However, from 1873 between 5-7000 West Indians soldiers[6] were stationed at Cape Coast and the neighbouring El Mina Castle to help the British in their Sangreti War against the inland Ashanti kingdom. These British Caribbean soldiers had regimental brass-band, and in their spare-time they played Afro-Caribbean music. This acted as a catalyst for Ghanaian brass bands to indigenise their own music: by first copying the West Indians and then in the 1880’s creating their own distinct adaha music.[7]

 

Adaha was a street-parade music and there were objections to it by the Europeans. In 1888 Reverend Kemp described the sound of drum-and-fife bands as ‘tormenting’ and warned that the danger of allowing Sunday school processions to be led by them,  as they would  ‘ultimately lead to the ballroom, the heathen dance and other worldly amusements’.[8]  Then in 1908 the District Commissioner of Cape Coast (A. Foulkes) put a curb on the five local brass bands of the town from playing their  ‘objectionable native tunes’ as these led to competitive quarrelling, obstruction of roads, drinking[9] and dancing.[10]  Despite these European protestations these local marching bands spread from the Fanti area and proliferated throughout in southern Ghana, and until the 1930’s [11]  they  were  the principal popular music ensembles of the Ghanaian urban areas.[12] 

 

PRE WAR ELITE BALLROOM VENUES AND THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘HIGHLIFE’

From the street we now turn to the variety entertainment venues of the local elites. And the earliest documented example is the ‘A Magic Costume Ball and Concert’ held at the Cape Coast Castle Great Hall in 1903 for a mixed audience of local and European ballroom dancers.[13] Later elite venues featured the ballroom and ragtime music of local dance orchestras such as the Excelsior Orchestra (formed in 1914), followed by the Jazz Kings, Accra Orchestra, Cape Coast Sugar Babies, Rag-a-jassbo, Ashanti Nkramo Orchestra, Winneba Orchestra, Sekondi Railway Silver Band and Nanshamaq  (or Nanshamak) Orchestra. The members of these large and almost symphonic-like ensembles[14] were educated in western type schools, could read music and were from the upper strata of Ghanaian society. Members of the Excelsior Orchestra, like the Torto brothers and Roger Chinery,  were ‘educated Africans’[15] ; as were the Jazz Kings’  pianist Squire Addo and drummer Calab Quaye[16] and the members of Teacher Lamptey’s  Accra Orchestra.[17]

 

Ballroom dances were often combined with other forms of  entertainment at these local black elite venues, such as imitations of  imported  American vaudeville and British ‘music-hall’[18] as well as silent movies.

 

Venues for this   high-class entertainment included the Victoria Hotel, Merry Villas,[19]  Rodger Club[20]  and Old Wesleyan School in Accra,[21]  as well as  the Hamilton Hall in  Cape Coast, the Domarch Club in Nsawam and the Optimism Club and  Arkhurst Town Hall in Sekondi. [22]  Also important were the ‘soirees’ or  ‘at homes’[23] for the wealthy; an example being the weekend parties held at Temple House in James Town, Accra built around the turn of the century by the Ghanaian lawyer Thomas Hutton-Mills. I lived  there in  the 1970's and when the  musician E.T. Mensah visited me he told me that because  he had  played  there  in the 1930's as a schoolboy member of the Accra Orchestra,  he was still nervous of the  place due  to the `high-ups' he had met there.

 

Another type of local Ghanaian elite venue were cinema houses such as Azuma House[24], Saint Mary’s Church Hall and Bartholomew’s Cinema (part of the Merry Villas entertainment centre) in Accra and the Palladium Cinema in Sekondi.  Added to these were the string of cinemas built in the mid-1920’s by the Ada businessman Alfred Ocansey.[25]  His most well known was the Palladium cinema in James Town Accra.[26]  which, featured the  comic duo of Williams and Marbel who tap- danced, sang rag-times and performed comic  sketches in blackface minstrel attire.[27] A little earlier  (in 1918) Teacher Yalley was doing similar comic blackface sketches for his Tarkwa School Empire Day festivities (see Sutherland 1970).  These local vaudeville performances sketches became known as ‘concert parties’ and were, in the 1930’s, hi-jacked from the elites  and taken into the rural and provincial areas by Bob Johnson  and the Axim Trio, who began the indigenisation of this popular theatre genre.

 

The term `highlife' itself was coined during the 1920’s in the context of these high-class ballroom and concert programs the orchestras began to include an occasional local folk-tune or street-song in their repertoires.  However, the name as not coined by either the elite performers or well-to-do audiences, but by the poor.  According to Yebuah Mensah, the leader of the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra (formed 1937), the term `highlife' was originally a catch-name for the orchestrated `indigenous songs' heard by people who gathered around exclusive clubs but `did not reach the class of the couples going inside, who not only had to pay a relatively high entrance fee of about seven shillings and six-pence, but also had to wear full evening dress, including top-hats if they could afford it (see Collins 86:10).   Attah Anan Mensah (1969/70:11/12) makes the similar observation that `through the patronage of high ranking merchants and other local elite... enjoying the good life, the new musical type earned it's name.'

 

The first documented reference to ‘highlife’ in a Ghanaian musical context was the  ‘high life a la Tango’ that was featured at the Railway Sports Club elite ball in Sekondi (Arkhurst Town Hall) in 1914.[28]  However, this word did nor refer to the Ghanaian music style. Indeed even in 1920 the name for local street music orchestrated by high-class ensembles like the  Excelsior Orchestra was known as ‘selections’.[29] The very first documented use of the word ‘highlife’[30] to describe the Ghanaian musical genre is from the 1925 program of the Cape Coast Literary and Social Club ‘Grand Soiree’ held a Hamilton Hall.[31]

 

PRE WAR  LOW-CLASS URBAN SALOONS  AND RURAL PALM-WINE BARS

Quite different  from the ballroom dance venues  were  the  urban dockside drinking spots  and saloons  that catered for local fishermen,[32]  stevedores and visiting seamen: including the famous Kroo (or Kru)  mariners of  Liberia who in the late 19^th century and  on the high seas pioneered the West African styles of guitar music[33] that influenced  early Fanti osibisaaba guitar/accordion music.[34]  The most famous 1920’s exponent of osibisaaba  was the Kumasi Trio that consisted of Kwame Asare (Jacob Sam)  and two other Fantis  (who all worked in Kumasi),  and the Fanti guitarist/accordion player George Williams Aingo.[35]  Examples of such working-class coastal bars in the port of Sekondi-Takoradi are  the Liberia[36] and Columbia bars mentioned by Emmanuel Akyeampong.[37]  The Ghanaian drummer Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren) also refers to a pre-war saloon in James Town Accra called the Gold Coast Bar that was patronised by American and British seamen.  It was a ‘low dive’ that   had swing doors and a band that used piano, horns and trap-drums.[38]

 

During the 1930’s the coastal osibisibsaa and ashiko guitar/accordion  music spread into the  agricultural southern heart-land of Ghana where  the guitar (being a relatively cheap imported instrument) gradually replaced the local Akan stringed instrument, the seprewa. However, as it did so the guitar absorbed the modal playing style associated with this Akan harp-lute,[39] which led to a music style known as ‘odonson’ or ‘Akan blues’. Like seprewa music, odonson was played both at funerals and at village palmwine spots,[40]  and so this acoustic guitar music  also became known as  ‘palmwine music’. Also like seprewa music this rustic guitar style was not usually accompanied by dance, but rather provided a thoughtful proverbial commentary on life and death. ‘Palmwine music’ was so popular amongst rural Akans that a lucrative ‘native record’ industry sprang up in the 1930’s[41], as farmers involved in cocoa and other cash-crops could afford to buy a wind-up gramophones and shellac records. Indeed this rural guitar style was also sometimes called ‘cocoa-ase music’, i.e. music listened to (live or on record) under the cocoa tree. 

 

THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND ITS  INFLUENCE ON GHANAIAN NIGHT-LIFE

During the Second World War many British and American allied troops were stationed in Ghana, particularly after 1942 when the United States entered the war.[42] As a result many swing-music bands were set up by foreign soldiers and Ghanaians to provide entertainment for the troops: such as Sergeant Leopard’s Black and White Spots, the Tempos and the Fireworks Four. Furthermore, and as Tempos member E.T. Mensah explains ‘when the Americans came bars began springing up during the war so that in any small corner there was a kiosk selling beer. They didn’t mind sitting down and talking and listening to jazz and swing all night.’ 

 

The most popular spot for the American G.I.’s in Accra was a saloon bar called the Basshoun alongside the Old Kingsway on High Street, Accra. According to Guy Warren of the Fireworks Four it was a ‘wild bar’ and E.T. Mensah comments[43] that  ‘the effect of the Americans on the local women was appalling, they were free with them and thus encouraged prostitution…..…at the Basshoun it was a nasty scene but fortunately it was closed down before the end of the war.’ Other Accra wartime clubs of a less disreputable nature were the Weekend-in-Havana (owned by the  Nigerian Mr. Morrison)  the Accra Town Hall (now Parliament House), the  Metropole, the Airport Lisbon Hotel, the Kit-Kat (owned by the Lebanese Mr. Ashkar) and the Sea-View Hotel.[44]  In Kumasi there was the  Hotel de Kingsway built in 1941 by the Sierra Leonean Collinwood-Williams.[45] 

 

With the de-mobilisation of the Allied troops at the end of the war the Tempos band became an all Ghanaian band, and under the leadership of E.T.Mensah it  created a successful blend of swing music and local highlife music – as well as Afro-Cuban and calypso music introduced to Ghana through records.[46] The swing influence on the Tempos resulted it becoming the first Ghanaian band to put professional women artists on stage, like Agnes Aryitey and July Okine.[47]  Indeed the Tempos was so innovative that it became the template for many Ghanaian and Nigerian bands,  and its sound became the zeitgeist for the early optimistic independence era.

 

At that very time the small acoustic osibisaaba and ‘palm-wine’ guitar bands were enlarged by E. K Nyame who, borrowing from the Tempos format, added trap-drums, double bass and Afro-Cuban bongos; thus creating what became known as ‘guitar bands’.  In  1952 E.K. Nyame went on to from the Akan Trio by adding a concert party theatrical group to his guitar band, and the resulting ‘comic highlife’ format became the model for all subsequent concert parties. E.K’s fusion of highlife and popular theatre completed the indigenisation of the concert party that began when Bob Johnson hijacked the genre from the urban elites in the 1930’s.

 

THE EARLY INDEPENDENCE ERA  & GROWTH OF NIGHT-SPOTS FOR THE MASSES

Highlife dance bands, guitar-bands and concert parties actively supported the Ghana’s independence struggle and Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party (C.P.P). As a result, from the period of Ghana’s internal self-rule (1952) and then full independence (1957) Prime Minister (later President) Nkrumah included popular entertainment as a vital component for developing a national and Pan identity. Indeed, as the C.P.P. was a mass nationalist party (compared to the earlier elitist United Gold Coast Convention Party), the popular performance of the masses was the perfect vehicle for projecting his deals to the general population.

 

In the 1950’s Nkrumah transformed the segregated European Club[48] into the headquarters of the National Arts Council, increased radio transmitting power one-hundred fold from it  wartime level and established the Ghana Film Industry from the wartime Gold Coast Film Unit.[49] All of this positively impacted on the popular entertainment sector. In the 1950’s and early 60’s Nkrumah’s C.P.P. government also utilised highlife bands for state functions[50] and established many state highlife bands and concert parties itself; linked to the army, the Workers Brigade, the Builders Brigade, the Farmers Council and State Hotels.[51]  Furthermore, for those who could not afford beer the government legalised the sale of a local liquor (made from distilled palm-wine and called ‘akpeteshie’) that had been banned by the British. Indeed, by 1953 there were in Accra 344 bars, restaurants and hotels that were selling alcoholic drinks.[52]

. 

There was a proliferation of dinking spots and night-clubs at which highlife bands performed. There were venues for the urban (and rural) poor that sold  akpeteshie,  and as will be mentioned later  these hosted guitar bands and concert parties. Then there were the venues for both the middle classes and upwardly mobile urban masses, that sold imported liquor and local beer[53] and featured the music of highlife dance bands modelled on the Tempos. These urban dance bands were considered modern and prestigious as their members could read music, wore suits and played a mixture of ballroom numbers, swing and highlifes. Although top-hats had gone out of fashion, the entrance rule for the clubs at which they performed was `ladies strictly in frocks and gentlemen in tie.[54]  Ione Acquah mentions that there nine of these clubs by 1956 and more appeared during in the 1960’s.[55] 

 

Besides night-clubs, there were also numerous ballroom dancing clubs in the 1950’s[56] that catered for the upwardly mobile urbanites. Some located in Accra included the Rhythm and Sounds Club, the Accra Youngsters Dancing Club[57] and the Trinity Dance Club. A National Association of Teachers of Dancing was also established,  whose President was the C.P.P. Minister E. K. Dadson.[58]

 

HIGH STATUS OF URBAN HL DANCE BANDS AND LOW-CLASS CONCERT BANDS

As mentioned,   the post-war dance bands and clubs that hosted  them were of a relatively high status  as compared to the rural oriented itinerant guitar bands and concert parties that will be discussed next. The dance band musicians were urban, wore smart clothes[59] and could read music. Furthermore, many of them as youngsters had been trained in the pre-war elite dance orchestras,[60] went to top-class schools[61] or had professional careers outside of music.[62]  The status of these Ghanaian dance bands is reflected in the following comments by the Nigerian musician Segun Bucknor on the Tempos band,  that toured his country in the 1950’s. ‘ E.T. Mensah's music was liked by the people who took the English way, they were the first middle-class Ghanaians and Nigerians.  There was a kind of snobbery, in that a man who was in a dance-bands felt himself to be nearer the white-man, as he would put on hat, tie and jacket, and would be called to balls and formal occasions.'[63]

 

Despite  this relatively  high esteem of dance band musicians,  and as the case of King Bruce exemplifies,  there was an ambiguous attitude to them at governmental levels, especially after the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966. Whilst King Bruce had been running the Black Beats band from 1952 he had been slowly climbing up the civil service scale. Then in 1967 a government official informed him that unless he stopped playing dance-music in public he would not be promoted to full Principal Secretary of the Administrative Service. So to continue his civil service career Bruce had to stop performing. The government officer who wrote the 1967 letter later told Bruce that had he been the leader of a Anglican church choir or symphonic orchestra, rather than a popular music band, this performance ban on him   would never have been made. [64]

 

As compared to the urban dance bands and dancing clubs the status of the musicians who played in highlife  ‘ guitar bands’  (that  evolved from pre-war osibisaaba and odonson groups) was of a distinctly low nature. These musicians could not read music, had humble occupations[65] and were often considered to be palmwine drunkards. Furthermore,   after E.K. Nyame’s fused  highlife and itinerant popular theatre in the early 1950’s, guitar band musicians also became  considered as ‘footloose’.  Not surprisingly, the venues for the highlife operas put on by guitar bands-cum-concert parties from the 1950’s were often of a humble nature. These groups travelled extensively ‘on trek’ by mini-bus[66] into the rural areas where   local compound houses[67] were turned into theatres by utilising its internal courtyard to provide space for a temporary stage. Sometimes a house owner who regularly hosted concert groups would build a more permanent stage of cement. In either case the landlord would charge the concert party for this, with his or her tenants getting the benefit of a free show. The highlife guitarist T.O. Jazz told me that Kwame Asare’s concert party in the late 1940’s   created an even simpler theatrical space, by making and performing in an ash circle in any convenient location (such as a lorry park) in a village or small town. Concert parties also played for the large numbers of rural migrants who had settled in the towns, and here the performance locations would be cinema houses and open-air bars that served beer and akpeteshie.[68]

 

An indication of the lowly status of the guitar band and concert party profession in the early 60’s can be appreciated by the fact that they had a quite different union from those of the highlife and ballroom dance bands. There was the Ghana National Entertainments Association (GNEA) that catered for itinerant concert bands and stage magicians, whilst the Musicians Union of Ghana consisted of members of the more urban oriented dance bands whose members felt themselves a cut above the GNEA members, whom they considered to be illiterate ‘bushmen’. Both these unions were dissolved in 1966, after the anti-Nkrumah coup, due to their links with his Conventions Peoples Party.[69]  The attitude of Ghanaian university students of the fifties and early sixties is also illuminating on the question of the differing status of dance bands and concert bands. For their end-of-term campus dances the students would invariably choose a dance bands such as the Tempos, Black Beats or Ramblers. Indeed this so worried a number of Ghanaian and expatriate lecturers[70] who had formed the African Music Society, that they especially established a university palmwine drinking spot at Achimota College to cater for the guitar and concert party bands of E.K. Nyame, Onyina and  Yamoah.   

 

1960’s to mid70’s:  CONGO JAZZ, WESTERN ‘POP’, AFRO-MUSIC  & ‘CULTURAL’ GROUPS  

From the late fifties new external musical influences began to enter Ghana, these being ‘Congo jazz’  (‘soukous’) from Central Africa[71] and western ‘pop music’ such as rock ‘ n’ roll, soul, disco and later reggae. The first band to introduce live Congo jazz to Ghana was  Ignace de Souza’s Black Santiagos (from the French-speaking Benin Republic) that in  the mid 60’s was playing at the  Metropole and Ringway Hotels. The imported ‘pop music’ fashion began with rock ‘n’ roll and the  ‘twist’ that were introduced through records and films,[72] like the 1957 ‘Rock Around the Clock’, and Chubby Checker’s 1962 ‘Twist’ and 1964 ‘Twist Around the Clock’. As a result many rock ‘n’ roll dancing clubs were set up by Ga ‘area boys’ in Accra; such as the Black Eagles, Aces Harlem Club, Royal Rockers, Teen Town and All Yankees[73] that played at traditional ‘outdooring’ (infant naming ceremonies) and funerals, the Accra Arts Centre and local night-clubs.[74]

 

Soul music became popular in Ghana during the late sixties[75], and disco-music and reggae from the early seventies. Again film was an important avenue[76] for these new imported western pop styles, and in some cases artists of these black music genres visited or played in Ghana.[77]  One impact on Ghana of soul and reggae, with their Afro-centric, back-to-roots and ‘black and proud’ lyrics, was a wave of local experimentation which led to the emergence, from the late 1960’s, of Afro-soul, Afro-funk, Afro-beat, Afro-rock and later local versions of reggae.

 

Important venues for the performance of these imported pop music styles and the various Afro-fusion styles that emerged from them were student ‘pop chains’ (i.e. competitions) that began to be organised during school holidays from 1966 by Faisal Helwani[78]  and also Dr Kpakpo Allotey at Baden Powell Hall. By the 1977 Fourth Annual Students Dance Band Music Contest[79] held at the Arts Centre fifty-six schoolboy bands entered the preliminaries.[80]  Besides the student pop chains and rock ‘n’ roll dancing clubs of the   late sixties there was the growth of more night-clubs and discotheques that featured highlife, pop and local acts, and/or played imported ‘disco’[81] dance-music records. Some of the discos in Accra in the early 1970’s included  the Gondola, the Cave de Roi, Club Keteke, Blow Up, Club Edward, Pussy Cat, Moon Club, Club Tabela, Windmill, Flamingo Club, and  Climax. One particularly important disco in Accra was the Pagoda (renamed the Napoleon Club in 1973) whose owner, Faisal Helwani, featured Afro-rock and Afro-beat played by the resident bands Hedzolleh, Basa-Basa, the Bunzus and Edikanfo. [82] 

 

During the early seventies another type of fusion-music emerged called ‘Ga cultural music’ that was created in Accra by bands such as Wulomei,  who played traditional Ga folk-songs and highlifes,  using (with the exception of a highlife guitarist) only traditional instruments. Scores of such band appeared during the 70’s that played the neo-traditional style pioneered by Wulomei.[83]  Not surprisingly this music became all the rage with local Ga population of Accra and was not only played at local ceremonies, but also on-stage at clubs and hotels. Indeed, in the mid to late-seventies a promotions outfit called ‘Castle Santana’ was specifically organising low-priced afternoon performances of ‘Ga cultural’ groups at clubs and cinemas near the sea-side, aimed at an audience of local Ga fishermen and their families.     

 

THE LATE 1970’s/1980’s DEMISE OF LIVE MUSIC

 By the early seventies the Ghana music scene was at a high point. The country boasted over seventy functioning highlife guitar bands (cum concert parties), scores of private or state run highlife dance bands[84] and literally hundreds of student groups pop groups and Afro-rock/beat bands. Catering for these were numerous live music night-clubs (about 60 in Accra alone), schoolboy ‘pop chains ’competitions, four recording studios and two local record pressing plants.[85]  Furthermore, during the early seventies two full length musical films were produced by Ghana Film Industry Corporation The 1970 `I Told You So' was based on a concert partly play and included the singer/actor Bob Cole and Nana Ampadu’s African Brother highlife guitar-band. This was followed in 1972 by `Doing Their Thing' that starred Charlotte Dade and the El Pollos band and was partly shot at  the Apollo Theatre. A year earlier later another musical full-length film of the period, but made by an American company, was the ‘Soul To Soul’ concert, shot at Black Star Square, one of the few times this areas was used for a popular music venue. 

 

The Ghanaian popular music and entertainment scene began to wane from mid to late 1970’s when there was a decline of the overall Ghanaian economy due to the mismanagement and corruption (‘kalabule’) of the Colonel Acheampong and Akufo military regimes that had come to power in 1972. As the general economy deteriorated so did the commercial music sector, which finally ground to a halt in the late seventies when record manufacturing almost ceased and Ghanaian artists began to leave the country in droves.[86] This was followed by a period of political instability (two military coups by J. J. Rawlings in 1979 and 1981) and a two-and-a-half-year night curfew (1982-4) that prevented night-time entertainment.  This interregnum in the music industry between the late 1970’ and 1984 was immediately followed by the imposition of huge import duties (160%) on band equipment and then music education was demoted in the school curriculum.

 

From the late 1980’s and with the liberalisation of the economy and the country gradually moving towards civilian rule, the Ghanaian music scene slowly began to pick-up. However, by then many of the old-time  ‘classic’ highlife bands, concert parties and pop bands had been permanently wiped-out and there was a consequent scarcity of live bands in the country. Other factors of a technological nature are also pertinent to the decline of live music bands and concert parties. One was the appearance of cheap-to-operate mobile discos or 'spinners' in the late 1970’s that gradually took over the dance floors[87] during the 1980’s. Then there was the introduction of long-running television concert parties series; such as  ‘Osofo Dadzie’  (from the mid-1970’s) and   ‘Obra’  (from 1982) and the emergence of commercial ‘dialogue’ cassettes of concert party music and comic acts.[88] Moreover, it was during the 1980’s that cheap-to-produce local video productions began in Ghana,[89] and these, like the ‘spinners’ went mobile, so gradually eclipsing live concert party in the rural and provincial areas.[90]

 

RISE OF NEW POPULAR MUSIC GENRES AND THEIR   VENUES

Despite the collapse of live popular entertainment during the late seventies and eighties, new musical entertainment genres emerged. The three most important of these are performance styles related to imported techno-pop styles (like disco and rap ), to the  growth local church gospel music,   and thirdly  idioms  that have a ‘folkloric’ focus; a trend  encouraged by tourists and  ‘World Music’ fans  interested in  Ghanaian  traditional music and live dance bands.

 

Two local techno-pop styles have evolved in Ghana since the 1980’s that through the use of drum-machines and synthesisers have done away for the need for large and expensive to operate dance bands. The first was ‘burgher highlife’, a fusion of highlife and ‘disco’ music created in the early 1980’s by Ghanaian musicians (like George Darko and the Lumba Brothers) living in the German town of Hamburg. This studio engineered music subsequently became popular in Ghana and its artists usually mime on stage.   The second Ghanaian ‘techno-pop’ style was a local language rap called ‘hiplife’ (i.e. hip-hop highlife). This has evolved since the mid-1990’s and practically does away with musicians altogether, as it only involves one artist rapping over backing-tracks made by a studio engineer. As a result hiplife is practically never performed live (i.e. ‘free-styling’) but is rather mimed on stage to pre-recorded music. The main outlet for both these forms of local ‘techno-pop’ is not live performances, but music videos and audio-recordings. In the latter case local burgher highlife and hiplife (together with imported disco-music,  hip-hop   and R&B)  are played at  small discotheque-type nightclubs that have multiplied over the years.[91]

 

Local gospel dance-music began to emerge from the very late 1970’s, as with the downward turn in the Ghanaian economy[92] many highlife and popular artists moved under the patronage of the separatist African spiritual, apostolic, charismatic and pentecostal churches that have multiplied since the 1950’s[93], and allow dancing for worship.[94] As a result literally hundreds of gospel dance bands have sprung up in Ghana since the 1980’s (many fronted by women singers) and this religious dance music now constitutes about sixty to seventy percent of the airplay and recording output of the country.[95]  Obviously most of the live performances of the local gospel is done on church premises. However the local churches also put on evening gospel shows and competitions at many of the cinemas that have, with the growth of video, closed down since the 1990’s.

 

A third important development in the Ghanaian commercial music scene in the last fifteen years or so has resulted from the large numbers of tourists visiting Ghana. Twenty years ago there were literally no tourists in Ghana, but this has changed since the liberalisation of the economy in the late 1980’s. In  2004, for instance, about 650,000 foreigners visited the country.[96] Furthermore, because of the rise of World Music since the mid-eighties, many of these tourists are interested in the local performing arts, both live popular music and particularly traditional music and dance. As a result there has been  the appearance of a number of venues that cater  for commercialised traditional  ‘folkloric’ groups. Most important are the private hotels and cultural centres that feature folkloric groups on stage and also teach foreigners local drumming and dancing. The first of these was  the African Academy of Music and Arts (AAMA)  a beach-side hotel at Kokrobite  set up in 1988 by the Ga master drummer Mustapha Tettey Addy, followed by the late Godwin Agbele’s (an Ewe master drummer)  Dagbe Drum School at Kopeyia in the Volta Region.[97] This foreign interest in local music has also led to the emergence of several private or NGO music archives since the 1990’s, the first being Kofi Ghanaba’s (Guy Warren) African Heritage Library at Medie that is currently being assisted by the University of New York.[98]

 

As already noted, the late 1970’s/1980’s collapse of the Ghanaian commercial music-scene resulted in a drastic reduction of commercial night-clubs that catered for live local popular music performances. However some have survived and a few new ones have appeared that cater for live performances. In the Greater Accra Region, for instance, highlife performance regularly occur at the Bywel Club, the GBC (Ghana Broadcasting) Clubhouse, Chesters Place, the Next Door and Osekan Beach Resorts, the Dubois Memorial Centre and Amakyie Dede’s Abrantie Spot; the latter being the only night-club owned by a Ghanaian musician. Particularly important is the cultural centre of the French Embassy, the Alliance Francaise, which puts on weekly shows of highlife and folkloric music performances, as well as occasional reggae acts. Local reggae (and folkloric music)  is also  featured at Big Millie’s beach resort,  Akoma Village and the  Jehrah Restaraunt .

 

Furthermore, since the 1990’s live jazz clubs have emerged that especially cater for middle-class Ghanaians who have returned home after spending years abroad.[99]  These cosmopolitan and relatively well-off audiences enjoy small combos that play jazz, as well as  Afro-jazz and other fusion music (Afro-beat and Afro-rock) at small and intimate Accra clubs such as the  Village Inn,  Bass-line,  Jazz Optimist Club.  Odo Jazz Club, Diane’s Café, and Tonie Maneison’s   Jazz-Tone Club; as well as at jazz nights at high-class hotels such as the Golden Tulip,  Palmgrove and  La Royal Palm.

 

It should be added that there are currently a number of governmental or government supported venues   that cater for a cross-section of Ghanaian performance, from live shows of highlife, gospel, reggae and folkloric music to mimed burgher highlife and hiplife, as well as international acts.  Old venues that are still operating include the Accra Arts Council and Kumasi Cultural Centre that were both opened during the Nkrumah  era,  and the Trade Fair Site in Accra that began hosting performances in the 1970’s. Then in the 1980’s a National Theatre was built in Accra (by the Chinese)[100] and various   Centres for National Culture were established in the regional capitals. At the same time the ‘Holy Gardens’ was established at a space near one central Accra’s major intersection, and the La (Labadi) Beach in Accra was taken over by the Ministry of Tourism who regularly put on seaside musical shows and  ‘meet me theirs’.[101]  In 1992 the Rawling’s government initiated the bi-annual PANAFEST that was directed at  tourists from the black diaspora,  with its main performance venue being Cape Coast Castle.[102] This event puts on performances by both local artists and stars from the Black Americas, such as Stevie Wonder, Rita Marley and Isaac Hayes. In the late 1990’s  the Rawling’s government also launched an annual Emancipation Day that celebrates the ending of slavery in the Caribbean  and includes performances at  Accra’s  Children’s Park.[103]  At this time some of the FM radio stations began an annual street carnival in Osu, Accra, which was endorsed by the city council.

 

Since the Kufour government came to power in 2000 two new developments have occurred which will have a positive impact on Ghanaian night-life, particularly the live music and performance sector. In 2004 the huge import-duties on musical instruments was reduced, and in 2005 the entertainment sector was integrated into the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The Ministry of Tourism threw its weight behind these initiatives at they believe these will encourage a resurgence of live music venues for folkloric music, old-time highlifes and other live acts that are attractive to the foreign visitors and ‘world music’ fans coming to Ghanaian with precious foreign exchange..  

 

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