THE GENERATIONAL FACTOR IN GHANAIAN MUSIC : PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE  by Professor   John Collins

 

 

Plenary paper read at the Playing with Identities in African Music Conference of the Nordic African Institute at Turku/Abo, Finland, 19-22th October 2000. Publication details:  The Generational Factor in Ghanaian Music: Concert Parties, highlife, Simpa, Kpanlogo and Gospel, Article in Playing With Identities in the Contemporary Music of Africa, (eds. M. Palmberg and A. Kirkegaard), Published by the Nordic African Institute/Sibelius Museum Apo, Finland. 2002. pp 60-74.

 

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This paper  will cover the importance of generational dynamics in traditional  and neo-traditional musical change and in the evolution of  highlife music, including its most recent manifestation as the computerised Burger Highlife and Hip-Life of today's youth who  are growing up in an increasingly  technological and  individualistic ethos

 

 

As is well recognised now, the notion that African societies were static and that the so called ‘Dark Continent’ had no history is a colonial invention. In Ghana and other parts of British Imperial Africa this idea was particularly associated with the indirect rule period of the late 19^th century when the British began to control it’s African colonies through traditional chiefs and emirs rather than the educated coastal African elites. The fact that there had been numerous African nations and empires with their own historical dynamics was quite ignored. Indeed these became relegated to mere tribes and static village systems that had to be guided and civilised. Thus the emphasis of the  ethnographers of the period  was to freeze African social systems into a timeless ‘ethnological present.’ The comparative musicologists of the period likewise considered  ‘authentic’ African performing arts to be archaic and  unchanging.

 

                This was however far from the truth and as Professor  J. H. K. Nketia ( 1971 and 1981) discusses in the case of Ghana, there was  musical syncretism going on between the Hausa, Dagomba, Akans, Ewe and Ga people  through trade, war and migration  long before European contact.

 

                Another form of traditional musical dynamic was generational change and conflict. For example youthful age-sets, secret initiation societies and warrior associations could, through innovative performance, ridicule members of the older generation, question priests and even overthrow chiefs. Likewise the youth continually modified  recreational drum-dance  styles  which  were  often initially frowned upon by elders: thus acting as an identifier for  each new generation.[1] The young in turn become elders and a new recreational style emerges in the next generation in much the same way as popular dance-music styles in the West mark out the waxing and waning of youthful sub-cultures.

 

It was from recreational music and dance styles that,  compared to more conservative and slow-changing  ritual and court ones, that so much of Ghana’s popular dance-music arose. But in the 19^th and 20^th centuries era novelty was injected into recreational performance from outside rather than internal African influences. It could be rightly claimed therefore that much of contemporary Ghanaian, and indeed African popular music, is a direct continuation of traditional generational oriented recreational, albeit  with elements from Europe, the America, India and the Islamic world incorporated into it. In this light African popular music is just as much an Africanisation of western music as it is a westernisation of African music.

 

 

Turning now to contemporary Africa where traditional generational tension conflict has not only  been carried over into modern context, but  has actually increased for a variety of reasons.  Urban migration and the formal western education of young people are particularly important as these have resulted in a questioning of traditional and parental authority, and  turn away from the extended family towards the nuclear one. Another factor is the is the introduction of imported social norms such as  romantic love, smoking, the  drinking of alcohol [2] and those associated with the teen-age fashions and the  rebellious pop idols of western youth culture. Indeed, and as in the West, local  African popular performers [3], particularly urban ones, have become `role models' for African  youth.

 

Naomi Ware (1978:311) claims this in the case of a distinct youth identity in post-war Freetown, Sierra Leone, and many other writers have commented likewise. In East Africa Low (1982:26) refers to the clash between the older generation and young popular musicians (particularly guitarists) returning home to their villages from urban and industrial centres during the 1950’s.  Ranger (1975:165 and 108-10) notes that the brass-band derived beni music `mirrored’ tensions between the young and old, especially after it had spread into the rural hinterland and became associated with self-supporting youngmen's societies that ignored the jurisdiction of village heads.  Wachiri-Chiuri (1981:50) refers to popular songs by the Kenyan guitarist Joseph Kamaru that are about generational problems.[4] A specific Sierra Leone example referred to by Michael Banton (1957:Chapter IX) are the ‘neo-traditional’[5] songs of Freetown's Ambas Gede voluntary association that catered for new urban migrants during the 1920’s and 30’s and sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the lethargy of the traditional leaders.[6]

 

                As mentioned, western education has also enhanced generational strife in Africa, and this is sometimes linked to the acculturated music of the school's themselves.  For instance David Coplan  mentions ( 1985:26.) that from the late 19th century mission schools in South Africa formed vernacular choirs and fife and marching bands to counteract what the whites called the ‘revolting traditional communal dances, beer drinks and other customs inconsistent with Christianity.'  This clash between the older `pagan' generation and the younger mission educated ones was a general feature throughout sub-Saharan  Africa in colonial times. And in the  post- independence era schools continue to produce music  disliked by the older generation and have, as  was will discussed later,  been a breeding ground for youthful `pop' bands.

 

                Just as important as the music of school children was that of school drop-outs and truants: like the `no good boys' of Ghana in the 1930's and the `street urchins' of South Africa in the 1950's who respectively created neo-traditional konkoma and  penny-whistle kwela music.[7]

 

  In West Africa, the drop-out and delinquent factor in generational conflict became more important after independence, when the dramatic expansion in the educational system resulted in an increase in the number of western educated youths unable to find employment in the modern sector.  Twumasi (1975:49) mentions that the sudden increase in youth unemployment in Ghana during the 1950's was one of the factors that led Prime Minister Nkrumah to establish the Workers and Farmers Brigades.  These trained and  hired young  unemployed as musicians and actors for the Brigade bands and concert parties that were established from the late fifties.  It was these that also, in the face of strong parental opposition, opened up the popular entertainment profession  for a whole  new generation of women  concert party performers.[8]  Chris Waterman (1986:220 and 223) observes that in the western Nigerian case the urban migration of large numbers of rural primary school drop-outs in the fifties and sixties was a factor in the dramatic rise in the number of juju-music groups, the popular dance band genre of the Yoruba .  Moreover, there was a subsequent frequent fissioning of older bands and the emergence of new generations of band leaders. Kazadi wa Mukunu makes a similar observation concerning the Democratic Republic of Congo[9]

 

To look into the subject of popular entertainment and generational conflict in English speaking West Africa and particularly Ghana in more depth, four specific areas will be examined. These are A) the youthful age of many popular artists and the parental opposition that they face; B)the content of popular song and dramatic texts that dwell on inter-generational strife; C) the age-gap within popular entertainment ensembles themselves; D) fourthly, examples of some specific entertainment genres that are linked to juvenile sub-cultures, fashions and delinquency.

 

 

 

A.      THE YOUTHFUL AGE OF PERFORMERS AND THE PARENTAL OPPOSITION THEY FACE

                Young  pioneers of    Ghanaian  highlife guitar-cum- concert party bands are numerous. Examples from the  concert party genre (local comic opera) include Bob Johnson's Versatile Eight and Bob Cole's Happy Trio that  were put together by schoolboys during the 1930’s and 50’s respectively. The trailblazing highlife guitarist Jacob Sam (Kwame Asare) began making public appearances early in life when he sat on the shoulders of his accordionist father playing claves.  Sam's nephew, the famous highlife guitarist  Kwaa Mensah, began his musical career in the 1930's as a small boy in the Atwem drum-and-fife band. Mr. Bampoe (Opia) joined the Yanky Trio concert group in 1946 when he was just eleven years old whilst the famous lady impersonator and falsetto singer of E.K. Nyame's guitar band, Kwabena Okai (or Okine), began his musical activities at thirteen around the same time. The still popular Nana  Ampadu of the African Brothers first went on stage with Yamoah's concert party during the 1960’s at fifteen years old. [10] Also during the sixties the Ghanaian  pop bands that played  rock music and soul consisted of students  involved in competitive inter-school ‘pop chains’

 

The youthful nature of popular entertainers performers is also found in other areas of West Africa.  Jeyifo (1984:84) says that Kola Ogumola's Yoruba travelling theatre group included school children, whilst those of Hubert Ogunde,  Oyin Adejobi and Akin Ogumbe contained the sons and daughters of these  founder-leaders (Ibid:87). Ricard says (1984;69/70) that the three founders of the Happy Stars concert party of Lomé at its creation in 1965 were twenty-four, nineteen and eighteen years old and that  when the group was filmed at the World Drama Festival at Nancy in France, the ages of its other twenty members ranged  from seventeen to twenty-two. He also  ( Ibid;178)  mentions that this group was particularly popular with school leavers and apprentices, as well as the unemployed.  Even younger was Angelique Kidjo of the Benin Republic who began her singing career when she was a six year old member of her mothers thirty-strong popular theatre group, the first in the country. [11] Similarly Fatu Gayflor,  the ‘Golden Voice’ of Liberia began her professional neo-traditional singing career when she eight years old. whilst the country’s Daisy Moore was just five (Collins  1996:238/9)

 

                Numerous West African dance-band musicians, including many that I have interviewed, began their careers early. E.T. Mensah of the Tempos dance-band joined the Accra Orchestra in 1933 at fourteen and the Tempos one-time drummer, Kofi Ghanaba (Guy Warren), first began as a young boy in the late 1930's with the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra.[12]  The horn player Ignace de Souza of the Republic of Benin who led the Black Santiagos dance-band in the mid-sixties began playing professionally at sixteen with the Alfa Jazz band of Cotonu. [13] The Bendel State born Nigerian highlife musician Victor Uwaifo played with Victor Olaiya's Lagos based dance-band as a schoolboy, as did the creator of Afro-beat, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.[14] The Lagotian musician Segun Bucknor who pioneered Afro-soul in the late 1960's had prior to this been a schoolboy member of Roy Chicago's highlife dance-band [15]  and the famous juju music exponent, Ebenezer Obey, joined the Royal Mambo Orchestra at the age of twelve.[16].    Waterman (1986:254) mentions that the pioneering juju musician I.K. Dairo also began his career at twelve, and both Waterman (1990:64) and Alaja-Browne (1987:1) talk of this Yoruba genre emerging in the early 1930's from a group of `area boys' of the Saro (Sierra Leone) Olowogbowo quarter of Lagos who had been playing together from the late 1920's. In eastern and southern Africa a similar youthful contribution to syncretic performance styles has been observed by Ranger, Coplan, Kubik and Graham. [17]

                Because of the low esteem of popular entertainment in Ghana due its connection with drunkeness, womanising  and an itinerant life-style, there is often strong opposition from parents, relatives and teachers to their youngsters becoming professional stage performers. The previously mentioned Y.B. Bampoe was beaten by his uncle for forming his schoolboy Yanky Trio in 1946. The guitar and  its association with palmwine ( a local alcohol) bars was particularly frowned upon.  Jacob Sam’s accordion playing father considered all guitarist as ruffians ( Collins 1996: 3) whilst Emmanuel Akyeampong ( 1996:62) mentions the case of  elders of the town of Bekwai Ashanti triying to de-stool a young chief in 1920 for playing guitar. [18]

 

Bame (1985:20) says that I.K. Yeboah's Abuakwa Trio concert group of the 1950's actually collapsed due to parental problems.  In the case of the falsetto singer of the Akan Trio,  Kwabena  Okai (Okine),  his uncle considered music such  a `useless profession' that he levered the young Kwabena away from the konkoma group he had joined by sending to Accra  to learn tailoring.  Unfortunately for the brother but luckily for Ghana, the tailor was Appiah Adjekum who played Hawaiian guitar and was just starting up  a guitar band - which Kwabena Okai naturally enough joined and met his future professional partner E.K. Nyame.[19]

 

                The resistance that young Ghanaian popular entertainers have encountered is found  elsewhere in West Africa. The Yoruba comic actor and popular theatre leader Moses Olaiya or `Baba Sala' began his professional stage career as an instrumentalist with the Empire Hotel Dance Orchestra of Lagos, which his father, says Lakoju (1984:36), `did not take kindly to.'  The father of the popular Nigerian highlife musician Victor Uwaifo's tried to stop him playing guitar and even wanted to smash his first one (Collins 1986:202).   The Krio elite of Sierra Leone, says Ware (1978:313) `strongly discouraged their children from associating with or becoming popular musicians.'

 

A specific case is that of the Ghanaian/Togolese percussionist Kofi Ayevor  who told me(Collins 1985B:41) that his father wanted him to become a doctor. But Kofi was so keen to become a drummer that he  would walk a `twenty mile round trip to see top Ghanaian bands like the Black Beats and E.T. Mensah's Tempos.'  Likewise the father of the well-known Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour at one point, says Bender (1991:37) `forbade him to sing publicly,' whilst the parents of Côte d'Ivoire's Alpha Blondy were so incensed by his interest in reggae music, his growing of rastafarian dreadlocks and his refusal to become a teacher, that they had him placed under psychiatric care for two years. [20]

 

                The Nigerian/Cameroonian musician Prince Nico Mbarga actually released a record with his Rokafil Jazz in 1977 on the topic of parental opposition.  This highlife, sung in pidgin English and called `Music Line'  is the story of Nicholas himself.  The song begins with a father warning his son against going into the music business as he will never be able to save enough money to settle down and get married.  However, it ends on a happy note, with the  son replying that he has become so successful in the `music line' that he can afford several wives and a very large car.[21]

 

 

 

B.      GENERATIONAL STRIFE IN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT TEXTS

                The theme of the young's lack of respect for their elders occurs in many of the plays of Ghanaian concert parties of the post-war period and we can take  some of those of the Jaguar Jokers ( or  J.J.’s) as examples.  Their play  `A Day Will Come' involves a young women Asabea who follows the flashy Tommy Fire to drinking bars and has no care for her sick mother In. `Go Back To The Land'  another young women called Sapona ignores her father's advice and is lured to the big city.  In the J.J.’s play `Awisia Yi Wo Ani' it is the obedient orphan Kofi Antobam, rather than his spoilt and disrespectful half brother King Sam, who is successful in life.  In the closing moral of this play general counsel to the audience is given by their father, Mr. Johnson’s, which he sings as  a highlife song and which  includes the following line: `to the children I say this, young people should respect their elders, they shouldn't steal or go to beer bars.'[22]

 

                Other concert parties also dramatise the clash of generations. Indeed it is a facet of two of the oldest concert party characters, the moralising and once top-hatted `gentleman' and the mischievous  comic `Bob' who is often a house-boy. The theme of the young versus the old occurs in the play ‘Think Twice' by the Golden Stars group and documented by Bame (1985) which is  about a `boy about town' duping an illiterate old farmer.’ In this  play the old farmer is sometimes made fun of for his poor English: which brings us to the point that it is not only the young who are criticised in concert plays, but also the old.

 

  In the  Jaguar Jokers `Awisia Yi Wo Ani' for instance the clownish house-boy,   Opia, pokes fun of his employer Mr Johnson's crotchety old age by making exaggerated efforts to help him sit down, whilst shouting `hold him, he is somebody’s old man', which audiences finds hilarious.  In their  television play `Ewo Bibiara' the old gentleman, Mr. Johnson, actually has a fight with another old man, which Opia characteristically encourages.

 

                With both Togolese and Nigerian popular theatre, contrasting old and young stereotypes have been are depicted.  The Happy Stars of Lomé had its `playboys' and `girls' dressed in the latest fashions, as well as a `gentleman' and old men leaning on a canes ( Ricard 1974:179).  Karin  Barber (1990:20) mentions that the characters of Yoruba popular plays include `sly cynical houseboys'  and  illiterate old parents making comic misinterpretations of modern ways, whilst Ulli Beier (1954:33) says that Kola Ogunmola's Yoruba dramas typically contains a `strong-headed child who is punished for his disobedience.'

 

                Highlife songs also  sometimes dwell on the generational topic, as with Mr Johnson's closing moral which he sings in the Jaguar  Jokers play `Awisia Yi Wo Ani' referred to above.  Another example from the Jaguar Jokers is Kwaw Tawia's song in their  play `Onipa Hia Mmoa'. This drunkard accuses his mother of being a witch whom he has to protect himself from by putting `medicine' in his hair. [23]

 

                A very popular song of the early 1970's that also condemned the old was the Big Beats Afro-beat type of highlife entitled `Kyenkyemna  Osi Akwan' which compares the old to a vine or `broken thing' that crosses and blocks the path of the youth who want to get on in life.[24]. I once witnessed a case of this song actually being used in a dispute between the youth and elders of a village. It occurred at Pokuase in June 1972 when the Jaguar Jokers concert party wanted to perform and thus break the traditional one month ban on drumming that precedes the annual Ga Homowa harvest-festival. This annoyed the traditionalist elders  and they were called kyenkyemna’ by the youngsters of the village who wanted the show to go on.

               

Some highlifes lyrics also reflect the worries that the older generation has in understanding the ways of the young. An example by the Black Beats dance band is their mid-1950's record `Tsutsu Blema Beneke' which translates from Ga as `the old days were not like this.'  This song was an adaption of an old Ga highlife song that laments on how things are changing, and how young lovers are behaving differently, by showing their affection too openly.[25]

 

 

 

 

C.      GENERATIONAL DISPUTES WITHIN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT GROUPS

                Many Ghanaian band leaders have complained  about their ‘bandboys’. For instance Mr Bampoe of the Jaguar Jokers concert party claims they are fickle rascals, `wee' (marijuana) smokers, heavy drinkers, swollen headed and constantly quarrelling over women.[26]

 

                Another cause of friction between the younger and older members of concert parties is that it is usually the young who introduce the latest styles and fashions.  Sometimes these are accepted - as in the case of the Jaguar  Jokers’ incorporation of Afro-beat, reggae and Afro-rock music between 1969 and 1973.  Sometimes however innovations are rejected, as with Bampoe's complaint about the `bandboys' putting on earrings and colouring their finger-nails. Indeed, the term `bandboys'  itself is a reflection of the patronising attitude of the  group’s executive members towards younger members.

 

                E.T. Mensah, the famous Ga trumpeter and  leader of the Tempos dance-band popular in Ghana in the 1950’s and 60’s criticised his 'bandboys' during the seventies  in the following way.

 

‘ They don't love music as much as we did in our early days. It's the dough they're after, and if they don't get it they simply move on to another band.  Discipline is another headache.  The bandsmen today are swollen headed and everyone of them styles himself a star.  Musicians do tend to be young and wild and they like women, drink and wee (marijuana). But since I've been with the Tempos I've tried not to direct my band into that frenzied life.' (See Collins 1986:42.)

 

                This age difference in the Tempos became exacerbated after 1967, when E.T. Mensah had to re-organise the group and include some of his own sons and their peers.  As he explains, these 'young boys did not like to play waltzes, quicksteps, slow foxtrots and other Victor Sylvester type numbers: they didn't like highlife music much either.  All they were interested in were Congo numbers  (i.e. soukous) and pop music .... I nearly gave up music because I was being compelled to play music out of my taste.'[27]     

 

The problem that E.T. Mensah was facing at the time was that during the 1960s the music of Congo jazz or soukous from the then Zaire as well as  pop music from the West (rock ‘n’ roll, the twist, soul) were all the rage with  Ghana's younger generation and many student `pop chains’ and `soul brother' competitions were organised for student bands by Faisal Helwani, Raymond Azziz and other local impressarios (see Collins 1985A:108.)  The youth therefore began to treat the older highlife dance-bands and their music as 'colo';  that is  colonial and old-fashioned

 

                King Bruce the leader of the Black Beats dance-band also felt the sixties generation pressure. He responded to this in 1969 by letting  his Black Beats continue providing the older highlife and ballroom repertoire whilst he managed new bands to cater for the latest styles.  One such group was the Barbecues whose members says Bruce were `mostly playing pop music and imagined they were the Beatles and Rolling Stones.'  He complains that other groups of `scruffily dressed youths' also came to him to be managed.  Whereas Bruce knew the members of his Black Beat dance-band intimately, he really did not know the youngsters in the pop groups he managed, which led him to complain that `some of them had all the bad characteristics of bandsmen; running always with money, indiscipline and so on.' (See Collins 1987/9.)

 

                Nigerian examples of this type of friction are found in various popular performance genres.   Victor Uwaifo, the well known highlife musician from the Nigerian city of  Benin, commenting on the large number of musicians that have passed through his Melody Maestros band had this to say. ‘After a time they became stagnant and uncontrollable.  Or they don't find it interesting anymore to play with me as they want to branch out and find better opportunities elsewhere ...it is a task to keep going... they don't lead responsible lives.'[28]

 

Barber (1987:65) refers to the `father figure' leader of a typical Yoruba travelling theatre who is surrounded by an inner core of permanent artists and fluctuating `outer rings of increasing instability.'  Waterman (1982:67-9) has actually written a paper on the subject of band seniority which is about the problems between `Captain' Dayo Adeyemi, the leader of an Ibadan juju-music band, and his bandsmen. This  became particularly tense when Adeyemi went to Mecca and bought a new car.

 

 

 

D.  YOUTH CULTURES, JUVENILE DELINQUENCY    AND GENERATIONAL CONFLICT

                To examine  the role of youthful and even delinquent sub-cultures in generational friction I will examine two areas. Firstly, there is the influence of imported ‘pop’ music on Ghana and other English speaking West African countries that began in the sixties with rock music and soul and continues up today with the current fad for reggae and rap. Secondly, I will take the examples of  two Ghanaian neo-traditional forms of music that have emerged as  a result of the impact of both western and local popular music on traditional recreational drum-dance genres.

 

The sixties and seventies  generation of  English speaking West Africa adopted many of the youthful ‘pop' fashions, heroes and heroines from abroad, and consequently treated the older generation  as `colo' or out-of-date.[29]  A fashion in vogue in the mid-sixties was Italian clothes and pointed shoes and a hero in Ghana during that period was the macho `Jack Toronto',  possibly modelled on a cowboy character of Italian `spaghetti westerns'.  To be called by this name was a form of praise amongst youths and from the late sixties other terms of acclaim that  became current in the country which were borrowed  from the rock music of the `hippie' and `flower power' generation and from African-American soul and ‘motown’ music that projected a message of black pride.. These  were `psychedelic', `Santana man' (i.e. Carlos Santana), `soul brother,' `Afro' and `Peace Corp'; the latter stemming from the motorbike riding American Peace Corp volunteers, many of whom before the Nixon era wore beads and long hair.

 

Linked to the imported pop culture was the emergence of a new generation of local bands in Anglophone West Africa that played psychedelic rock, Latin-rock and soul - as well as the Africanised offshoots, Afro-rock and Afro-beat. There were bands from  Sierra Leone such as the   Heartbeats and Kabassa,  Smith’s Dimension from  Liberia and the Soul Assembly, BLO , Mono-Mono and Ofege from Nigeria. Pop bands in Ghana included the Psychedelic Aliens, Cosmic Boom, the Aliens, El Pollos,  Pagadeja,  Fourth Dimension and Hedzolleh (Freedom). Some of these featured in the local Ghanaian film `Doing Their Thing' that exactly captures the fashions and ambience of the times and is about a father who puts obstacles in the way of his daughter becoming a pop musician.

 

                 The role of the ‘area boys’ in the creation of Nigerian juju music during the 1930’s has already been referred to. Particularly important in Nigeria during the pop era was Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and his African 70 band  whose Kalakuta house in Lagos became a refuge for drop-outs and delinquents during the 1970’s and 80’s and whose militant Afrobeat songs became a rallying cry for the Nigerian down-trodden ‘sufferheads’.  It was Fela’s Afro-beat that influenced a Ghanaian band resident in Lagos during the seventies called the Big Beats  that  released the Ga Afrobeat in Ghana called ‘Kyenkyemna Osi Akwan' that, as mentioned earlier, became a catchword for Ghanaian youth in their  condemnation  of  the older generation.

 

Since the early the 1980’s other imported popular musical influences  have become popular in Africa which includes  Jamaican reggae  and African-American  ‘disco’ type soul-funk music, followed more recently by hip-hop and rap and ragga. Although Jamaican reggae made it’s first appearance in West Africa during the 1970’s,  from the 1980’s local versions of it, often sung in vernacular languages, were developed by Miatta Fahnbulleh in Liberia, Alpha Blondy, Jah Tiken Fakoly  and Tangara Speed Ghada of the Cote d’Ivoire,  Kwadwo Antwi, Felix Bell and Rocky Dawuni of Ghana and Evi Edna Ogholi-Ogosi,  Majek Fashek and Ras Kimono of Nigeria.  It was during this time that some local youth, much to the annoyance of the older generation, began to grow  dreadlocks, became anti-authoritarian and embraced rastafarian ideas. For instance, it was  when the now famous Alpha Blondy first grew dreadlocks that his parents, put him under psychiatric care for several years  (see Collins,1996:172). Furthermore Alpha Blondy  publicly disagreed with the politics of ex President Bedie , so much so that one of his reggae songs called ‘Guerre Civile’ was repeatedly played on the radio on the day of General Guei’s military coup in 1999.[30] 

 

It was also from the early 1980’s that western techno-pop with its synthesisers and quanticised electronic drum beats  became popular in Africa. These genres that were popular with the youth began in the early 1980’s with ‘disco’  and was followed in the nineties by  house-music,  rap and rag. These subsequently  spawned a host of local variants such as South African ‘bubble-gum’ and kwaito music, Zim-rap from Zimbabwe and Burgher-highlife and hip-life from Ghana. In Ghana many of the older generation of musicians feel hostile to these new techno developments as they feel its is not genuine highlife, does away with live audiences and puts live artists out of work[31]

 

                Before turning specifically  to the present day pop culture of Ghana  I will first turn to neo-traditional genres that are also pertinent to modern  generational identity. One  example, mentioned earlier, was konkoma which was created by ‘ruffians’ and ‘school drop-outs’ and was  influenced by local brass-band music. Two other Ghanaian  examples will be discussed here; namely the  simpa recreational drum-dance music of northern Ghana and the kpanlogo of the southern Ga people.

 

                Simpa evolved in the Dagbon traditional area during the 1930’s when local recreational music became acculturated with imported western and southern Ghanaian performance styles; including the music of  gome groups, concert parties and highlife bands,  When I stayed in the Dagomba capital of Yendi in 1974 there were two rival simpa groups called `Wait and See' and the `Real Unity Stars'.  These consisted of a group of young male percussionists and female singers and dancers, all aged between ten and sixteen years old.  Besides local Dagomba songs and highlifes, they also played their own renditions of Congo jazz (soukous), soul music and the twist.

 

                I was told that simpa music had always been associated with the young and frowned upon by the older people, as since its inception simpa gatherings have been considered as improper places for young boys and girls to meet. This generational stress became compounded in the post-colonial era by the fact that these two competing performing  groups in Yendi each supported one of two sides of a political moiety in the town (and indeed Dagbon in general) based on a longstanding dispute over the chiefly succession between the Abdullai and Andani royal houses.  In 1969 this became so serious that there was major violence in Yendi and a six-month ban was imposed by the police on what they believed was inflammatory simpa music throughout the traditional area ( See Collins 1985A:Chapter 5)

 

                Chernoff (1979:212/3) mentions a newer acculturated recreational percussion genre [32]  that swept through Dagbon in the 1970's called 'atikatika' which is played by children between the ages of five years old and the early teens.  These children are known for singing witty songs related to the chieftaincy dispute just mentioned and `think nothing of attacking local figures like school head-masters and prominent businessmen.'  Due to their political lyrics and outrageous gossip about the older generation, atikatika groups have been periodically banned by the local and national authorities.  

 

                Neo-traditional kpanlogo is a southern acculturated music that in its early days became the focus of youthful Ga identity and protest. It was created around 1962 by some Ga youths in the fishermen's Bukom area of Accra who merged the old Ga kolomashie dance with elements of western 'pop' and oge; the latter being a Liberian seaman's percussion music popular with Ga's from the 1950's.  Because of the exaggerated pelvic movements of the kpanlogo dance, borrowed from rock `n' roll's `Elvis the Pelvis' and Chubby Checker's `twist', the older generation initially opposed this new-fangled traditional genre, claiming it was sexually suggestive.  Otoo Lincoln, one of the originators of this dance and music told me that a director of the Ghana Arts Council `wanted to spoil the name of kpanlogo.... and said my dance was no good as one of the beats in the dance makes the body move in an indecent way.'(Collins  1992: chapter 4 )  As a result of the ensuing quarrel between the Ga youths and some older members of the Accra public a display was organised in 1965 for the by then fifty kpanlogo groups.  It was held at Black Star Square in Accra where President Nkrumah and some members of his C.P.P. government, who were present as arbitrators, endorsed this percussion backed dance-music as genuine `cultural' music.

 

                Nevertheless, I was told by the Ga musician Jones Attuquayefio [33] that even after this official blessing  kpanlogo performers he knew were arrested by the police, their drums seized, with some of the musicians being caned and put in the cells for a few days.  One reason for this harassment, said Attuquayefio, was that early kpanlogo  (and indeed rock `n' roll) were popular with the fashionably dressed `young rascally ‘Tokyo Joes’ who were the Ga supporters and `action troops' of Dr. Busia's anti-C.P.P. United Party.  These rough political activists who came from the Bukom area used  kpanlogo rhythms to accompany their anti-Nkrumah songs.

 

Another factor contributing to this harassment of kpanlogo groups may have been that the content of the short dance-dramas that are often part of a kpanlogo session, are sometimes anti-establishment.  An example I saw in 1975 was an open air performance by Frank Lane's group of James Town. [34] .  Their Ga play was about a government health inspector catching and summonsing some street sellers for not putting netting over their foodstuffs as protection from flies. They begged the official to let them off and got him so drunk  that he began dancing the kpanlogo. While he was doing this the culprits ran away and when the inspector realised he had been tricked he tore up the summons and dramatically threw the pieces in the air.

 

                The association between acculturated entertainment and fashion conscious and often admired juvenile delinquents, such as Ghana's `Tokyo Joes', has been observed in other parts of West Africa and indeed Africa.  Alaja-Browne (unpublished:4/5 and 23) says that although the competing groups of Lagos `area boys' who created juju music in the 1930's were of `low status coupled with deviant behaviour,' they were also respected and feared for their courage in championing their districts. In South Africa the `Blue Nines' gangs of the inter-war period consisted of school drop-outs who drank, smoked `dagga' (marijuana), spoke `flytal' slang  [35] and danced to marabi music.  They were followed in the mid-1940's by the flytal-speaking `tsotsis'; anti-social city youth who enjoyed imported jazz, the jitterbug dance and the local sexually suggestive `jive' dance-music. [36]

 

The Congolese equivalent to the tsotsis were the `Bills' or `Buffalo Bills' of the fifties and sixties who rode bicycles and motorbikes and watched cowboy films.  They particularly favoured the Congo jazz of Zaiko Langa Langa [37]  band formed in 1969. The Zaiko Langa Langa format was subsequently mimicked by a host of similar Congo (then Zaire) guitar-bands that become the focus for student and youth cults of the 1970's and 1980's (see Stapleton and May 1987).  One of the most well known was that of Papa Wemba who went on to become the leader of the `sapeurs', the Kinshasha youth who wear the latest expensive imported French fashions.  Nkolo (1990:29) believes that this `sapeur' cult may partly be a youth reaction to the late President Mobutu's `authenticite' policy of the 1970's which attempted to ban European dress. In another Francophone state,  the West African  country of the Cote d’Ivoire, students invented a highly satirical local popular music style called ‘zouglou’  (and its associated mapouka dance)  in the early 1990’s  [38]  This music became more political in the late 1990’s when the students became  radicalised by  their opposition  to the  corrupt civilian regime of President  Bedie. Since the 1999 army coup of General ( now President) Robert Guei zouglou bands like those of  Soum Bill and the  Les Salopards [39] have been  endorsed by the Ministry of Culture.

 

                Turning now specifically to Ghana  where, as mentioned earlier,  it was from the early 1980’s that disco music with its electronic drum beat became fashionable  This  electronic variant of highlife was created by Ghanaians living in Hamburg, Germany at that time [40]   whose disco-fied  ‘burger highlife’ subsequently became popular with the youth at home. The burgher-highlife fashion was followed in the late 1990’s with vernacular versions of  hip-hop, ragga  and rap that is now known as ‘hip-life’ (hip-hop plus highlife) and is accompanied with the imported dress and  hair-styles of American rap artist  [41] 

 

It should be pointed out, however, that this move towards  local techno-pop is not just a question of changing fashions but is been  is partly a result of  economic, political and technological  factors which have mitigated against the large live- format popular bands, such as highlife dance bands and the guitar bands-cum-concert parties. These restraints include almost three years of  night curfew during the early /mid 1980’s, heavy taxes on musical instruments, the ‘invasion ‘ of  cheap-to-manage ‘spinners’ (mobile discos)  onto the club dance-floors and the rise of local  television and video productions.  One interesting result of this is that  live format highlife  is now found mainly in the numerous new Ghanaian churches [42]that are not taxed and that often use dance bands for worship and outreach purposes. A consequence of this  is that since the mid 1980’s an enormous number of women singers have entered the popular music (albeit sacred)  sector. [43] Indeed, women now dominate in the field of gospel singing

 

 Inspite of the rise of ‘gospel highlife’ both burgher-highlife and the more recent hip-life have become the dominant  commercial secular music of the  urban youth in the big Ghanaian cities. And this local techno-pop presents a sharp break with the  highlife music of the older generation in two ways.  Firstly, unlike the older varieties of highlife that dwell of a range of topics that  includes love, witchcraft, socio-political commentary, the orphan state, money ‘palava’ and  the problem of death, [44] the lyrics of the new styles of highlife dwell almost exclusively on romantic love and sometimes sexual innuendo [45] In the case of hip-life there is a definite ‘macho’ flavour to the lyrics and practically all local rap singers are men. Indeed in Ghana at the moment there is a distinct gender split in the two main new forms of popular dance-music; namely hip-life and local gospel. Whereas hip-life is dominated by young men who aggressively chant  (i.e. rap) over imported computerised beats, young  Ghanaian women prominent in are singing melodiously to a highlife beat and  in the live context of a church service.

                A second generational difference older highlife and today’s techno-pop is that  burgher highlife and hip-life uses drum-machines and synthesisers that distances them from the live performance of previous generations. Infact, members of the older generation often complain that the present brand of electronic highlife is not highlife at all,  and that its use  of computerised instruments and electronic gadgets is cheap and imitative of western techno-pop.  For the youth, however, it is the very artificiality of the music that  gives it their distinctive up-to-date stamp. [46]  Furthermore a young musician can now-a-days become a ‘superstar’ without actually having to manage a full band for performances and recordings. This, like the romantic love theme  in contemporary lyrics reflects a further move away from traditional norms and towards an individualistic ethos by urban Ghanaian youth.[47]

 

So a controversy rages in Ghana  about the new techno-pop styles of  the present-day youth. The older generation claim its not highlife ,  it’s pre-programme rhythms are purely imported,  its synthesisers puts drummers and horn players out of work, its lip-synching videos cannot substitute for live performance, it does not attract foreign tourists in search of ‘authenticity’, it’s artificiality makes it an un-exportable product for the lucrative World Music market.

 

Nevertheless, burgher-highlife and hip-life are sung in vernacular languages and  thus from a linguistic point of view serve a positive cultural function of putting the local languages into new contexts. Likewise Ghana’s young techno-pop artists became  familiar through  music  with  high technology.  Moreover, the use of  cheap to produce digital multi-track recordings  and  video performance means that music making has become somewhat  ‘democratised’ . It is now  possible for many young people, who would not have otherwise have  entered the music profession, to have a go and find a voice. Finally  and as pointed out before, it is the very artificiality of the music  that helps draw the generational  line in Ghana at the moment. Where the next line will be drawn is anyone’s guess. In the West the extreme techno-pop fads of the seventies was followed by  quite different trends; such as the  acoustic sounds of  ‘unplugged’ artists,  ‘live band circuits’,  a proliferation of retro-styles, the growing interest in  ethnic and  ‘roots’ music,  including the  World Music phenomenon.[48]  So in Ghana, likewise,  the next generation could evolve  a  musical movement that draws more heavily on tradition. Through the ‘law’ of generational change that has been occurring in Ghana since time immemorial – there must be a change

 

 

 

 

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