Highlife

What it is

Accra dance halls in the 1920s were putting Ghanaian melodies through brass band instrumentation, and the people outside who could not afford a ticket named what they could hear through the wall. E.T. Mensah and the Tempos took it across West Africa in the fifties. Guitar bands like Nana Ampadu's African Brothers took it inland and turned it into a storytelling music. Then in the early eighties Ghanaian musicians living in Hamburg, George Darko and Daddy Lumba among them, rebuilt it on a drum machine and a DX7, and that version is the one a step grid can honestly hold. What a grid cannot hold is the guitar. Two interlocking parts, one picking arpeggios and one carrying a lower melody, are what makes a record highlife, and there is no lane for them here.

What it sounds like

Bright, mid-forward and unhurried even when it is quick. Two clean electric guitars picked rather than strummed, a horn section answering the vocal in parallel thirds, and a kit that stays light: cross-stick instead of snare, hats riding with the offbeat pushed. Underneath, a conga and a small hand-held iron bell called the firikyiwa keeping a five stroke figure. The Hamburg records swap the horns for a DX7 and the kit for a drum machine but keep every placement. Vocals are in Twi or Ga, often two or three singers in harmony. The whole thing is mixed politely, with real space around each part and nothing fighting for the middle.

Key elements

• The cross-stick, not the snareThe backbeat is a rim click, six strokes in bar one and none of them above velocity 100, quiet enough that the guitars stay on top of it. A struck snare turns this into a different music in one bar.
• The firikyiwa figureA small iron bell on beat 1, the a of 1, the and of 2, the and of 3 and beat 4. Five strokes, and everything else in the arrangement is placed against them.
• A bass drum that stays lowBeat 1, the and of 2, beat 3 and the e of 4, mixed at about the level of the conga. It is closer to a jazz bass drum than to anything that drives a floor.
• Two guitars, interlockedOne picking an arpeggio figure, one playing a lower melodic line, both clean and both with a plectrum. This is the part the grid below cannot write and the part a listener identifies first.
• Congas between the twoFive strokes in bar one, on the e of each beat plus the a of 3, taking only sixteenths that the bell and the cross-stick have both left open.

How to get them

• Start with the bellProgram the five firikyiwa strokes and loop them alone until they stop sounding sparse. Everything a highlife band plays is placed against that figure, the vocal phrasing included.
• Cross-stick, not snareUse a rim click sample, keep every stroke under velocity 100, and resist a struck snare on 2 and 4. The kit in this music supports the guitars rather than leading them.
• Two guitarsTrack one picking an arpeggio and a second playing a lower melodic line, both clean and both with the plectrum. Do not tighten them against each other, because the small disagreement is the sound.
• The drum machine versionFor burger-highlife, replace the kit with a TR-707 or a Linn and put a DX7 electric piano on the chords, but keep every placement exactly where the band had it. That is what the Hamburg records did.
• Horns in thirdsTwo or three horns answering the vocal in parallel thirds, entering after the line rather than sitting under it. Short blocks, never pads.
• Swing0.55. Highlife lilts, and a straight sixteenth grid at this tempo turns the conga and the cross-stick into a march.

Reference points

E.T. Mensah and the Tempos, Nana Ampadu's African Brothers, Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, Ebo Taylor, George Darko, Daddy Lumba and Nana Acheampong, and the Ghanaian musicians in Hamburg who rebuilt it on machines. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.