Dispersion of Highlife Music in Nigeria
Among the Igbo tribes, Ghana highlife became famous in the early 1950s and other guitar-band methods from Zaire and Cameroun later followe...
http://worldhitz4u.blogspot.com/2014/02/dispersion-of-highlife-music-in-nigeria_16.html
Among
the Igbo tribes, Ghana highlife became famous in the early 1950s and other
guitar-band methods from Zaire and Cameroun later followed. The Ghanian E.T
Mensah easily the greatest famous highlife artists of the 1950s, travelled
Igbo-land often, drawing large audiences of dedicated supporters. Bobby Benson
& His Combo was the first Nigerian highlife ensemble to find supporters
throughout the country. Benson was followed by Jim Lawson & the mayor’s
Dance band who gained the national popularity in the mid-70s, ending with
Lawson’s death in 1976. During the same time, other highlife artists were
reaching their top. These among Prince Nico Mbarga and his band Rocafil jazz
with his hit song sweet mother which was a pan-African hit that sold more than
13 million copies more than any other person in Africa. Mbarga used the English
lyrics in a style that he dubbed panko, which joined refined rumba
guitar-phrasing into the highlife phrases.
source of picture: en.wikipedia.org
After
the civil war in 1960s, Igbo artists were forced out of Lagos and they return
back to their homeland. The result was that highlife ceased to be a main part
of normal Nigerian music, and was however of as being something entirely
related with the Igbos of the east. The highlife’s fame gradually decreased
among the Igbo’s supplanted by juju and fuji. Though, a few artists kept the
pattern alive such as Yoruba singer and trumpeter Victor Olaiya (he is the only
Nigerian to ever earn a platinum rercord), Stephen Osita Osadebe, Oliver De
Conque, Oriental Brother, Celestine Ukwu, Orlando Dr. Ganja Owoh, Victor Uwaifo
and Sonny Okosun whose unique toyed style combined juju and highlife.
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