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 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.