We continue our collaboration with the
Indian Music Experience with
Who Is Highlife? by
Wilma Kiener,
Dieter Matzka and
Alpha Yahaya Suberu.
Highlife is the rock’n’roll of Africa, and it originated in Ghana, West Africa. This West African country jives to the beat of highlife from morning to well after midnight. Considering the country’s history, from the arrival of the first colonial power through to globalisation, it comes as no surprise that African musicians have managed to amalgamate typical Ghanaian beats with continuously changing Western influences in highlife: from the rhythmic palm wine music and Kwame Nkrumah’s national commitment to promoting dance-band highlife, to the exiled musicians living in Germany and today’s genre mix hiplife.
Burger highlife evolved in the 1980s in the recording studios of Düsseldorf and Berlin, where Ghanaian musicians collaborated with German sound engineers to create a fusion of traditional music, disco and funk.
The film tells the story of how this special style of fusion music came about, using musical excerpts and interviews.
The film
WHO IS HIGHLIFE? was produced in 2007/2008 during two large-scale concerts organised by the Goethe-Institut in Accra, “Made In Germany – Burger Highlife”.
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