The Highlife Baton

Old roots, new hands

Named in the 1920s, inscribed by UNESCO in 2025: who is carrying highlife forward now, and why Bisa Kdei says musicians are a bit scared to tag it.

Words: Onome T, Chief Writer · No photographs in this story (links and text only)

The Highlife Baton

On 5 March 1957, the eve of Ghana's independence, E.T. Mensah performed before nearly 500,000 people gathered in Accra, according to Graphic Online's history of highlife. Hold that number. It is the size of the room this music once filled.

The music is older than that night, and older than its own name. Graphic traces highlife to the late nineteenth century in the port cities of the Gold Coast, with Accra, Cape Coast and Sekondi-Takoradi among them. It lists indigenous Akan and Ga rhythms and the palm-wine guitar music of coastal communities among the traditions that fed it. The name arrived in the 1920s, because the music was performed at elite social clubs and ballrooms attended by colonial administrators and wealthy Africans. Port-town music, named for the ballroom.

Then it travelled, and it multiplied. Nana Ampadu's group alone recorded over 800 songs across five decades, by Graphic's count. Ghanaian musicians who migrated to Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s gave rise to Burger highlife, named after Hamburg. Daddy Lumba's 1989 debut album sold over one million copies across West Africa. In the 1990s, Reggie Rockstone created hiplife, a fusion of highlife melodies with hip-hop beats and rap. Graphic says Afrobeats artists in Ghana and Nigeria still use highlife's guitar rhythms, melodic structures and storytelling traditions. In 2025, UNESCO inscribed highlife on its list of intangible cultural heritage.

A sound with that record should not need defending. Its own artists say it does. In a GhanaWeb report dated 7 October 2026, Bisa Kdei said: "People are, let me just say, a bit scared to tag their songs as highlife because most people also think that highlife is for the old." The trouble he describes is with the word, not the work.

So who is making the work? Start with RCee. GhanaWeb reports that RCee, born Austin Antwi Boakye, was raised in Bremang, Kumasi, and is now based in Accra. It places RCee's music at the intersection of Afrobeats, highlife and Afro-fusion. OkayAfrica's profile adds the lineage: RCee's father introduced him to highlife musicians from Paa Bobo to Daddy Lumba to Kojo Antwi. Asked what drew him in as a boy, RCee told OkayAfrica: "At that time, it was the album covers. It was quite artistic, and the sound itself, how they were using storytelling."

The catalogue shows the turn. OkayAfrica notes that RCee's first single, "Made In Ghana", came out in 2022, when his sound was "purely Afro-pop in its most generic form." Two EPs followed: How Did We Get Here (2024) and Young Daddy (April 2026). GhanaWeb lists features from rapper M.anifest and singer Mellissa on Young Daddy. It also credits live instrumentation and production support from Klasik Beatz, Babawvd, guitarist Joshua Mozsi and saxophonist Opejasax.

OkayAfrica's verdict is the boldest on the record. It calls RCee "one of the few Ghanaian artists giving highlife music a contemporary perspective without diluting its traditional roots." OkayAfrica also says his sound veers into Afro-pop, funk and soft disco. It hears the opening track, "Sweety", as a song that "borrows the plain-speaking and honesty common to highlife music". Plain speech is the right thing to borrow. A guitar figure can be sampled. Plain speech has to be meant.

RCee sees company around him. "Seeing my generation jumping on high life songs and making high life records," he told OkayAfrica.

Kofi Kinaata got his nomination from a veteran. In an interview on Joy Prime, posted on 28 August 2025, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley expressed confidence in Kinaata's talent, GhanaWeb reports. MyJoyOnline, which describes Ambolley as a veteran highlife musician, reports that Kinaata is an artist he can bank his hopes on when it comes to continuing the highlife legacy. In MyJoyOnline's rendering, Ambolley said: "He is sticking to his highlife identity and even adding something to it."

The awards have made a call of their own. At the 20th Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, Kuami Eugene won Highlife Artiste of the Year and was honoured with a crown as the "Future King of Highlife", MyJoyOnline reports. Bisa Kdei, for his part, believes award schemes, media platforms and radio personalities have a major role to play in changing the perception of highlife, according to GhanaWeb.

Nana Asamoah rejects the obituary. "Highlife is not dying. Musicians are still making that kind of music. It only looks quiet in the mainstream because the system has changed," he told Graphic Showbiz. Where legends release less often, he sees an opening: "if there is a gap, I see it as a responsibility to bring a fresh wave to keep Highlife moving forward." His prescription is short: "The key is not to fight or compete but to find a way to blend."

Cojo Rae counts himself among the young, upcoming artists, and he has put a name on what he is pushing. "We, the young upcoming artistes, need projections and support to push highlife," he said on a Kumasi-based radio station, as MyNewsGh reports. For now, he said, his main agenda is what he calls "Gen Highlife". He added that he is not against other genres and has explored them himself.

Blending is the oldest instruction this music has. The port towns mixed it long before the ballrooms named it. A hundred years on, the label is the part in question. The records, by their makers' own account, keep coming.

“Port-town music, named for the ballroom.”

Sources

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