Book Launch and Documentary: Highlife Unbound: Highlife as Trilocal and Transnational Music Culture 1950-1967

book

In his new book, Highlife Unbound (published by Brill 2026), Dr. Markus Coester unfolds the trilocal and transnational history of Highlife, Anglophone West Africa's first modern popular music. It introduces Highlife as a travelling cultural practice and trilocal community by investigating the interrelatedness of Highlife-making in the Gold Coast/Ghana, Nigeria, and England between 1950 and 1967, the time when Highlife became modern popular music culture. It does this through an in-depth focus on travelling musicians, Highlife in three countries, and the circulation and appropriation of recorded music. The African Diaspora contact points of music-makers from the Caribbean and West Africa in England are an important subject of the book as are the music’s forgotten London sites.

Markus Coester, Dr. habil. (Ph.D. 2003, Habilitation, 2015) is a cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is a project director in the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple - Reconfiguring African Studies. His work and research have centred on music and culture, mainly Highlife, preservation, digitisation, and recirculation of important music archives and collections, like the Olive Lewin Collection in Jamaica and the GBC Gramophone Library in Ghana.

Link to the book: Highlife Unbound – Highlife as Trilocal and Transnational Music Culture 1950-1967 | Brill

 

 

Concert with Ghanaian highlife band Amamere:

24 April, 20:00-22:00, LiteraturHaus: Møllegade 7, 2200 Copenhagen

Amamere, an exciting new music project from Cape Coast, Ghana, brings a breath of fresh air to the highlife tradition, blending the distinctive guitar highlife of the 1970s with Afro-funk. Formed in 2022 by drummer and composer Rim Akandoh Jnr. (former drummer of Ghanaian highlife legend Ebo Taylor), the band draws inspiration from Ghana’s rich musical history while adding a modern, energetic twist.  

 Tickets will be sold at the door: 100kr.

Link to event: Concert with Ghanaian Highlife Band Amamere – University of Copenhagen