Highlife Unbound

Highlife Unbound 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.