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A Time and a Season, Abroadcaster's Tribute to Highlife King, E. T Mensah

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A Time and a Season, Abroadcaster's Tribute to Highlife King, E. T Mensah The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. MMANUEL Teteh big band arrangement. Successful though later to be popularised in America by of Africa's fore- this turned out to be in terms of musician- pianist Randy Western. lusidans passed on early ship and financial reward ET still thirsted in August, 1996. By his demise for a popular music type based on Mensah became highly elevated the West African subregion African rhythms, an alternative to the when Ghana attained independence in which he influenced more di- foreign dance music that was prevalent. 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah. Ghana rectly and indeed all of Africa 1947 brought Guy Warren and ET to- extended the territories of highlife firmly to lost yet another giant, an inno- gether again, this time under the leader- Cote d' Ivoire, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. vator, composer, singer, multi- ship of pianist Joe Kelly, thus, the original Highlife was played before heads of state instrumentalist and band Tempos band was born. The band played and African musicians were influenced leader. sophisticated and adventurous Ghana- across different national borders. ET ian songs. The band was a musical suc- Mensah was proclaimed the king of cess but lacked commercial viability. highlife, and his recordings were instant Born in Accra, Ghana where he hits selling beyond West Africa. also died at 78, E.T Mensah was directly ET realised himself in 1948 when involved in the pioneering and formative he went his separate way and founded The top musicians in Ghana in the processes of highlife music. His earlier his own Tempos band. By now he had the Fifties and Sixties were graduates of the years were spent i n the vortex of the cross- experience and musical ability to accom- Tempos Band sticking out on their own cultural currents which pervaded colonial plish his dream, that is, evolving a popu- after serving their various terms of appren- Ghana and the west coast of Africa and lar African-oriented type of music in a ticeship. King Bruce left the Tempos Band thus helped to forge these influences to scene dominated by Western dance mu- to form the Black Beats, Joe Kelly deserted develop a trado-modern African musical for the Red Spots. In 1 961, Jerry Hansen expression that became highlife. left to form the Ramblers Dance Band. The list is very long, and even though some of His music career started in 1932, when he played piccolo in school with a vibrant big band formed and led by Joe Lamptey, ET's school master and mentor. Called the Accra Orchestra, the band played imitative foreign music that was in vogue at the time - ball room, ragtime, swing and rumba. ET developed a burn- ing passion for the sax and learnt to play it alongside the piccolo, and by 1936 moved to collaborate with drummer Guy Warren, one of the most resourceful of Ghanaian musicians of the time, ET's alto being one of the fiercest and most profi- cient of the five saxophones that the fifteen piece band paraded. Much as Guy A broadcaster's tribute to Highlife King, E.T Mensah Warren's drums were pr/ominent, the music saw the beginning of African flavoured Benson these individuals often deserted with promi- dance music. Idonije nent members of the Tempos Band, it was not difficult for Mensah to regroup and Mensah qualified as a pharmacist maintain the same Tempos sound that in 1943, a profession which interfered Highlife immediately caught on and was unique and easily identifiable with his music for some while. 1940 spread in influence to other West African however had been the beginning of his countries which already were more than A major landmark in the life of musical accomplishments, the year he eager to be freed from cultural imperial- Mensah was the visit of Louis Armstrong to joined the Black and White Spots, a ism. Nigeria was the first to be liberated Ghana in 1 956. As the foremost trumpet highly professional band led by a Scottish in 1 949, through the late Bobby Benson, player and band leader, he performed with satchmo's all stars and received soldier, Jack Leopard who acquired dance himself a leading band leader in Nigeria standing ovations from large audiences band musicianship at the professional at the time playing the Glenn Miller - who held them both in high artistic es- level in London. Sergeant Jack Leopard Count Basie - Benny Goodman type of teem. led by far the greatest, most promising swing. band at the time and playing with the Black and White Spots was like training in Mensah's first visit to Nigeria con- The highlife music era began to a college of music. Here ET had his first verted Bobby Benson who eventually re- decline in 1 969 when ETMensah took the induction to harmonic progression and corded Taxi Driver' the big highlife hit Tempos Band to England. Most of the African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. 1/ NO 4 regular Tempos musicians had by then left bands for the continental colonial admin- Bands were concentrated in Lagos and and so the band consisted of new mem- istrators in addition to church hymns intro- Port Harcourt, so when the war broke out bers whose orientation was different. In- duced by missionaries, theguitar, brought in 1967 the musicians went home to be stead of sticking to h'ighlife for which he to African soil by the Portuguese traders, recruited into the Biafran army. By 1 970 was well acclaimed, ET succumbed to the swing and ballroom played essentially for when the war ended, only one highlife pressures and demands of the time, and the white and eventually, African elite. band survived in Celestine Ukwu and the played a mixture of soul, reggae and Philosophers National calypso. Early highlife as played by ET Mensah was based on common meter In Ghana, the economic recession He was invited to Lagos, Nigeria in hymn structures occasioned by the influ- of the late Seventies and the Eighties led 1 986 by some of his old friends, among ence of church hymns whose simple chord to a mass exodus of Ghanaian nationals which was club owner Victor Olaiya, progression was easy to adopt. Even abroad. Mass emigration and economic himself a graduate of the Tempos Band. It though the songs were in African lan- recession thus weighed heavily against was a fruitful and memorable visit, culmi- guages, the melodies were foreign. The the development of highlife and also nating in the recording of a monumental non-Africanness of highlife origins and contributed significantly to its decline in album, Giants of Highlife, a collector's form has, to my mind, more than contrib- popularity. item that brought him and Olaiya jam- uted to its failure to make a lasting impact ming together and evoking the memories within Africa. Also the late 1 960s saw soul music of the Sixties. invading the entire West African region Fela Anikulapo Kuti of Nigeria took and gave highlife a tough competition. ET Mensah was honoured by the highlife to America in 1969 with his James Brown and his imitators likeGeraldo government of Ghana in an appreciation Koola Lobitos band. His entrance point Pino played the music with great finesse ceremony in 1 989. It turned out that the into the music was however through jazz. employing the showbusiness techniques colourful ceremony was to be his last Back home Fela quickly established his as well as multi-micro and stereophonic official outing. Since then old age has brand of highlife because it was regarded sound devices, a modern facility that was made him inactive, in the face of ill health. as a revolutionary departure from the new to West Africa. Consequently, a The overflow of tributes in Ghanaian and •'drab' nature of pristine highlife. He had great number of musicians travelled Nigerian newspapers as well as on radio a big band which struck a five-part har- abroad and converted to pop-oriented and television which has allocated gener- mony, establishing question and answer music, namely Joe Mensah, Eddie Kwansa, ous space and air time to vintage highlife sessions with riffs but the music did not go George Lee, George Dako, all of Ghana; hits stoked the memories of those of us down well with Americans who were and Remi Kabaka, Donald Amechi, Mike who saw the glory and the ebb of highlife looking forward to 'African music'. The Odumosu, of Nigeria, among others. through the Fifties and the Sixties. Hope- tour was in consequence a failure and in fully they will provide an occasion to order to save the day, Fela gave his music We were yet to see music in Africa rekindle interest in the music. a heavy African feeling on the spot and as a vehicle for propagating culture de- Koola Lobitos became 'Africa 70' and spite the foresight of leaders like Kwame Highlife may indeed be enjoying a highlife transformed into 'Afrobeat' giv- Nkrumah but whose vision unluckily did fresh popularity seizing on the topicality ing birth to the LP Jeunko Ku, his first big not survive to their successors. African that the occasion of ET's death has pro- hit. media policies did not protect African music and as a result the electronic media vided. The odds against a highlife revival In Ghana, the veterans including are many however.
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