Downloads   Galeries   Forums   Audios   Vidéos   Liens   Livre d´or   Partenaires   Contact   
  Accueil
  Actualité
  Régions/Peuples
  Historique
  Sawanité
  Le Ngondo
  Tourisme
  Littérature
  VIP
  F.A.Q
  Agendas
  Evénements
  Annonces
  Projets
  Communauté



      


29.08.2006

The Rebirth of Highlife 

By Alex Last
BBC, Lagos

Fatai Rolling Dollar is 79, but you wouldn´t know it.

Small and thin, eyes sparkling beneath his signature cloth cap, cigarette and guitar in hand, he´s the oldest of the highlife stars still active on the music scene.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, highlife was the sound of West Africa.

It was Africa´s first example of musical fusion between African traditional songs and rhythms with western styles such as jazz, Caribbean calypso, Cuban son, rumba and military band music.

The new forms spread as sailors brought new influences and instruments back to the West African coast from the 1920s.

It got its name because the bands played in clubs frequented by the elite; people who were living the high life.

Made famous in Ghana, highlife spread across the region. It was pioneered in Nigeria by the likes of Bobby Benson, Dr Victor Olaiya, and Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson.

Rolling Dollar started playing music in the 1940s, first using a thumb piano, before moving onto the guitar, and joining highlife bands in Lagos in the hey-day of the 1950s and 1960s.

Decline

But in Nigeria, the music gradually went into decline - sparked by the Biafran civil war from 1967 to 1970 which split up bands, as musicians joined the army, and nightclubs closed.

"The whole band´s boys went to join the army, the navy and the air force," Rolling Dollar recalls.
"One day, we went to play at a club, and an army officer went and smacked one of my boys.

"The next day he went and joined the army. And so from that time, highlife went down, because there was no-one to play it."

In the years that followed, new forms of music derived from highlife took over in Nigeria: Juju and Afro-beat in the 1970s and 1980s.

These days hip-hop, R&B, and rap dominate the Nigerian music market.

But some people are trying to revive highlife.

In Ojay´s bar in Lagos, the last Sunday of each month is the Great Highlife Party, when old stalwarts like Rolling Dollar come and play with the bands.

It´s a chance to hear the classics, but also to bring the music to a new generation.
"Highlife declined over the years, but we are trying to revive it, because we feel that this young generation should know where our musical culture is coming from," says Benson Idonije, a music journalist and broadcaster who has been promoting the highlife revival.

Mr Idonije hopes the music will influence Nigeria´s current music scene.

"Just now hip-hop is the contemporary thing - you find Nigerians imitating the American style," he says.

"But if they were inflamed by highlife, which we are trying to bring back, they would be fusing it with highlife.

"If you listen to Ghanaian hip-hop, they call it hip-life, you find that in that country, even though it is hip-hop, the underlying beat is highlife. So they have an identity, but we don´t have in Nigeria, because young Nigerians are looking up to America for their future."

Packed

Inside the club, the place is packed.

On stage, the large bands with drums, bongos, guitars, trumpets and saxophones play the tunes, often cover versions of the hits from decades ago.

Then Rolling Dollar bounds on stage, singing, playing the guitar, and dancing.
Each tune is about 10 minutes long, and the performance defies the years. Nigerians both old and young are up and dancing at the front.

Many of those in the queue to get in are younger Nigerians in their 20s and 30s.

"Highlife is the kind of music that when you listen to it, you feel more relaxed, than this modern music," one young woman says.

A young man joins in: "When I was growing up, my dad used to listen this kind of music. I´m more interested in finding out what it was about.

"Highlife is our heritage, its something that I grew up with, its something I enjoy, listening to and dancing to."

Although many of the old highlife greats are no longer alive, the music is still popular, and as many including Rolling Dollar believe, its influence on Nigerian music over the decades means it will never die.

"Today we are trying to push highlife back again. And it´s coming back. From highlife, people got something - they got hip hop. What they are singing and dancing to now, it´s from highlife."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/5287018.stm

Published: 2006/08/28 01:40:17 GMT
 

Source:  | Hits: 24136 | Envoyer à des amis  ! | Imprimer ! | Réagir(0)

PLUS DE NOUVELLES


  Ngondo 2007 prolongé au 08.Dec : Les Miengu recommandent l´unité Sawa
( | 03.12.2007 | 37411 hits  | 0 R)

  Peuple Sawa, Tous à L´unisson. Sawa Ancestors Predict Blessings For 2008
( | 03.12.2007 | 32824 hits  | 0 R)

  Les Elog Mpo’o (Mpoo) se ressourcent à Edéa
( | 01.12.2007 | 37164 hits  | 0 R)

  Exclusif ! Entretien avec le Pr. NJOH MOUELLE
( | 30.11.2007 | 39747 hits  | 0 R)

  MANGA BEKOMBO Priso: Conflits d´autorité au sein de la société familiale chez les Dwala du Sud-Cameroun
( | 27.11.2007 | 38912 hits  | 0 R)

  Remember Manga Bekombo Priso (1932-2004)
( | 26.11.2007 | 37002 hits  | 0 R)

  Cet enfant de NEW-BELL NKONGMONDO: MBOM EPHREM, ancien Lions Indomptables
( | 23.11.2007 | 44682 hits  | 0 R)

  Hommage : Elle s’appelait Else Ekindi
( | 21.11.2007 | 49680 hits  | 0 R)

  "Du racisme français, Quatre siècles de négrophobie" par ODILE TOBNER
( | 21.11.2007 | 35010 hits  | 1 R)

  Et si Nkongsamba vous était contée
( | 20.11.2007 | 50493 hits  | 0 R)

  Alucam - les manifestations du cinquantenaire lancées à Edéa
( | 20.11.2007 | 38091 hits  | 0 R)

  Nkongmondo - Le miroir de la misère ambiante
( | 20.11.2007 | 36398 hits  | 0 R)

  Le Ngondo s´ouvre au Grand Sawa
( | 20.11.2007 | 31189 hits  | 0 R)

  Richard Bona parle
( | 20.11.2007 | 28322 hits  | 0 R)

  Sawanité: le pari de l’alliance
( | 12.11.2007 | 27561 hits  | 0 R)

  Bakassi Enquête: Affairisme, trafic d’armes, convoitisme du Nigeria... la tuerie
( | 11.11.2007 | 35472 hits  | 0 R)

  Fritz Dikosso-Seme : Interview "Le Ngondo en plein Sahel"
( | 11.11.2007 | 29934 hits  | 0 R)

  Entretien avec Marcien Towa
( | 11.11.2007 | 28692 hits  | 0 R)

  Bakassi: Sanglante attaque des Nigerians; 21 militaires camerounais tués et 6 blessés
( | 10.11.2007 | 35009 hits  | 0 R)

  Festival : Douala accueille le SUD (Salon Urbain de Douala)
( | 09.11.2007 | 33475 hits  | 0 R)

  Manu rend Hommage aux Tirailleurs Sénégalais
( | 09.11.2007 | 27960 hits  | 0 R)

  Fête du NGUMA MABI 2007
( | 05.11.2007 | 31402 hits  | 0 R)

  BlackExploitation videos & movies
( | 05.11.2007 | 31201 hits  | 0 R)

  Le Ngondo 2007 - les Sawa se préparent
( | 31.10.2007 | 30473 hits  | 0 R)

  Athlétisme : Françoise Mbango rompt le silence
( | 31.10.2007 | 28619 hits  | 0 R)

  EMOTION - Comment capitaliser nos ressources à cette veille du NGONDO
( | 30.10.2007 | 22638 hits  | 0 R)

  Clubs mythiques SAWA: « CAIMAN AKWA CLUB DE DOUALA »
( | 25.10.2007 | 71620 hits  | 0 R)

  Le Peuple Sawa salue la montée de Caïman en D1
( | 25.10.2007 | 25299 hits  | 0 R)

  FAKO Mountain Race of Hope 2008
( | 23.10.2007 | 32374 hits  | 0 R)

  LIMBE - Fishermen Accuse Chinese Trawlers Of Destructive Fishing By Francis Tim Mbom
( | 23.10.2007 | 25583 hits  | 0 R)

  Ebénezer Njoh Mouellé, le philosophe et la vie quotidienne
( | 19.10.2007 | 46336 hits  | 0 R)

  Ekambi Brillant et Valère Epée “ ressuscitent ” la culture camerounaise
( | 19.10.2007 | 31636 hits  | 0 R)

  TOKOTO ASHANTY, L’homme de chèvre, revient
( | 14.10.2007 | 31488 hits  | 0 R)

  EBOA LOTIN: UN POETE BANTOU
( | 08.10.2007 | 35157 hits  | 0 R)

  Quelques mélomanes parlent de ce qu’ils gardent de Samuel Eboa Lotin
( | 08.10.2007 | 34787 hits  | 0 R)

  Discours de Ruben Um Nyobe a l´ONU le 17/12/1952 et Hommage d´Achille Mbembe
( | 20.09.2007 | 37488 hits  | 0 R)

  Ruben Um Nyobe : modèle d’homme de culture
( | 13.09.2007 | 35133 hits  | 0 R)

  Steve Bantu Biko: Your memories - 12 September 1977.
( | 12.09.2007 | 40312 hits  | 0 R)

  Le Prince Alexandre
( | 09.09.2007 | 37315 hits  | 0 R)

  Les Ibos de la diaspora appellent à "l’union de tous"
( | 06.09.2007 | 33649 hits  | 0 R)

  France-Afrique: the idiocies that divide us
( | 01.09.2007 | 34254 hits  | 0 R)

  Une Television Africaine (LCA1 TV) en ligne
( | 29.08.2007 | 24180 hits  | 0 R)

  Henri Bandolo : Hommage manqué à un virtuose de la plume
( | 27.08.2007 | 43568 hits  | 0 R)

  Les descendants des Pharaons à travers l´Afrique (Extrait page.62-63)
( | 26.08.2007 | 45227 hits  | 0 R)

  Prince Bétotè DIKA AKWA nya BONAMBELA
( | 21.08.2007 | 49017 hits  | 0 R)

  FELA - a Commommeration
( | 17.08.2007 | 44812 hits  | 0 R)

  Fela Anikulapo kuti… for ever !
( | 17.08.2007 | 30890 hits  | 0 R)

  A Great Loss: The Passing of Dr. Asa Grant Hilliard III (Amankwatia Baffour II) (1933-2007)
( | 16.08.2007 | 40059 hits  | 1 R)

  l’héritage de Rudolph Douala Manga Bell
( | 16.08.2007 | 32554 hits  | 0 R)

  Valère Epée : Duala Manga Bell, un exemple de patriotisme
( | 12.08.2007 | 33439 hits  | 0 R)



   0 |  1 |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5 |  6 |  7 |  8 |  9 |  10 |  11 |  12 |  13 |  14 |  15 |      ... >|



Jumeaux Masao "Ngondo"

Remember Moamar Kadhafi

LIVING CHAINS OF COLONISATION






© Peuplesawa.com 2007 | WEB Technology : BN-iCOM by Biangue Networks