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Bokoor
African Popular Music Archive Foundation (BAPMAF)
NYU is proud to work with John Collins and the Bokoor African Popular Music Archive Foundation (BAPMAF) on this page about Ghanaian Highlife Music. Highlife is the popular music of Ghana. Running a parallel history with American Jazz music, Highlife is an amazing fusion of African traditional rhythm, melodies and techniques with the instruments and popular music of the Western world. With the introduction of trumpets, trombones and saxophones by European Regimental Brass Bands and the importation of the Spanish guitar to the Western African coast by the Kroo sailors in the late nineteenth century we see the emergence of Highlife and its various styles. While traditional instruments like the Seprewa (a Ghanaian harp lute) where often set aside for a Spanish style guitar, the traditional practices and techniques of the old instruments remained. Also of great interest is that Highlife music was and continues to be greatly influenced by the music of black American culture returning to Africa in the reverse diaspora that occurs in the 20th century. BAPMAF is an NGO that was established in 1990 by Professor John Collins, King Bruce, Koo Nimo, E.T. Mensah, Jimmy Beckley, 'Opia' (i.e. Mr. Y.B. Bampoe of the Jaguar Jokers), the musicologist Professor A. A. Mensah, Edinam Ansah (Volta Region, MUSIGA), guitarist Kwaa Mensah and media-man Beattie Casely-Hayford. Materials at the BAPMAF Highlife Centre span over a century of West African music history and includes over 800 hours of recorded music (including 700 old highlife songs on shellac 78 rpm records and master-tapes of over one Ghanaian hundred bands recorded at Bokoor Recording Studio from 1982), 700 photographs, over 600 publications, and many rare documents, speeches, brochures, posters, record sleeves. Find out more about:
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