Highlife

Spreading recently to select dance halls across the globe, the guitar-oriented dance music known as Highlife sprang from the urban centers of West Africa in the 1920s and '30s, particularly the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Its name referred to its original dance band format, but by the '60s, guitar bands had mostly displaced larger groups. Indigenous rhythms and instrumentation ultimately merged with Euro-American dance forms, brass instruments, and more recently, electrified ensembles.