Artist description "The Old Highlife" casts a wide net. There are songs here which were old when Roadmaster was a choir-boy forty years ago, and songs which Agyemang wrote as we sat down to record. There are tracks with nothing but acoustic guitar, and others bursting with the electric bubbling two-guitar style and tight vocal harmonies that characterize West African pop and dance music. There is great happiness in the midst of great loss, love in poverty, reason in confusion, and gospel light shining through despair. And in the midst of the 'old' highlife, there is always something to be found that's alive, vibrant, funky, and new.

Music Style Ghanaian highlife

Artist History I first came to Kumasi with only a vague idea of finding a guitar teacher. In Accra, the capitol, live music seemed to be on the decline; the few bands playing at tourist hotels favored American standards and South African reggae over the old highlife that had attracted me to Ghana in the first place. My wife and I were hardened travelers at this point, so a few old tapes of beautiful harmonies and sparkling, almost Caribbean guitar were enough to draw us across the Atlantic with malaria pills and Twi/English dictionaries stowed in our backpacks. After a few days asking around, I was led one afternoon to Shekinah Recording Studios and my first meeting with Nana Opoku Agyemang. The apprenticeship started immediately. In the first week he taught me most of the songs on this recording, and in the second week we began tinkering with them, changing bass lines and inventing interlocking guitar parts. Agyemang was more than enthusiastic. At his music studio, everything is done on the synthesizer, so despite the fact that he had spent the better part of his life touring with various highlife bands across Africa, he hadn't played the guitar seriously in a decade. The lessons became social events, a parade of family and friends singing harmony, tapping sticks against coke bottles, and cooking fufu. But when Agyemang's old friend Roadmaster came onto the scene, with his soft, lilting voice and his sense of sweet harmony, everything seemed to fall into place. In the third week we made this record. – Beston Barnett

Group Members Roadmaster - vocals; Agyemang - guitars and vocals; Beston - bass and guitar; John Krapa - drums; additional singers: JK Acheampong, Sharif Ali-Bawa, Agya Yaw

Instruments electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drum kit, and hand percussion

Albums "The Old Highlife" (2001)

Location Kumasi, Ashanti - Ghana

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