From Burger Highlife to Gospel Highlife: Music, Migration, and the Ghanaian Diaspora

Abstract

This chapter deals with music in the context of Ghanaian migration, with a particular focus on the Ghanaian diaspora in Germany that emerged over the course of the past three to four decades. Germany constitutes one of the preferred destinations of Ghanaian migrants in Western Europe and it assumed a prominent role in the production of Ghanaian popular music in the 1980s and 1990s. In the following discussion, two diff erent, though interrelated, fi elds of musical activity will be highlighted, namely, burger highlife and gospel highlife, and the role of these in the negotiation of social status and identity in the context of migration discussed. While the early and formative years of Ghanaian highlife music have received relatively much scholarly attention (Asante-Darko and van der Gerst 1983; Collins 1986, 1989, 1996; Coplan 1978), developments in Ghanaian popular music from the 1980s onwards have often been neglected, if not openly dismissed for their alleged ‘inauthenticity’, because of the heavy reliance on computerized sounds and the lack of live performed musical instruments (Collins 1996, 289-95). It is only recently that researchers have begun to direct their attention to more current trends (Carl 2012; Collins 2012; Shipley 2009, 2012). As far as musical production and performance in the context of Ghanaian migration over the past decades is concerned, the sociocultural signifi cance of this transnational fi eld has thus far not been explored.

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