Feb 5/07
Highlife for domestic onions
Been doing a lot of home living and home cooking lately. Today’s track is especially great for when you’re chopping onions.. knife in my left, glass of red in my right, highlife-ing around the kitchen.
You can hear this tune on the Art Hurts release, The Old Highlife. It’s the baby of Art Hurts Records’ Nashville native, Beston Barnett. He went to Ghana on his Honeymoon and ended up studying guitar with Nana Opoku Agyemang. Three weeks into the lessons he managed to convince his new teacher to record an album with long-time friend, Amankwah “Roadmaster” Ntori.
You might recognize Agyemang’s guitar from, among others, F Kenya’s Band that we heard here before on one of Ulubujaja’s guest posts. And in case you’re wondering, Roadmaster gets his name from his mom since he used to walk for miles on foot.
Roadmaster & Agyemang – Akwasi Broni
Tags: ghana, highlife
I just spent a weekend of sub -30 degree celsius in the bush of northern Ontario. Nothing like some highlife to warm me up! Thanks Matt and a belated happy new year … Glenn
I was reading about this genre on the way home this evening in Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon by Michael E. Veal. The author notes that the 1950s are often referred to the “Golden Age” of Nigerian highlife. and that the name “‘highlife’ is generally understood to have originally referred to the opulent upper-class social settings in which the music is performed.”
So, I come here and find a post about highlife. Right on time!
Glenn, nice to hear from you! I gotta say I’m a little jealous of your northern Ontario bush weekend.. hopefully I’ll be back up there myself next November.
Hope all is well, and happy new year to you, too,
Matt
Benn loxo reader, Joe, wrote me this e-mail today:
“The lyrics to Akwasi Broni are interesting and very Ghanaian in spirit.
Akwasi is day name for Sunday born male. (all Europeans and Americans are sunday born, since they brought christianity; Broni means european/american)
The lyrics go like this: The white man plays guitar in the sweetest way. He came from America to Ghana to learn how to play guitar. He came with his wife on their honeymoon, and he learned to play guitar. We like having him here next to us. He loves to dance very much. He plays guitar in the sweetest way. etc etc”
Thanks for the info!
-Matt
Great guitar work
Good detective work. Akwasi Broni is what they often call whites they don’t know in Ghana: Akwasi for sunday, Broni for white. It turns out, though, that I was born on Sunday, so the name stuck.
It’s said in Ghana that if you say hi to a white man on Sunday, then you don’t have to go to church that day. I was constantly surrounded on Sundays by kids yelling Hey Kwesi Broni and running off laughing, and it took me a while to figure out why.
I stop in at this website now and again – it’s nice to see something of mine here. Keep up the good work.
- Akwasi Broni (Beston Barnett)
Oh. Also, I think the guitar in the F Kenya Band is Eric Agyemang not Nana Opoku Agyemang. Same name, similar style, different folks. It’s a pretty common name in Ghana.
- Beston
Thanks for the correction, Beston, and nice to see you’re giving Benn loxo a listen once a while.
Cheers,
Matt