Feb 26/07
The Highlife Turntable: Vol. 3
Today we have a third highlife installment from Benn loxo listener, ubulujaja:
“Lord Bob Cole (who may also have been known as Bob Johnson) was a Ghanaian comedian, songwriter, and actor who was a veteran of the Ghanaian Concert Party scene of the 1950’s where highlife music was mixed with comic dramatizations of local events. I first heard his music on the 1970’s C.K. Mann and Bob Cole release Osode: African Hot Highlife Rhythms and started making an effort to track down anything I could by him. The song Kekerebtire is a Nzima song off a Decca 45 release probably done in the mid to late 60’s. The structure of the song is classic highlife with the opening horns blast and interwoven guitar and percussion solos, but the punchy nature of the vocals make the song stand out and are delivered with a sort of vaudevillian boisterousness that must have characterized the concert party scene. For more information on the Ghana Concert Party Theatre you should check out Catherine M. Cole’s book Ghana Concert Party Theatre.
I don’t know much about Muchacha Imuzor as there are no liner notes or list of performers on any of the LP’s I have managed to find, but he did a number of good Ukwauni styled highlife records in the 70’s for the EMI Label. The song Anazo Eze is a 16 minute track off an LP of the same name. His vocals have a distinctive urgency that bring together the rhythms of the guitar, percussion instruments and chorus to make a solid Ukwauni praise song.”
Thanks as always for the post, ubulujaja.
Bob Cole and his Music Makers – Kekerebtire
Muchacha Imuzor – Anazo Eze
For some reason I cannot get any of the tracks to play in Windows Media Player (‘unknown error’ message.) I have not had this problem with your site before – I am a regular and I am not having the same problem with any of the other music blogs that I am visiting?? Thanks, P.
Need I say I appreciate your site a lot and the wonderful music you have introduced me too?! Thanks!
P, there was something up with the encoding of these MP3s. I corrected the problem – should work now.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Matt
still can’t download, comes in as html
Never had any problems listening but since today have…
Hey everyone,
I realized that you’re right – those of you listening directly from your media players might be locked out by the new, tighter link security. It was meant to prevent people from linking to the songs on this web site from other web sites, but for those not used to downloading files instead of streaming them (or who don’t know the difference) it could cause problems.
I’ve reset the rules. You should be fine now.
Cheers,
Matt
i just downloaded the bob cole song. i can think of only a few things that are better than highlife.