The Broadway Band (or Broadway Dance Band) was established in 1958 in Takoradi by Sam Obote, a Nigerian. Mac Tontoh joined the band in 1962. It was the first big band of its kind in Africa. The band was run by the management of the Zenith Hotel in Takoradi and led by Sam Obote until […]
Category Archives: MUSIC
Research on African Music
07
May
May
Kwame Asare (Jacob Sam) was born in 1903 in Cape Coast. The first highlife guitarist was taught the guitar by a Kru Liberian seaman. His famous guitar style came from the two finger technique of playing the seprewa, a traditional harp-lute. Asare was trained as a goldsmith and he moved to Kumasi where he formed […]
07
May
May
Emmanuel Tetteh Mensah was born on 31st May 1919 in Accra. E.T. went to school in Jamestown where he learned to read music and play the concert flute and piccolo with a teacher called Joe Lamptey who formed the Accra Orchestra out of his school fife band. E.T. joined the Accra Orchestra in 1932. Between […]
07
May
May
In 1961, the alto saxophonist Jerry Hansen and nine musicians left the semi-professional Black Beats to form the fully professional Ramblers Dance Band. “The Ramblers Dance Band, nearly eight years old (in 1969) has introduced glamour into the West African Highlife Scene. The Band has provided its dance fans with their highlife tunes, while for […]
07
May
May
The original leader of the Stargazers of Kumasi was Glen Cofie, later replaced by Eddie Quansah, with Joe Mensah as lead vocal and also Joss Alkins. Stan Plange joined the band in 1958 and played under the leadership of Ad-lib Young. Stan Plange left the Stargazers to join the Broadway Band in Takoradi in 1964 […]
05
May
May
Senior Eddie Donkor was born on 6th March 1942 at Akropong-Akwapim, in the Eastern Region of Ghana. On that same day elsewhere in the world, great artistic icons such as Charles Tolliver (the Great Trumpeter on Jackie McLean’s Blue Note albums and co-founder of Strata-East Records), Paco Cepero (Spanish Flamenco artist who worked as an […]
05
May
May
This all was a perfect canvas, onto which Sunday laid the melodic patterns of rock-n-roll, guitars, rhythms, and modern colors. Under this scheme, he produced two of his very first albums, the 1977’s Sound Vibration and the 1979’s The Royal Sound. They gained terrific success. After the success of these two albums, Sunny Ade was […]
05
May
May
Born Sunday Adeniyi, King Sunny Ade has been perfecting his Nigerian juju beats for decades. By now, he’s achieved legendary status: Some know him as the African Bob Marley. The son of a church organist, Ade knew from a young age that music was his life’s passion. He left grammar school in the 1960s, started […]
02
May
May
Part of what makes highlife a unique musical genre is its method of melding traditional and contemporary sounds from all corners of Africa and the world. When highlife began to gain momentum in the early 1900s, it was known for incorporating foreign guitar techniques, creating layers of sound and cultural fusion on top of existing […]
29
Apr
Apr
In 1994, when residents in Accra woke up one morning to hear a radio station blaring out copious melodious music, but not from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Ghanaians realised that private broadcasting had been actualised.! That was how Radio Eye really opened the eyes of Ghanaians to the fact that when in 1977, the Supreme […]
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