Highlife.
To Americans, that phrase most likely conjures up images of golden beer in clear bottles and a slight improvement to the general blandness of our domestic beverages.
Highlife music on the other hand, couldn't be farther away from bland: it's a vibrant fusion of West African polyrhythms with Western jazz that is one of Ghana's main musical exports.
On her new album, A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise In Unity), Ghanaian singer Florence Adooni shows what the future of highlife could look like through endless combinations of rhythm and melody that add disco, funk and other modern sounds to the highlife blend.
A.O.E.I.U. is her international debut, but Adooni was already an established Frafra gospel singer in her home country. While it might not sound familiar to the version of gospel we are familiar with in the U.S., Adooni's lyrics that alternate between English and Frafra, carry similar themes of community, growth, spirituality and overcoming struggle.
That is perhaps most clear in the title track, a 10-plus-minute spiritual Afro-jazz odyssey that brings to mind Fela Kuti's band playing a Pharoah Sanders or Alice Coltrane composition. Across the song's four movements, Adooni and collaborator Max Weissenfeldt's melodies lift in unison with the tempo and intensity. The song finally crescendos under Adooni's spoken word messages to the power of music, my personal favorite of which is, "Music is the art of time."
Weissenfeldt is a drummer best known for his work with The Heliocentrics and Poets of Rhythm. His bright production gives the album a distinctly modern feel, whether or not the songs lean more traditional. The opening song, "Mam Pe'ela Su'ure," is a Frafra-language hymn that translates to "My Heart Is Pure," and has the classic finger-plucked guitar lead that is common to highlife and other West African music.
The squishy and synthetic bassline of "Vocalize My Luv," fits like a glove with the organic percussion shuffle and horn accents, creating something that is just as much U.S. disco and U.K. electronic dance as it is Ghanaian highlife.
Adooni and company settle into a lowdown funk groove on "O Yinne Te San Tue!", allowing the singer to showcase her impressive vocal skills. From the hushed solo verses to the chorus with backing vocalists, she has a jazz singer's ability to jump from low to high notes at will.
A.O.E.I.U. is an exceptional showcase of modern, futuristic highlife music, and the rare album that simultaneously gets your hips shaking and heading towards the dance floor, while also rewarding close listening to the complexity of its rhythm, melody and harmony. It's our Album of the Week at KAXE.
Must listens
- "Mam Pe'ela Su'ure"
- "Vocalize My Luv"
- "A.O.E.I.U."
- "O Yinne Te San Tue!"
- "Uh-Ah Song"
- "Fo Yelle"
