| Abstract: | Abstract The paper draws on ethnographic and historical research on the formation of Highlife in a ‘trilocal’ setting: Ghana, Nigeria and England in the 1950s and 1960s, the time when Highlife evolved as one of the most popular forms of modern music of (anglophone) West Africa in the twentieth century. It tackles the issue of how the formation of Highlife-music and culture was (transnationally) related to the formation of an African Diaspora in the colonial centre London in the post-World War II decades, how West African cultural formation in the diaspora affected Highlife as a popular and transnational culture, particularly evident in the so far neglected ‘diasporic memory/ies’ on Highlife. The approach seeks to emphasise the critical role of travelling music/ians from West Africa and the Caribbean to London and back in the formation of both, African diasporic and transnational identities as well as African popular music, in that important phase of its history. In the final part of this paper I am reflecting upon methodological issues related to my study on Highlife, focussing mainly on the relationship of living memory, archive and qualitative research. |
