Female Highlife Performers in Ghana: Expression, Resistance, and Advocacy.

• Author: Mcleod, Nicholas C.

AFRICA

Amoah-Ramey, Nana Abena. Female Highlife Performers in Ghana: Expression, Resistance, and Advocacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.

If one were to glance at the music industry in Ghana today, with several top selling female artists, all-female bands, and women serving multiple tenures as president of the Musicians Union of Ghana, it would be hard to imagine that women were not allowed to perform on musical stages before the 1950s. Assessing the foundations of Highlife music and culture, Nana Abena Amoah-Ramey's Female Highlife Performers in Ghana: Expression, Resistance, and Advocacy examines the critical contributions, ideological transformations, and industry struggles of women to the Highlife musical tradition. Amoah-Ramey addresses the total neglect of the contributions of female Highlife musicians by arguing that Ghanaian women revolutionized music through their use of Highlife as a medium of resistance, advocacy, and empowerment. Making use of available archival sources, interviews with various individuals and groups, and cultural evidence from audio and video media, Female Highlife Performers in Ghana documents the challenges and subjectivities of female trailblazers in Highlife music.

In its opening chapter, the...