Santrofi’s Deep Into Highlife honours tradition and innovation

19 Oct 2023 - 14:24

Published under the Creative Commons Licence

Highlife apostles Santrofi are at it again, bleeding the spirited traditional Ghanaian genre that perpetually obsesses them.

Santrofi.

Having settled into a diligent tour regiment that has made them an international rage, they return with Deep Into Highlife live LP, a seven-track digest of their diplomatic expeditions since 2021, recorded at Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Germany, and backed by Berlin-based 14-piece brass band Omniversal Earkestra.

The soul of our music is highlife and this is Santrofi’s overarching point, and the project unfolds both as a cumulative assessment and a fist pump on West Africa’s musical identity. As a result, native traditions, specifically from the '60s and '70s, form the bedrock of the CD, garnished by catchy storylines, charged horn sections and funky vibrations. Still, its sonic outlook is broader, carrying over into newer pulses.

For instance, the party-themed closing track ‘Sei Mu’ featuring Ghanaian drill poster child Yaw TOG is a strong hypothesis on the interconnectivity of both genres. The hip hop subgenre, it appears, is drenched in folk elements anyway – and on stage, it’s in its own interest to be supported by a folk band.

There are Afrobeats references by way of ad libs on a fresh rendition of opener ‘Alewa’, the breakthrough single and title track of their 2020 debut album. The one problem with the track, which promotes our shared humanity, when we examine its tone more closely, lies in how it inadvertently falls into the trap of reinforcing a confidence deficit. Its lyrics implore the Western audience it’s aimed at to embrace the black race. Such pleas, which have shaded highlife songs on racial equality, should be unnecessary in this age, as harmony should be a given, and this one-sided dynamic is problematic in how it perpetuates stereotypes and stresses historical power imbalances. A more constructive approach should promote unity without seeking validation from another race.

In between, however, there’s effusive nostalgia and feverish innovation. The project’s thematic underpinnings are love, betrayal, caution, decency and pan-Africanism. ‘Kwaa Kwaa’, which we’ve already heard on Alewa, celebrates fertility, while other familiar tunes like ‘Cocoase’ and ‘Africa’ dwell on love, time, distance and solidarity. The ‘Kwabena Amoah’ medley revisits inherited stories highlighting life’s ebbs and flows, and character.

The import of ‘Suru Nipa’, an original composition by guitar band legend AK Yeboah, whose voice is heavy with history, is that the real threat to a living man is another living man, not a dead one.

If you want to leave a legacy, refresh highlife without somehow compromising it. Santrofi is thriving in this commission, their creative fortunes carry over into the potential future of the sound – a canonisation of the genre’s founding fathers and Santrofi’s own accession to the throne.