Ghanaian highlife legend, Bernard George Kobena Brako, known professionally as Ben Brako has described the highlife genre as an international one.
Referring to how he feels when people create genres for what their songs should be identified as, he noted that it all balls down to our culture.
Speaking to Rev. Erskine on Y107.9 FM’s Myd Morning Show he said, “Let’s just say that culture is dynamic so it evolves and changes hence, you’ll get influences from different places coming together so there’s bound to be different twist to it and it can be labeled sometimes”.
He stated that the genre highlife has types such as vulgar, palm-wine, guitar and also big band highlife amongst others.
“Now we have hiplife but hiplife is really highlife with rap over it so some of the genres are just sub genres and when you get really deep into it you find out that calypso, reggae and some other genres work with the highlife rhythm” he emphasized.
He strongly believes that highlife is international and can be dynamic in terms of the rhythm that underpins it.
“So we just need to do it right and it’ll sell itself” he added.
Responding to what is making highlife unattractive for the new wave of artists he mentioned that the only thing he can think of is most young people thinking highlife is for the old only.
“They’re wrong because we have other young highlife artists like Kofi Kinaata, Kwabena Kwabena, Bisa K’dei who are all very young but doing very well. Even Stonebwoy has a lot of his songs resound like highlife. So all songs come from the same mother and that is highlife” he stated.
