Beautiful highlife music
The Delite Rancher | Phoenix, Arizona | 05/27/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This album plays beautiful highlife music. Eric Agyeman's Zairean tinged guitar really shines on "Highlife Safari." Recorded in the 1970's, it captures the time when the genre was drifting away from the heavy use of brass and moving towards using all electric musical instruments. Thus the horns are mostly used for accents and punctuation. While the African keyboards squeal every once in awhile, it is the polyrhythms that make everything sway to that wonderful tropical groove. There is enough spacing within the songs to allow the musicians to 'stretch out.' This is great party music as it is very danceable. The song writing is good and the production is excellent. Overall, "Highlife Safari" is a compliment to any Ghanian musical collection.
1. Matutu Mirika 2. Abenaa Na Aden? 3. Ao! Masem Yi 4. I Don't Care 5. Nea Abe Beto 6. Odo Bra"
A classic of the genre
m_noland | Washington, DC United States | 03/15/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Eric Agyeman was a highly popular guitarist from the Ashanti region. Mostly recorded in 1979 with the core of the Sweet Talks band. This is guitar-driven highlife with some horns and cheesy synths, representative of the style that was popular in the late 1970s/early 1980s -- a harder, more aggressive sound than the "palmwine" and horn-driven dance band styles that preceded it, and less Westernized than the "Burger highlife" sound that became popular later when many of the musicians ended up in Europe. A variety of singers including the inimitable A.B. Crentsil handle vocal duties."