A chatterbox weave of cycling guitar riffs and racing drums and percussion tumbles forth. A high lead vocal slices the air with soul-charged precision answered by a looser, more low-key chorus. Right away, you want to dance. This is what highlife is supposed to sound like! The band is F. Kenya's Guitar Band (The Riches Big Sound), and the recording comes from Bokoor Studio, just outside Accra, Ghana. Bokoor is the creation of Englishman-turned-Ghanaian John Collins, and as this treasure of a CD comes out in 2002, Collins is celebrating 50 years in Ghana. That's serious. Collins started Bokoor in 1982 at a time when a military curfew had curtailed the activities of his own and other highlife bands. Many a band made the only decent recordings of their career at Bokoor, and the studio became a required stopover for anyone exploring music in Ghana, including Afropop Worldwide.

The sheer energy of acts like George Adu, who split off from the City Boys, and the Happy Boys is pretty much irresistible. F. Kenya rightly rates three tracks here, two of which are flat out highlife joy, while the third, "Madame Zehae Aha" (Just as I am), offers a cooler 12/8 groove, still with sensational vocals. The Bokoor Band, which Collins formed in 1971, weighs in with "Yaka Duru," described as Liberian folklore, although the lilting bass and percussion suggest a hint of rumba. The Happy Boys' "Sosu Sei Me" (Limit the Way You Spoil Me) pumps hard enough and with enough electric guitar jangle that it sounds a little like full-out Zimbabwean jit pop. The Beach Scorpions, despite their alarming name, offer a sweeter, tamer sound, singing in English on a long track called "Friends Toady, Enemies Tomorrow." This band split off from one the pillars of classic highlife, Nana Ampadu's African Brothers Band.

In the 1990s, Ghana's great highlife became more and more scarce, edged out mostly by the rise of Christian gospel music, reggae, and DJ's animating clubs with hip-hop and other foreign sounds. That makes this release more than a charming remnant of the past. Electric Highlife is a powerful record of a key chapter in the development of modern African pop.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org