Before E.K. Nyame, Ghana’s concert party actors mostly sang in English. Nyame changed that. His Akan Trio, founded in 1952, brought guitar band highlife fully into the concert party and performed in Twi, the language of most of its audience. It was a small revolution in Ghanaian popular culture.
Kwahu
Emmanuel Kofi Nyame was born in 1927 in the Kwahu area of the Eastern Region. He became a guitarist and composer and joined the band of Appiah Agyekum in 1947 before forming his own group.
Guitar band highlife
Highlife in the Gold Coast had two main streams: the big dance bands, like E.T. Mensah’s Tempos, which played in clubs for elites, and guitar bands, which played for ordinary people in towns and villages. Nyame was one of the leaders of the guitar band tradition.
The Akan Trio
In 1952 Nyame founded the Akan Trio, a concert party group. Concert parties were travelling theatre shows that mixed comedy, music and moral stories. Nyame’s group fully integrated guitar band highlife into the drama and performed in the vernacular, with songs he composed himself in Akan.
Nkrumah
The same year, Nyame’s band was chosen to accompany Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah on a trip to Liberia. He became a strong supporter of Nkrumah and the independence movement, and his band released dozens of highlife songs in support of the Convention People’s Party.
400 records
Nyame was extremely prolific. His band recorded about 400 78rpm discs for labels including West African Decca and HMV. His songs dealt with love, money, morality and everyday life, and they were played on radios and gramophones across the country.
A godfather of highlife
Music writers rank Nyame alongside E.T. Mensah as one of the founding figures of modern Ghanaian highlife. Where Mensah polished the dance band sound, Nyame rooted highlife in the language and lives of ordinary Ghanaians.
His death
E.K. Nyame died on 19 January 1977, aged 49. Generations of guitar band musicians, from Nana Ampadu to later highlife stars, followed the path he opened.
How concert parties worked
Concert party troupes travelled by lorry from town to town, performing in school halls, cinemas and open compounds. A typical show began with highlife music to draw a crowd, followed by a play built around comic characters, a moral lesson and plenty of songs. The “Bob” character, a comic trickster, was a favourite. Audiences paid small entry fees and expected to laugh, dance and be moved. Nyame’s troupe stood out because its music was so strong: people came for the songs as much as the drama. Records of the songs then sold to people who had seen the show, linking live theatre to the growing record business of the 1950s.
The concert party stage was where many Ghanaians first saw themselves in popular art. E.K. Nyame made sure they heard themselves too, in their own language.
