Almost a century ago, a group of musicians from the Gold Coast travelled to London to make records. One of the songs they cut would shape Ghanaian popular music for generations.
The song was “Yaa Amponsah”, recorded in 1928 by Kwame Asare, also known as Jacob Sam, with his group, Sam’s Trio. The recording was made for the Zonophone label, part of the effort by British record companies to sell records to African buyers.
Palm wine music
Before highlife became big-band music, the Gold Coast had palm wine guitar music, played by sailors, workers and musicians in bars and drinking spots along the coast. It used acoustic guitar, with rhythms and melodies drawn from local traditions, sailors’ songs and other influences.
“Yaa Amponsah” is one of the best-known examples. Its guitar pattern, a rolling, two-finger style, became a basic building block for later musicians. Many highlife guitarists learned it as a foundation, the first pattern they mastered before moving on to their own songs.
The song
Yaa Amponsah is a woman’s name, and the song is a love song. Over the decades, many artists recorded their own versions, and the melody and guitar pattern appear, sometimes renamed, in countless highlife songs.
The guitar band tradition
From palm wine music grew the guitar band highlife of E. K. Nyame, Onyina and others, and later the concert party tradition, which combined music with comic theatre. Guitar band highlife remained popular in Ghana’s towns and villages even as dance band highlife, led by E. T. Mensah and others, filled the clubs of Accra.
Recording history
The 1928 recordings are among the earliest commercial recordings of Ghanaian music. Collectors and archivists have preserved and reissued many of them, giving modern listeners a chance to hear what Gold Coast music sounded like before independence.
Why it matters
Highlife is one of the foundations of modern African pop. It influenced Nigerian highlife, Afrobeat and later Afrobeats. Tracing it back leads to guitarists like Jacob Sam and songs like “Yaa Amponsah”.
Listen
Reissues and archive recordings of early Gold Coast guitar music can be found online. Listening to “Yaa Amponsah” alongside modern highlife reveals how much has stayed the same.
A guitar pattern played in London in 1928 can still be heard in a Kumasi bar today, sometimes by a guitarist who has never heard the original.
