Burger Highlife concert @ Goethe-Institut

Zapp Mallet and the Systhm Band will on Friday, May 18 celebrate Burger Highlife with a workshop/concert at the Goethe-Institut in Accra.

Together with other celebrated musicians, the band will showcase a variety of improvisations with prominence on Burger Highlife.

They are expected to play a number of Burger Highlife tunes laced with their own variations while exploring the use of Burger Highlife rhythms by traditional, contemporary, reggae, gospel, hiplife and other artistes.

As part of the programme, a lecture/demonstration on Burger Highlife would be moderated by Kwasi Quayson, Okyeame Kwame and Zapp Mallet, with several musicians sharing their experiences from the use of Burger Highlife rhythms.

The Goethe-Institut in Accra has regularly organized the celebration of Burger Highlife, which took Ghana and other countries by storm in the 1980s with its dramatic blending of rhythms from Ghana and elsewhere.

Several Ghanaian musicians moved to Europe in the early 1980s to escape the harsh economic conditions. A number of them, including leading Burger Highlife exponents such as George Darko, Lee Duodu, Rex Gyamfi, Mc God, Daddy Lumba, Nana Acheampong and Charles Amoah settled in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Hamburg, all in Germany.

Their collaborations with German musicians led to the creation of a crossover music style from highlife disco and funk musi,c that was dubbed Burger Highlife. It made a huge impact on our Ghanaian musicians and the public at large in the mid 1980s and continues to inspire up and coming musicians.

Mallet, who is also a recording engineer, is in the process of creating a new synthesis through the fusion of different genres of music such as rock, jazz, pop and classical with traditional Ghanaian rhythms.

The concert/workshop, which forms part of ‘Cultural Days in May’ 2012, is being supported by the Goethe-Institut in Accra.