Burger-Highlife is a distinctive form of

highlife Highlife is a music genre that started in present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its history as a colony of the British Empire and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions of African metre and wester ...

music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...

created by Ghanaian immigrants to Germany. It is considered a Ghanaian

musical style Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the na ...

. In the 1980s,

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the ...

music was gaining popularity worldwide and was carrying with it a growing popularity for other forms of world music that were easy to dance to. Highlife music, often fused with reggae, gained a wider audience in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

and North America at this time. During the late 1970s-early 1980s, there was a massive exodus of Ghanaians such as Seidu Mohammed to foreign lands. One of the countries that attracted Ghanaians was

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

, with many making the cities of

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

and

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

their second home. Burger-Highlife was born when Ghanaian musicians in Germany started collaborating with German musicians and producers. They created a crossover music style from highlife, disco and funk music. This creation of a cross-cultural fertilization between two nations and two different cultures bears all the significant hallmarks of co-operation. People from different cultural backgrounds came together, exchanged thoughts, ideas and hopes and by doing so, they created something new and exciting that had an instant appeal and a lasting impact on Ghana and Ghanaian and other communities worldwide. A whole subculture with its own fashion and way of life appeared. Some of the pioneers of Burger Highlife are George Darko, Lee Dodou, Lumba Brothers, Rex Gyamfi and Charles Amoah. This distinctive form of music, dubbed "Burger-Highlife", has had a lasting influence of highlife music worldwide.

External links

Burger-Highlife webproject of the Goethe-Institut in Accra/Ghana
{{Genres of African popular music German styles of music Ghanaian music Highlife genres