E.T. Mensah
Emmanuel Tettey Mensah was a Ghanaian trumpeter and bandleader crowned the "King of Highlife" for popularizing dance-band highlife across West Africa through the 1950s with his group The Tempos. His brassy, big-band arrangements — capped by 1957's independence anthem "Ghana Freedom" and a celebrated 1957 collaboration with Louis Armstrong — set the template that a generation of West African bandleaders, Fela Kuti included, started from.
the sound in question
1957
Ghana FreedomE.T. Mensah
we haven’t charted E.T. Mensah yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.