Sometimes ‘world jazz’ or ‘world fusion’ comes across as primarily a musical endeavour. Yes the results have been seminal and spectacular. No-one would question the significance of the ethno-jazz explorations of Weather Report, Coltrane, Gillespie, Getz and so many more but sometimes the connection between heritage, culture and music-making comes from a more personalised perspective.
Ghanaian trumpeter and composer Peter Somuah’s jazz has always worked from such a starting point. Now Rotterdam based but born in Accra, he picked up the trumpet as a fourteen year-old at High School and played that capital’s scene in a swathe of highlife and reggae bands. Gradually becoming drawn to US trumpet masters like Miles, Freddy Hubbard and Roy Hargrove, his own music began to take shape. His debut ‘Outer Space’ in 2022 merged jazz, funk, and electronics with West African grooves. Then last year’s ‘Letter To The Universe’ saw him mould his own fusion style more confidently, weaving highlife, post-bop and urban beats into a steamy pan-global brew. The release rightly began to turn heads his way.
It’s in that direction which his new release ‘Highlife’, out now via ACT, makes strides, binding the strands of his musical heritage and individual odyssey into a pulsating and resonant sonic narrative. Keeping his core sextet from the previous two albums only adds to the intuitive drive and energy underpinning this third Somuah offering. These players (Jesse Schilderink on sax, keyboardist Anton de Bruin, Jens Meijer drumming, Danny Rombout on congas and bassist Marijn van de Ven) may be Dutch or now resident in Holland but they clearly have a strong connection with their leader’s foundational sounds. As Somuah maintains “their deep passion for highlife and afrobeat and the feeling they have developed for this music are the most important things”.
The making of ‘Highlife’ also captures a journey taken, the instrumental tracks recorded first in a Berlin studio before Somuah flew with the tapes to Ghana to add contributions from highlife legends Koo-Nimo, Pat Thomas and Gyedu-Blay Ambolley. It’s Koo-Nimo’s venerable voice on The Rhythm which fittingly opens the album. Now 93 years old, the first recorded highlife artist recounts how such Ghanaian music originated. He recalls that African musicians from dance bands assembled to entertain the colonial elite merged the required waltz/samba/bolero style into their own music that would eventually be for their own people. It’s a prologue that sets up the rest of the album poignantly.
From here another highlife luminary Pat Thomas brings his “golden voice” to the sultry sway of We Give Thanks. A tune with a Cuban-jazz glide and those Fela farfisa organ phrases, it sparks the album into life. With the horns’ massaging fills, bubbling conga accents and subtle tingling guitar, this thrilling slice of contemporary highlife clearly says that on this album Somuah is not going to compromise in his vision. No surprise then that the creator of ‘hiplife’ (rap within highlife) in the seventies, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley also makes an appearance, bringing this weathered purr to the joyous soca strut of Chop Chop. Somuah’s trumpet and Jesse Schilderink’s tenor banter beautifully around the melody as Ambolley, taking a lyrical swipe at political greed, underlines that highlife was never establishment music.
The presence of such strong afrobeat identifiers could have upset the coherence of any album which also pursues more formal jazz-based directions. That clearly isn’t a problem here though as ‘Highlife’ flows so naturally, Somuah careful that the West African themes and modal moods merge together with real purpose. The skittering rhythmic workout of Drumbeat inventively blends a Tony Allen shuffle with Somuah’s Miles-ish minimal trumpet to arrive at something excitingly fresh. Similarly the attitude-filled afro-funk of Conqueror drives the deconstructed solo lines home to a swinging melodic resolution while on Re-imagined a smoochy slow bossa gets pepped with spikey, almost harmolodic, brass jabs and emerges still chic.
Overall Somuah and his sizzling band are committed to bringing Accra bustling proudly out of the speakers. The loping, easy-going momentum of Bruce Road, where breathy horns lay back as Somuah’s trumpet solo sings, and the stomping afro-dance of closing track Jamestown, do just that. This doesn’t mean ‘Highlife’ sees Somuah simply reminiscing about his past, the city and its music. The album represents forward thinking, taking those rhythms and melodies to new places. It’s significant that he’s augmented his quintet with young, like-minded Ghanaian musicians who are on a similar nu jazz pathway, Thomas Botchway on talking drum plus shekere and guitarist Bright Osei Baffour. The exuberant, soulful African Continent also introduces afro-pop singer-songwriter Lamisi Akuka, whose lyrical vocal brings an emotional zip to this song of unity.
In some ways Peter Somuah’s ‘Highlife’ is similar to South African trombonist Michael Jiyane’s recent ‘True Story’ album in that it has the song as a central pillar. Just because he is a ‘jazz’ musician doesn’t mean that the strong vocal tradition rooted in African music, should be abandoned. Fittingly Somuah adds his own voice to the gently persuasive Mental Slavery. Here the woozy synths hint of nineties Burger Highlife as he reflects on the Ghanaian experience through his own eyes and the long shadow that colonialism still casts. The track’s an unpretentious blend of the profound and punchy like so much of this fine album. Groove-filled, gracious and going places, Somuah’s Highlife jazz needs to be heard.
Get your copy of ‘Highlife‘ by Peter Somuah from your local record store or direct from ACT Music HERE
