Highlife is a music genre that originated in Ghana at the turn of the 20th century and incorporated the traditional harmonic 9th, as well as melodic and the main rhythmic structures in traditional Akan music, and married them with Western instruments. Highlife was associated with the local African aristocracy during the colonial period. By 1930s, Highlife spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia and Nigeria via Ghanaian workers, amongst other West African countries, where the music is now very popular.
Highlife is characterised by jazzy horns and multiple guitars which lead the band. Recently it has acquired an uptempo, synth-driven sound (see Daddy Lumba). Igbo highlife and Joromi are subgenres.
This arpeggiated highlife guitar part is modeled after an Afro-Cuban guajeo. The pattern of attack-points is nearly identical to the 3-2 clave motif guajeo as shown below. The bell pattern known in Cuba as clave is indigenous to Ghana and Nigeria, and is used in highlife.
Artists who perform the Highlife genre include:
Highlife is an album by American jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock. It was recorded at Jersey City's Quantum Sound Studio in October 1990 and released that year by Enemy Records.
In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave Highlife an "A" and called it a "gorgeously straightforward guitar record" from someone whose musical principles reflect "a genius son" of Jimmy Smith and Jimi Hendrix. He said Sharrock expresses his themes in a dignified manner, with variation in timbre more so than in harmony, while committing to both cacophony and melody in his exploration of jazz and rock traditions. Christgau named it the sixth best album of the year in his list for the Pazz & Jop critics poll. In The Philadelphia Inquirer, jazz critic Francis Davis hailed Highlife as "instrumental-pop at its most energetic and uncontrived". She felt the "vivacious" record was more "pop" than "jazz" but nonetheless a "persuasive argument for the advantages of maturity" in which Sharrock embraced "simplicity and directness, qualities you'd never have expected from his twenty-five years ago".
Highlife is a cellular automaton similar to Conway's Game of Life. It was devised in 1994 by Nathan Thompson. It is a two-dimensional, two-state cellular automaton in the "Life family" and is described by the rule B36/S23; that is, a cell is born if it has 3 or 6 neighbors and survives if it has 2 or 3 neighbors. Because the rules of HighLife and Conway's Life (rule B3/S23) are similar, many simple patterns in Conway's Life function identically in HighLife. More complicated engineered patterns for one rule, though, typically do not work in the other rule.
The main reason for interest in HighLife comes from the existence of a pattern called the replicator. After running the replicator for twelve generations, the result is two replicators. The replicators will repeatedly reproduce themselves, all on a diagonal line. Whenever two replicators try to expand into each other, the pattern in the middle simply vanishes. The behavior of a row of Replicators interacting with each other in this way simulates the one-dimensional Rule 90 cellular automaton, where a single replicator simulates a nonzero cell of the Rule 90 automaton and a blank space where a replicator could be simulates a zero cell of Rule 90. Replicators can be used to engineer other more complex patterns, such as glider guns and high period oscillators.
I rolled you up like my Rizla
Cut you up, with my sisters
You wanna get us - yeah, the venom spitters
Your style's trash: don't litter
You got the jitters the hardhitters
No quitters your soul quivers
When you see the gats blazin, get out the street now
There ain't no use for you beggin to turn the heat down
You label me coldblooded
You wanna warm me up with hot lead the gat thudded
You can't cut it
You wack, but it's - no use your mouth shut it
Shootin arrows diamond-studded, and still budded
You got to love it, you better chase the paper all day
So you can walk down the long platinum hallway
But now the fools are minutemade;
they get played for a minute
then played out they never get back in it
Gun park I bring chalk for your body outlined on the floor
You got hit by the 4-4!
You're in the game called life, son - how you're livin it
Street corner kids growin up blowin up
You chase dreams you want the highlife, with the skylights
But in the end your soul's lost, you lost the shine right
Never turn your back ever, on niggaz true to you
Stand alone for the cheddar - and they'll be through with you
The highlife; yeah, the highlife
The highlife; yeah, the highlife
You gotta hang out with B. Reezy, and take it easy
It's gettin greasy, I had to learn how to beat me
That's when you go for dolo, and get your meal ticket
And still kick it hardcore I'm runnin real with it
Niggaz getting softcore, the people want more
hardcore shit that's why I give them an encore
Curtains opened, you see the people applaud feelin it
You can't figure out the formula so you're stealin it
Can't stand unoriginal cats with minimal
skills that's criminal - you fake bitches!
You're lookin for riches, in the wrong places
The faces of death look you in the eye cut off your breath
When you fall feel your knees shatter
The bones breakin with your weak blatter
Pissin on yourself it don't matter
Dead weight, the bed waits for you on the set date
Dreams gone instead fate didn't hesitate
to put you away, close the gates now you're locked out
Your life: cable, with all the porn channels blocked out (damn!)
What you good for? Nothin, so be gone suckers
Have a nice trip see you motherfuckers!
I live for the highlife, get my mind right
Fuck the fame, the game and the limelights
Fools that be out there tryin to duplicate
But they can't match the aura, can't impersonate
See the first things that comes to pass, is the blast
of the Cypress Hill weed funk blazin up a path
You can't help, but inhale and get strong
You need that good shit all up in your lungs
I live fast, and keep energy in motion
Jah bless, so I feel I been chosen
But I know, (?) of he who conquers
You gotta come strong and sound off like thunder
I check myself and make sure I'm comin real tight
Rhyme for my fam, the G's and the highlife
The highlife - hah, hah