Nathan

=Ghanaian Music:= Ghana has many varied styles of traditional and modern music, due to its vibrant ethnic groups and geographic position in West Africa, enjoying cosmopolitan cultures. The most well known genre to have originated in Ghana is Highlife, which among youth had in the late 1990s had incorporated Hip-Hop influences to establish a newer hybrid genre, known as Hiplife. Traditional music in Ghana is based on two factors: ethnic groups and geography. The country is home to numerous ethnic groups, whose musical styles can be put into two main categories: **Southern** Inhabited by ethnic groups speaking broad Kwa and Gbe language groups. The cultures of these fertile forested regions were isolated from Sudanic influence that dominated the North. The music of southern groups are highly associated with social or spiritual function, and rely on complex polyrhythmical patterns played by drums and bells, as well as a stronger emphasis laid in harmonized song. An exception to this rule is the Akan tradition of praise-singing with the //Seperewa// harp-lute, a genre which has its origins in historic influence from the griot traditions of the Mali and Mossi empires to the north-west. **Northern** The music styles of this region, which lies in the sparsely vegetated Sudan and Sahel grassland belts, are generally grouped into a larger Sahelian West African musical umbrella category, due to ethnic migrations and cultures historically crossing borders from the rest of the region into the country during the Songhai Empire and Mossi empires abroad, and the indigenous Dagomba, and Mamprussi states. Peoples of this region base musical composition on stringed, wind, melodic or light percussion instruments, as compared with that of Southern category, which relies mostly on complex polyrhythmic composition of a variety of drums and bells. As with other Gur and Mande groups in West Africa, a long history of griot praise-singing traditions exists among the various groups in Northern Ghana. Music in the northern styles are mostly set to a minor pentatonic scale. Hiplife music is an innovative Ghanaian fusion of highlife and hip hop. It can also be compared to a mix of dancehall, reggae and Ghanaian highlife music. Recorded in Ghanaian languages ( Twi, Ewe etc...), hiplife is rapidly gaining popularity throughout West Africa and abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Germany. The history of Ghanaian hip hop goes back to the 1980s, when performers like K.K. Kabobo and Gyedu Blay Ambolley found a small audience performing highlife variations with fast spoken, poetic lyrics. With time, Ghanaians became influenced by American hip hop, reggae, dancehall and highlife pioneers like Samini, Ofori Amponsah, Reggie Rockstone, etc. Hiplife's history dates back to the early 1990s when Reginald "Reggie Rockstone" Ossei began to craft this art form with producers Mike Cooke, Rab Bakari, Zapp Mallet and Coalhouse. In Twi, Reggie would flow over rap-like beats. Reggie Rockstone has been described as the "Godfather of Hiplife". Other Ghanaian rappers like Lord Kenya, Obour, V.I.P, Obrafuor, The Native Funk Lords, Castro Destroyer and MzBel continued the trend of hiplife music which is now one of the most popular forms of music in West Africa. The most popular Hiplife musicians include Tic Tac,Sarkodie, the three person Vision in Progress (VIP), obrafour,Edem, Castro and Batman Samini, who won a MOBO award for his contribution to hiplife in 2006. Since the rise of these popular musicians, hiplife has grown in popularity abroad. It must be noted that hiplife can cover a broad range of musical styled fused together. Artist such as Samini combines the reggae/dancehall/ragga scat and patois-tinged sounds of Jamaica with Akan-language lyrics over reggae rhythms fused with Ghanaian melodies. His music is branded by the general populace as hiplife. Then there are artists such as K.K. Fosu who do not rap or 'DJ' per se; but sing with a heavy R&B influence. Verses; bridges and choruses may be in Twi, but the structure and the rhythm fusion is suspiciously based on American R&B. The majority of hiplife is recorded in a studio environment with heavy emphasis on computer-aided composition, arrangements and production. At this moment, hiplife artist are not known to use live instruments in their performances in front of audiences. Most performances are based on voicing over instrumentals and dubs on Compact Disc.
 * Hiplife**