HIGHLIFE HISTORIES: MODERN AFRICAN URBAN EXPERIENCE      3 Credit Hours

Catalog description

The term "highlife" is most often associated with a musical style originating in Ghana and Sierra Leone during the 1920s and popular to the present day. The music mixed the sounds of American, European and Caribbean influences within African musical traditions. Just like the music, African urban life has been a mixture of western notions of town planning, architecture and politics with African cultural and interpersonal traditions. The history of the African city offers a useful lens into the complicated and creative mixture of African and global sources. This course focuses on this mixing throughout the 20th century, concentrating on cities such as Harare, Zimbabwe; Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Nairobi, Kenya.