Bessa Simons Believes Highlife Should Rival Reggae Globally

Bessa Simons Believes Highlife Should Rival Reggae Globally

Every nation needs a musical signature: a sound that outsiders immediately associate with a place and that insiders hear as an expression of collective memory. For Jamaica, Reggae—through the charisma of Bob Marley, the spiritual force of Rastafari, and decades of cultural export—became that signature: a driver of tourism, an instrument of political voice, and a lever of soft power. Ghana already possesses an indigenous genre with comparable his…