Studio Improv as Compositional Process Through Case Studies of Ghanaian Hiplife and Afrobeats

Abstract

This study is an examination of the music and working practices of three Ghanaian music producers, Appietus and DJ Breezy—as in much non-Western music, the definitions of composition and improvisation continuously disrupt each other. The studio highlights this blending of processes where the hardware and software can form both the instruments and compositional tools. Hip-hop and electronic dance music rely heavily on improvisation through studio techniques that are idiomatic to the genre, including sampling, sequencing and looping new musical ideas or material from an existing recording. Text and rhythm in Hip-hop are well documented but compositional process involving harmonic and melodic analysis, as well as close sonic study of new production techniques are often overlooked. The music of minority composers of new genres is under represented in scholarship. Therefore, this article focuses to a greater extent on musical analysis and studio, improvisation and compositional processes, with supporting observations on broader cultural context. The methodological approach in this article centers on transcriptions and music analysis, as well as research through interviews with the producers in Accra, Ghana. This blending of interview material and musical analysis (through transcription, reduction and ecological acoustics) examines distinct threads of Ghanaian and international music styles, their paths through different formal and informal networks of education and the environmental affects on their process. An analysis of these producers’ processes requires looking at both musical elements as well as the resources of education and environment, changing the way that we read these contexts by foregrounding the music itself. A brief history of Ghanaian music, from pre-independence to contemporary electronic dance music, including contemporary hiplife and afrobeats, is followed by case studies. In the case of Appietus’ music, transcriptions show Ghana’s unique highlife harmony and its idiomatic harmonic tendencies, whilst interview material on his process shows his unique methods of vocalization in combination with production tools that are informed by local formal and informal educational networks and the Internet. DJ Breezy’s vertically sparse, minimalist Hip-hop influenced afrobeats No. 1 hit, ‘Tonga,’ is analysed using ecological acoustics. In order to focus this paper, I argue that firstly, we rethink the relationship between improvisation and composition through the work of these producers, secondly, that we cannot analyze the music of these producers outside of context, we need to change the way in which we read the context, and thirdly, that we stop using a type of ethnography that exacerbates essentialism.