Highlife On the Potomac With the Maestro Kojo

A world music concert in Washington, D.C., led by Kojo Antwi, who performs as Maestro Kojo, with a focus on highlife, the popular style that took shape in Ghana.

Kojo Antwi, performing as Maestro Kojo, is a musician working in highlife, a dance-oriented style that developed in Ghana in the early twentieth century. It combines West African rhythms and melodic phrasing with jazz and Western dance-band traditions, and it remains central to Ghanaian popular music.

The evening, titled Highlife On the Potomac With the Maestro Kojo, brings this repertoire to Washington, D.C. as a world music program. The Howard Theatre, which hosts concerts and shows in the city, is the stage, so the night suits listeners drawn to African popular music and to highlife's rhythmic character.

World music is the category that groups traditions from outside the Western pop mainstream, and highlife fits within it as one of West Africa's major popular styles. Those new to the genre will hear a direct introduction to its grooves and horn-and-guitar-driven textures.