From Britain to Bokoor: The Ghanaian Musical Journey of John Collins

Highlife, a popular West African genre, is easily the soundtrack to the life journey of the nation Ghana. And if there is one personality who has contributed the most to documenting it, it is Professor John Collins, a naturalized Ghanaian of British descent and a professor of music at the University of Ghana, Legon. Collins originally accompanied his parents to Ghana in 1952, when his father was setting up the philosophy department at the University of Ghana. Returning to Britain with his mother, Collins was educated in Bristol, Manchester and London, earning a science degree. He was also playing music and then he returned to Ghana in 1969 to study archaeology and sociology at the University of Ghana.

Eventually he himself became an academic teaching and researching popular music. This book captures the life and music career of Collins. What makes him an enigma is his personal involvement on the road as a guitar playing member of concert party bands. His working relations with Fela, E.T. Mensah, Kofi Ghanaba, Victor Uwaifo, Prof. J. H. Kwabena Nketia and many legendary names in the music space of West Africa make him a legend in his own right. This is the story of a “white man” man who came to Africa to legitimize the place of highlife as consequential to world music