A deep dive on one of the great voices and songwriters of Burger Highlife, the electronic crossover of West African rhythms and melodies with synthesizers, disco and boogie.

While Awesome Tapes from Africa leads the way with their essential archival work spreading the joy of African music to the masses, there still remains countless artists and voices largely unknown to the Western world. Today, we’re highlighting another one of those artists: Ghanaian highlife sensation Nana Tuffour, also known as 9-9-2-4, who recorded over a dozen albums over his short 44 years on this earth.

Born in Kumasi, the culturally and musically rich capital of the Ashanti region in Ghana, Nana Tuffour (born James Kwaku Tuffour) cut his teeth playing keyboards in bands fronted by numerous highlife legends including Alex “One Man Thousand” Konadu, Kofi Ani Johnson’s The Parrots Band, Kyeremanteng Atwede, and Dr. K Gyasi’s Noble Kings Band. Tuffour’s natural talent developed rapidly in these formative years and by the late ’70s, his sweet voice and unique style of vocalizing would lead him to the spotlight as he became front man of the Waza Africo Band, and release his first solo album in 1979.

Tuffour’s keen observations of African culture also made him a natural songwriter. His lyrics often explored themes of family, love, loss, spirituality, and remembrance. Listen to one of his most well-known songs “Aketekyiwa,” which tells the emotional and poignant story of a man rejected by his family due to his financial status. Quite slow-tempo for a highlife song, the groove allows Tuffour to stretch out and pour a full well of emotions into his vocal performance.

“Music has been part and parcel of me from my infancy. Physically and spiritually I love music and love to listen to all genres.”

Nana Tuffour

Aside from his first album Highlife Romance, Tuffour’s solo releases would largely be recorded outside of Africa. After the political upheaval of the early ’80s, a restrictive dusk to dawn curfew was imposed in Ghana by Jerry Rawlings’ military regime (PNDC) between 1982 and 1984. Tuffour and other prominent highlife musicians including Pat Thomas and George Darko left Ghana for Germany, which became the birthplace of a new sound now known as “Burger highlife.” Tuffour was an innovator within this genre infusing traditional Ghanaian highlife with modern electronics and influences from the West including disco, boogie, hip-hop, and house.

In a Bandcamp article on burger highlife, Ghanaian musician Wilson Boateng reflected on that time, “We knew we couldn’t destroy our roots, our highlife music, but what we were trying to do was to come up with something new, something different,” while Herman Asafo-Agyei, one of Ghana’s most revered bassists, echoed Boateng’s feelings: “It was very eclectic, we were picking up ideas from different artists, but in spite of all the branches that one took, there was always the root which is the African rhythm and the percussive aspect of our music.”

In 2018, UK-based Kalita Records released one of the only reissues of Tuffour’s music, writing: “It is Burger highlife’s transcendence of traditional musical boundaries that helps make it so accessible to listeners, appealing not only to Ghanaians back home but now highly regarded and sought-after by those in the West interested in more occidental disco and electronic sounds. We hope that you enjoy the four songs offered here, each chosen to demonstrate Nana’s singular influence on the development of Burger highlife.”

Below, some more of our favorite tracks from Nana Tuffour: