Meet Ghanaian Highlife Music Legend, the great E. T Mensah

Emmanuel Tettey Mensah, a.k.a E. T. Mensah (31 May 1919 – 19 July 1996) Born in Ussher Town, Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana). He had his early education at the Government School, Accra, where at the age of 12 he learned to play flute and piccolo in the school band.

In 1930s, Joe Lamptey (headmaster of a James Town elementary school) formed the Accra Orchestra which E.T. Mensah joined initially as a piccolo and flute player, he soon progressed to saxophone and also learned to play organ and trumpet.

E.T Mensah continued to play with this orchestra and also learned to play the alto-saxophone, and taught himself how to play the clarinet. At the age of 18, he and his elder brother Yebuah formed the Accra Rhythm Orchestra, the group which had five saxophones, a guitar, and some African drums won the Lambeth Walk Dance Competition in 1939 at the King George Memorial Hall (today's Parliament House of Ghana).

E.T Mensah attended Accra High School. In 1943, he graduated as a pharmacist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, and was then stationed in the Ashanti region of Ghana. In 1947, he joined the original Tempos band with Joe Kelly and Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba) after returning to Accra. The original "Tempos" band was formed in 1946, as a "jam session" group, by some European soldiers stationed in Accra; it played for army dances and at the Accra club.

African musicians gradually replaced the Europeans, until it finally became an all-African band. The original "Tempos" band split up, and was re-formed by E.T Mensah with money he gained from a pharmacy shop he had opened. E.T. Mensah introduced his dance band highlife to Nigerians when his Tempos Band visited in 1949.

E.T Mensah and his Tempos band successfully toured Great Britain in 1953. The group gained international attention and as a master of all the instruments of a jazz band, E.T. Mensah became very popular to extent that in 1954, he even set up a second band called the Star Rockets which played shows at home while he was away.

E.T Mensah and the Tempos further spread their music to other West African countries; they visited Ivory Coast in 1955, and toured Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 1958 and 59. Liberian President William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was so much impressed that he called the band back for his second inaugural ceremony.

In 1960s, the highlife genre started to decline, but E. T. Mensah did very well by propagating the Highlife for many years. In 1975, at the National Arts Festival, the Arts Council of Ghana honored E.T. Mensah with a stool in recognition of the title conferred to him as the "King of Highlife".

In 1980, E.T Mensah was elected the first president of the Musicians Union of Ghana(MUSIGA). In 1986 despite being confined to a wheelchair, he embarked on a world tour and that same year, a show was organised in his honour in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 1989 he was formally honoured by the Ghanaian government with the title "Okunini" (Very famous man) for his contribution to the country's culture. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate.

Contributions of E.T Mensah (founding member of African Popular music - Afropop) to Ghanaian and African heritage will never be forgotten.

He gave us hitz such as Ghana Freedom, Kwame Nkrumah, Day By Day, Mee Bei Obaaba.