How to Use highlife in a Sentence

highlife

noun
  • Pat Thomas brought distinct approaches, having honed their craft in big dance highlife bands.
    — Christian Adofo, Billboard, 23 Mar. 2022
  • The study discussed the protest contributions by reggae, highlife and other Afrobeat stars during the same period.
    — Garhe Osiebe, Quartz Africa, 21 Feb. 2021
  • From early on, jazz was a chief influence on him, alongside highlife and Nigerian spiritual music.
    — Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, 28 June 2017
  • Nigerian highlife duo the Cavemen, also featured on V, tweeted that their union with Aṣa was a dream realized.
    — Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 28 Feb. 2022
  • Now, Los Bitchos are interested in mixing some Seventies highlife rhythms into their music.
    — Jon Dolan, Rolling Stone, 7 Feb. 2022
  • Thirty years ago a frustrated drummer, burned out on playing Ghanaian highlife covers in a Toronto trio, decided to write and record his own music.
    — Noah Schaffer, BostonGlobe.com, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Afrobeats developed in the early 2000s, its sound the result of a fusion of elements taken from hip hop, R&B, highlife, dancehall, and more.
    — Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 24 Jan. 2020
  • In the end, his experimentation with Afrobeat, highlife, and rock, coupled with his larger-than-life personality, attracted more attention than his rock peers.
    — Ama Udofa, Rolling Stone, 19 June 2022
  • From there Bejuco construct a sound that draws significant inspiration from Fela Kuti and Afrobeat, while nodding to cumbia, dub, hip-hop, highlife, and more.
    — Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone, 7 May 2021
  • Afrobeat is a genre with the familiar universal appeal of jazz, soul and Ghanaian highlife, alongside the polyrhythmic drumming foundations of the Yoruba, Ewe, and Ga tribes.
    — Christian Adofo, Billboard, 23 Mar. 2022
  • Hundreds of parishioners, overwhelmingly Nigerian, many in African ceremonial clothes, swayed to gospel songs made faster and funkier by Nigerian highlife beats.
    — Adam Shatz, New York Times, 21 Jan. 2016
  • My latest collection explored postindependence Nigerian Afro-funk, disco, and highlife subcultures through the unique perspective of my late grandmother Florence.
    — Brooke Bobb, Vogue, 3 Apr. 2018
  • One common thread of my heritage was listening to my father's cassettes of highlife, a musical genre that combines ancient Ashanti rhythms with the rhythms of Ghana's other tribes, along with Western influences and instrumentation.
    — Nadia Owusu, Travel + Leisure, 9 Aug. 2021
  • Butterss’ double-bass throbs ground the music in chamber-jazz austerity; later, Bellerose shifts into slack, funky drummer mode, as Parker’s guitar takes on a muted highlife gait, then morphs into concentric ripples of distortion that psychedelicize your mind.
    — Dave Segal, SPIN, 15 May 2026
  • Rema isn’t the only star soundtracking raves this season, as Amaarae honors dance music from the Black diaspora by borrowing from her native Ghanaian highlife, Brazilian baile funk, Jersey club and more for her third studio album Black Star.
    — Heran Mamo, Billboard, 29 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'highlife.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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