Highlife is a kind of music long before hip-hop. 1950's I think at a guess. There are some "Latin"type elements in it: as I mentioned before, it is an early kind of "Mid-Atlantic" fusion, where black music went to Brazil via slavery, helped the development of Brazilisn dance music, and then returned via radio and records and influenced the development of west african dance music. The saxes and brass are handled in quite a Latin way, and the guiras and percussion have elements of African and Brazilian in them, mixed. Very exciting stuff. ET Mensah is the famous guy(or at least the one whose reputation travelled to England most successfully): but I'm hoping Quarcoo will turn up and enlighten us about who is the state of the art Ghanaian performer now.