Bossaphonik Presents Sounds of Highlife featuring Sacred Funk 4tet

Event information

February’s Bossaphonik event lands on Friday 20th as we welcome the return of musicians who have previously performed here, now in a brand new project entitled “Sounds of Highlife featuring Sacred Funk 4tet.”

The band is a celebration of highlife music – the musical form that became popular in Ghana in the 1920s and was dominant in the music scene throughout West Africa for much of the 20th Century. At the time Ghana was a British colony and highlife was a fusion of multiple varieties of local percussion traditions combined with western, often brass instrumentation and jazz harmony and melody. The music evolved over time and went through changes in style – there was palm wine highlife, Igbo highlife, brass band highlife, dance and guitar band highlife and others. At this Bossaphonik we will be treated to the late period of highlife-jazz and Afro-soul popular in the 1960s.

Highlife music was recognised by the UN as having a 100 year history and to celebrate there have been events across the world in 2025 in recognition, tagged as World Highlife Day. Tonight’s band formed to take part in this and performed a series of gigs around the UK in Autumn 2025. For this Bossaphonik event the core members of Sacred Funk 4tet will be joined by a number of guests to perform as a 7 piece. They include musicians who have led their own bands previously at Bossaphonik - double grammy winning Nigerian percussionist Lekan Babalola, acclaimed clarinetist Kate Luxmore and Venezuelan conguero Williams Cumberbache who was founder of Latin-funk band Tumbaito. They will be joined by virtuosic players on drum kit, double bass, guitar and trumpet.

The band will play a repertoire that includes the early highlife-jazz era of Fela Kuti – between 1963 - 1969 his band was called The Koola Lobitos which has remained largely unknown and unheard. This period represents a revelatory insight into the beginnings of the musical ideas that led to the foundation of Afrobeat – that Fela Kuti pioneered along with drummer Tony Allen and changed the face of music in West Africa. Tonight’s band will also perform the music of highlife and Afrobeat icon Ebo Taylor and highlife luminary Rex Lawson and others and they will also include music of the diaspora of the time in Cuba and Jamaica. This is set to be an uplifting experience of highlife dancefloor grooves!

Check out a video collage of the band (starts mellow then heats up!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRPmIf8iaoQ

Check out a documentary about the core band – Sacred Funk 4tet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwKi_UYhxMs

Following the joyful sounds of the live band as ever is a Bossaphonik club session. This evening we have Kwassa Kwassa guest DJs - made up of Tom Hilton and Simon Starling, the pair have been running their superb tropical parties in Oxford for over 12 years at venues including Tap Social and James Street Tavern. With their breathtaking repertoire of vintage music from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the dancefloor will be heated til 1:30am to the sounds of -

Highlife * Afrobeat * Soukous * Funk * Soul * Reggae * Ska * Salsa * Cumbia * Calypso * Hip Hop * Bomba * Soca!!!

Friday 20h February
Bossaphonik Presents Sounds of Highlife feat. Sacred Funk 4tet + Kwassa Kwassa DJs
Cowley Workers Social Club, Between Towns Road. OX4 3LZ (Near Templars Square Shopping Centre. Regular buses 1 and 5 from City Centre go up Cowley Road and back til 2:55am, stopping opposite the venue)
8pm–1:30am
Band starts at 9:30pm
£14 advance (wegottickets.com) / £16 student ID on door / £19 door

See ya there!