014 Nietzsche’s Rausch, Aesthetic Form, and Highlife Music

This episode uses Highlife music of Ghana to investigate a Nietzschean take on aesthetic attunement (what he terms Rausch), aesthetic form, and the production of the self. I begin by outlining how Ghanians employed ahaha, konkoma, and dance highlife to create a new sense of self for young people after the colonialist disruption of traditional modes of life and hierarchy. I then to turn to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's ideas concerning aesthetic attunement which is disinterested and yet passionate in order to assess how music might be employed in the production of the self. In the last segment, I broach the issue of Nietzschean "bad conscience" as it pertains to the colonial situation. I end by imagining how highlife music might be construed as a reversal of bad conscience, a way of turning the suffering of the passions into joy.