Ghana music reviews

This CD was my first exposure to West African music. Surprise! They aren't limited to bongo drums and acapella chants! I've fallen in love with several of the songs on this CD, and so have my children. We are now tracking down and collecting the CD's of the artists we enjoyed most! Great variety.

This is the perfect introduction to West African music. Some of the songs are absolutely captivating (Oumou Sangare and Ali Farka Toure especially). Brilliantly sourced album.

The man who preceeded Babtunde Olatunji in introducing America to African drumming! A rerelease of a 30+ year old album. It's still fresh & interesting with skillful & creative use of donno, atumpan, kpanlogo/conga and fontomfrom. Warren (now called Ghanaba) uses a mix of African drums (from the Ashanti, Dogomba, and Ga peoples of Ghana) arranged & played like a jazz drumset. He incorporates bastardized African rhythms in the context of African-esque and dated Western-sounding song forms. About 1/2 of the album is of great interest (inspring subsequent listenings) & 1/2 is trite. A lovely document of a jazz pioneer that is too often forgotten. Hopefully they'll release Ghanaba's earlier & more recent albums as well!

These kooky, free-jazz/world beat percussive explorations probably are not for everyone, but they are kinda weird and unique. Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren (aka Kofi Ghanaba) is one of the more elusive figures in the jazz world, as well as the African pop scene. He did a lot of work with a lot of great African bands in the '40s and '50s, founding the Tempos band that later made E.T. Mensah famous, and later got into the hard bop and free jazz scenes of the 1960s, gigging with some of the greats of the style. Then he kinda wigged out and got super-experimental, as these 1969-70 sessions amply demonstrate. It's weird stuff, Max Roach meets the rainforest, recorded with minimal instrumentation and a trance-y overall vibe, though also fairly artsy and irritating, in a way that might be familiar to folks who have heard Alice Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders.

in my opinion, this here is the best of the ajax/3 beads of sweat compilations. the most consistent by far, it also contains more "instant-classic-type" tracks. there's this one song, "the last day of jimi hendrix's life" which is soooo beautiful and heartbreaking...granted, there's nothing that quite equals "no i can't" or "historiograph" from (is it?) bitter melon farm, but all in all, it's a stronger collection.

This is a CD for someone who is already a Mountain Goats fan. More casual listeners would be better served by getting Sweden, 9 Black Poppies, or Full Force Galesburg. As a compilation of rarities, it is obviously rough and doesn't hang together like a typical Mountain Goats CD. That said, there are some great songs on this CD, from the opening song, "Golden Boy," which are about peanuts, to "Going to Port Washington," "The Anglo-Saxons", and "Noticifer Birmingham." Many of these songs are just Darnielle having a lot of fun. Sometimes, like on "Golden Boy", the results are amazing. Sometimes it only reminds you of how good he can be when he gets more serious. Overall, a good CD and a must-have for Mountain Goats fans.

This is the long-awaited final singles/rarities compilation from the Mountain Goats camp, released at long last by the label Three Beads of Sweat (along with reissues of the first two comps. released on Ajax).

Like the other two singles comps. this album has low and (incredibly) high points. Some of the best Mountain Goats songs ever recorded were on tapes or 7"s so these collections are a joy. Naturally though, when you have 31 songs on an album some of them are bound to be less than remarkable. Overall, it's a fantastic CD thanks in part to songs like "Golden Boy", "The Anglo-Saxons", and "Stars Around Her".

Any devoted fan will love this CD, however if you're just hearing Mountain Goats for the first time then I'd suggest picking up "Full Force Galesburg" (my favorite Mountain Goats release), "The Coroner's Gambit", or "Isopanisad Radio Hour".

My only real complaint is that the boys at Ajax didn't even distribute the songs between the 3 comps. 31 songs is quite a lot, even for me... so some of them probably could've been added to the first comp (a mere 23 tracks).

God Bless You, Mr. Darnielle.

Field recordings made in the 1970s of traditional music from various locations in Ghana. The musicians are accomplished non-professionals. The repertoire is traditional. In these senses is the music is much closer to what one would hear at traditional gatherings (such as the installation of a new chief) than say that produced by professional folk musicians such as Mustapha Tettey Addy or Foday Musa Suso. The audio quality of these recordings is quite high, though on a number of tracks considerable incidental crowd noise is also audible - in some sense adding to documentation of the social context of these performances. The Smithsonian CD "Rhythms of life, Songs of Wisdom" is similar but more stylistically diverse, including local brass bands, for example. Instruments played in these recordings include the axatse (a gourd rattle), dzil and chohun (similar to a xylophone or marimba), donno (talking drum), gonje (single stringed bowed lute), gyamadudu (bass drum), mpintintoa (single headed gourd drum), namuma (animal horn trumpet), wiik (flute). Number of tracks also feature vocals in local languages.

This album plays beautiful highlife music. Eric Agyeman's Zairean tinged guitar really shines on "Highlife Safari." Recorded in the 1970's, it captures the time when the genre was drifting away from the heavy use of brass and moving towards using all electric musical instruments. Thus the horns are mostly used for accents and punctuation. While the African keyboards squeal every once in awhile, it is the polyrhythms that make everything sway to that wonderful tropical groove. There is enough spacing within the songs to allow the musicians to 'stretch out.' This is great party music as it is very danceable. The song writing is good and the production is excellent. Overall, "Highlife Safari" is a compliment to any Ghanian musical collection.

1. Matutu Mirika 2. Abenaa Na Aden? 3. Ao! Masem Yi 4. I Don't Care 5. Nea Abe Beto 6. Odo Bra

Eric Agyeman was a highly popular guitarist from the Ashanti region. Mostly recorded in 1979 with the core of the Sweet Talks band. This is guitar-driven highlife with some horns and cheesy synths, representative of the style that was popular in the late 1970s/early 1980s -- a harder, more aggressive sound than the "palmwine" and horn-driven dance band styles that preceded it, and less Westernized than the "Burger highlife" sound that became popular later when many of the musicians ended up in Europe. A variety of singers including the inimitable A.B. Crentsil handle vocal duties.

Although the subtitle of this collection is "1960s guitar band highlife," stylistically some of this music sounds older -- as the liner notes indicate some of these performers were already well-established in the 1940s, and one might think of this as a link between more traditional folk music and the popular music of today i.e. if one buys this disk expecting world beat one will be disappointed. The standout cut is the title track King Oyina's "Menya Me Dofo" [I've Found My Love], a truly beautiful song -- someone ought to cover it. The disk closer, The Royal Brothers "Ohia Woa Enwu" [Don't Commit Suicide Over Poverty], points the way toward the more electric, harder-edged styles that would follow.

Ghanaian singer A.B. Crentsil has fronted a series of bands since the 1970s: Sweet Talks, Super Sweet Talks, Sweet Talks International et al. He has a highly distinctive voice and is both a popular, and in some respects, controversial, musician: although he has recorded gospel music, some of his music has been deemed sacrilegious and banned from the radio. This recording from the 1970s reflects his varied interests. It begins with a straight, highlife rendition of the Lord's Prayer, which is then followed by the infectious, 10 minute plus hit, "Adjoa" (a common female name), in which Crentsil advises the song's namesake to get with the program and give it up to the soldiers of whatever military government happened to be in power at the time. He then flips back into contemplative mode for the album closing "I Don't Know Why." Neither do I, but I can dance to it.

Traditional drumming done by well-known professionals such as Mustafa Tettey Addy and Kakraba Lobi. Mostly traditional songs with some compositions by Addy and Lobi. Well-recorded and played, this music exists in a kind of intermediate zone between field recordings of local, often rural, non-professional players and Westernized pop music produced in urban recording studios.

Koo Nimo is a living legend in Ghana as he struggles to promote traditional music which is in danger of being swamped by western pop. He sings in the local language of Twi.

The eight songs on this CD reflect philosophically on real events and are accompanied by traditional instruments. For example, the first song, Aburokyire Abrabo, describes the sad state of the African student located in Europe where everything is strange and hostile. Before actually making the journey, many Africans regard a visit to Europe as a journey to paradise!

Koo Nimo is Ghana's foremost exponent of acoustic guitar highlife
(palm wine music). His singing is supported by his group using a call-and-response vocal style.

Even without understanding the words, listeners will find the music compulsive. It gives a real flavour of Africa.

This is a disc completely worthy of your money and time. In case you have family, historical, and/or geographical reasons for wanting to know, the music on this disc is from Ghana's Central Region (not actually in the center of Ghana though, "Central Region" is the name of... for lack of a better term... a state in Ghana). The music is by (and from their areas of the Central Region) Assin, Efutu, Denkyira, and Fante peoples. All are Akan groups except the Efutu, "whose languages belong to the Guan cluster of the Kwa branch". Obviously I got this from the liner-notes, as I am no expert on all the many... and there are MANY... different languages and cultures of Ghana.

As for the music itself, I've had this disc for a couple weeks now and I'm loving it more with each listen. It is a very fine collection of recordings! I didn't get to the liner-notes until yesterday. It was interesting to find out that the Efutu are not Akan, since I had already noticed a distinct difference between the feel of their music and the other (although also differing) musics here. For those with some hip-hop interest, the Efutu track here makes me feel like they are playing some sort of ancient ancestor of a Timbaland beat. I like it alot. =)

There is alot for which to be thankful on this disc, and if you've ever stumbled upon my reviews for a few other cds from Ghana (the Master Drummers of Dagbon 1 & 2, and the Master Fiddlers of Dagbon), you'll be interested in knowing that this disc is completely different from those. Unfortunately, oftentimes things are lumped under the monolithic label of being "African music", but that is so broad as to be almost meaningless, considering the degree of musical diversity even in just one small country like Ghana. If you have the Masters discs I just mentioned, and you're worried about buying this one and feeling like it'd just be more of the same, don't worry. This is a whole other world.

The singing here has a much more organized feel than that on the Masters discs. Also, this disc always has larger groups of singers. It is more of a central feature of the music as well. Some lovely "chorus" vocals, sometimes in the form of interplay with the drumming. What you'll think of the brass band tracks (just a couple), I do not know. I like them, but I'm a weirdo. The first one strikes me almost as William Parker-ish orchestrations of his interpretation of the timbre of a bleating goat. I mean that in a good way. Also the percussion on that track is fantastic! I'm not sure how they are getting this tone, but it's like controlled, perfectly timed fireworks exploding in the distance.

Rather than rambling further, I will wrap this up by saying you probably didn't stumble on this cd by accident, so this sort of thing already interests you. Go ahead and pick this one up because I'm sure you're going to love it.

Field recordings of Akan folk music from the Central and Western Regions of Ghana made by ethnomusicologist Roger Vetter in 1979. In this respect the disk is more narrowly homogeneous than some similar ones: only the Central and Western Regions are represented, although the bulk of the Akan population of Ghana lives in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions. And, obviously, if it is a disk of Akan music, it does not include music produced by other ethnic groups in Ghana.

What the disk lacks in geographical and ethnic diversity, it makes up in stylistic reach. The music in these recordings is played by non-professional and semi-professional players, and although most of the music is quite traditional (i.e. shows little European influence) some tracks include instruments that originated outside Africa such as the tuba or the electric guitar, and some of the repertoire including waltzes and gospel music show a Western influence transmogrified in the local milieu. In this regard the recordings are authentic: the variety of music produced for local performance and consumption in the Akan coastal regions of Ghana was (and remains) varied, reflecting a variety of cultural uses and influences. While most of the music on this disk was meant for dancing, one of the most interesting tracks is a talking drum piece in which the message is not only played but recited, allowing one to hear the translation from speech to drumming. The accompanying booklet documenting the cultural background, the players, their instruments, and the various musical styles is highly informative.