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Notable Ghanaian Artists | Kakraba Lobi - Master Xylophone (Gyil) Player | back to top |
Kakraba Lobi was born in Kalba Suru in the Lobi/Brifo and and Dagara area of the Upper West Region in Ghana. As a child, he was taught how to play the pentatonic wooden Gyil Xylophone by his father. In the 1950s Kakraba went to Accra, where he performed in programs for Radio Ghana and in 1957 he was offered a teaching position at the Institute of African Studies, where he was a full-time teacher until 1987. Over the years, he was a guest lecturer in Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, the U.S. and Africa, which resulted in creating hundreds of Gyil desciples worldwide, especially in Japan. In 2000 Kakraba released the "Song of Legaa" CD, followed in 2004 by the "Song of Niira". In both he was accompanied and produced Valery Naranjo and Barry Olsen. The CDs were released on the Kaleidoscope Sound label in the United States. Kakraba passed away in late 2007. His son S.K. has followed his footsteps as a Gyil player and carries on the legacy of his father. |
| Mustapha Tettey Addy - International Ga Master Drummer | back to top |
In the Ga village of Avenor near Accra, Mustapha was born into a family of well known drummers in 1942. Mustapha and his brothers Jacob, Emma and Obo learned traditional music from their father Kpani Kofi Addy, who was a highly respected Akon priest in the early 1960s. Mustapha and his brothers were involved in the creation of the Ga recreational Kpanlogo drum-dance and Mustapha also began working as a master drummer at the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana. In the late 1960s he began to tour internationally, and between 1972 and 1981 he released seven albums on the British Tangent, French Arion and German Insel Hombroich labels. In 1982 Mustapha moved back to Ghana, where he established the Royal Obonu Drummers and in 1988 he founded the Academy of Music and Arts (AAMA). Between 1990 and 1999, he released six albums on the German Weltwunder label, including the important "The Royal Drums of Ghana". In 1992-93 he and his Obonu Drummers played at various WOMAD (World Music and Dance) festivals around the globe. Through his records, international tours and the AAMA drum center, Mustapha has become a major player in spreading Ghanaian drum culture internationally. |
Kpanlogo drumming, a traditional type of drum-dance music, was created by Otoo Lincoln, who composed well-known tunes like "Kpanlogo Alogodzan", "ABC Kpanlogo" and "Ayinle Momobiye". Otoo was born in the Korle Wokon district of Accra in 1941 and learned Ga drumming from his family. He obtained the name "Kpanlogo" when he used the new beat he was creating to perform an old Ga folktale his grandfather told him about, which involved three Ga princesses called Mma-Mma, Alogodzan and Kpanlogo. Otoo Lincoln and a group of boys from the Bukom area of Accra (Frank Lane, Okule Foes and other members of the Black Eagles dance club) created the youthful Ga Kpanlogo drum-dance during the early 1960s by combining older Ga fishermen-styles of music, such as the Kolomashie, Gome and Oge with highlife or even rock & roll dance movements. Because of Kpanlogo's supposedly indecent movements, it was banned for a while before it was again in vogue in 1965. Except for a small copyright payment to Otoo in the 1990s, Otoo has never received the financial rewards for having created what has become Ghana's most internationally-acclaimed drumming style. |
Kofi Ghanaba (or Guy Warren) was born in 1923 and educated at Achimota College in Accra. In the 1940s he was a journalist, and in 1947 joined the Tempos band with E.T. Mensah. Since he had been a member of Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists in the UK, he introduced many new ideas to the band including the use of Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. After Ghanaba left the Tempos, he stayed in Liberia for three years and then went to the US, where he worked with such African American jazz musicians as Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Billy Strayhorn. It was in Chicago that he changed his musical direction: "I would be the African musician who re-introduced African music to America to get Americans to be aware of his cultural heritage of the black people. When I was young, it was jazz that dominated me. I was naive and thought that that was the thing. But it is the African music that is the mother, not the other way around. I had to find this out the hard way." From the late 1950s, Ghanaba released a number of important Afro-Jazz LPs such as "Africa Speaks, America Answers", "Theme for African Drums", "Soundz of Africa" and "The Third Phase". Ghanaba returned home in the 1960s. In 1981 he presented a drum version of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" in the UK, when he was given the title "Odomankoman Kyerema" or Divine Drummer. |
Source: Commemorative Brochure of African American Heritage Month, February 2005, by the African-American Association of Ghana (AAAG) |
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