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Ghana, like Benin, might not have had a Fela Kuti or a Hugh Masekela, but it always had the funk. And as this compilation – sourced almost entirely from the vaults of Accra’s Essiebons label – makes clear, its relationship to the American template was never cut-and-dried. Amartey Hedzoleh’s closer, ‘Dza Hunu Tso’, opting for a vapour trail of traditional wui flutes, double-tracked by Afro don producer John Collins into capricious dialogue. Hedzoleh, like most of the other featured artists, will be familiar to fans of Soundway’s lavish Ghanaian collections: happily, much of the tracks here won’t be. It’s low-key for the most part, with a flavour of the humour and eccentricity, if not quite the brilliance, of the influential compilation Afro-rock. Check out the hectoring, 6/8 dirge-funk of Rob’s ‘Read The Bible’, or the classroom kitsch of Cutlass Dance Band’s ‘Sukuu Yede’. In the customised highlife of the likes of CK Mann and the Apagya Dance Band, it’s the constantly evolving ingenuity of their arrangements – the fantastic, lost-in-deepest-tropics analogue keyboard sounds in particular – that make it all so compelling. Apagya’s ‘Kwaakwa’ is a re-arranged, clave-assisted children’s folk song that’s just delightful. Sound isn’t always the best quality but the pops, hisses and general air of terminal obscurity – on CK Mann & The Master’s ‘Mber Papa’ especially – open a flickering portal into a magical world, alive in a way contemporary music so often isn’t.
Brendon Griffin |
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