I've been on a bit of a Koo Nimo kick lately! If you have a chance, check out this fascinating 2010 interview with Koo Nimo by Christopher Lydon for Radio Open Source. The recording was made at "7:30 a.m. on the last Saturday in January, a warm winter morning in Ghana, and we are privileged to be hanging out for an hour of music and a few well-chosen words with a aristocrat of sound and four accompanists in his studio in Kumasi, the old Ashanti capital." Here, Lydon and Agya Koodiscuss the history of highlife/palm wine music, jazz, globalization, the African diaspora, and musical cross-fertilization among other things. In addition, Koo Nimo offers some beautiful (although short) musical performances throughout the interview. I've made the performances alone available for download below.
This great 2008 performance by Koo Nimo at Afrikafestival Hertme in the Netherlands has been around Youtube for a while, and now we have another recently posted Youtube video which presents a more complete version of this performance. The always incredible Koo Nimo is joined here by members of his Adadam Agofomma group as well as the seprewa virtuoso Osei Korankye (whose collaboration album with Koo Nimo is available on this blog). The set begins with a seprewa/guitar piece "Abube ne atebe" that features Osei, followed by a beautiful song entitled "Death is everybody's business." The performance concludes with a version of the Ghanaian standard "Yaa Amponsah" that quickly turns into Koo Nimo's own tune "Aburokyire Abrabo" (Overseas Life). In case you're interested, I've posted a full recording of this tune below, along with a translation by Joe Latham from the booklet Ashanti Ballads of Koo Nimo.
On the subject of Koo Nimo, you might like to check out this beautiful, handmade book honoring Agya Koo that was recently acquired by the Smithsonian. The book is called Listen, listen : Adadam Agofomma : honoring the legacy of Koo Nimo, a collaboration between artists Mary Hark, Atta Kwami, and Koo Nimo himself. An article about the book is on the Smithsonian site here.
Koo Nimo - Aburokyire Abrabo
Aburokyire Abrabo(Overseas Life)
Mother, Oh Mother, your son has made a terrible journey. Now I am stranded overseas. Darkness has encircled me. There can be no witness to what I endure alone. An unsuccesful mission is a disgrace, So how can we come hone? If you fail, no child is named after you. Death is preferable to shame. Everyone has reasons for leaving his native land. Some travel to study, or to marry. Some go as tourists, some look for jobs. Some seek medical treatment. Some return, but others die overseas. What a tragedy that is. Why should this be? It is our individual destiny. Life has its bad times we have to pass through. The cold weather gets so bitter men lose their senses. Poverty, family problems, illness and accidents All aggravate the stranger's sad state. Married or single, life is not pleasant in a foreign land. Bad company, gossip, rumours, misunderstandings, So many troubles could be settled by speaking to the family. There is but one consolation: Namely that travel brings wisdom to men. Spirits of our Ancestors, Gods of our Ancestors, Watch over our brothers abroad. Let them return home safely. To live in Europe is to understand this lament.
If you've enjoyed the recent posts here about palmwine music then I'm sure you'll also appreciate these two fantastic videos, courtesy of youtube (if you haven't seen them already). The first features the late T.O. Jazz playing a heartbreakingly beautiful solo piece, it looks like near the music department at the University of Ghana, Legon. Is anyone familiar with this highlife song? I'd love to known the title and composer. T.O. Jazz is absolutely one of the great old-time highlife musicians in my book, so stay tuned for more music from him in the future.
For the second video we have Koo Nimo performing at a music festival in the Netherlands, again joined onstage by Osei Korankye (this time Osei is singing whilst alternating between premprensua and hand drums).
Here's another album of palmwine music by one of my favorite musicians, Koo Nimo. The record is Tete Wobi Ka (2000), and here Agya Koo is joined by Osei Korankye, another truly one-of-a-kind musician. Osei plays the Akan harp seprewa, the original instrument of Ghanaian palm-wine music (pictured last below). This is a particularly important instrument, as it is the style and playing technique of seprewa, translated onto the guitar, that has remained at the core of Ghanaian highlife from the 1920s through the 21st century. Osei is also a singer, and his tenor provides backing to Koo Nimo's deeper, resonant voice through much of this album (I'll be devoting another post to Osei in the coming weeks).
Tete Wobi Ka doesn't appear to be commercially available any longer, so I've offered it here for download . Koo Nimo's excellent first album Osabarima is (I believe) still available commercially for purchase.
Below is a bit of biography on Koo Nimo himself:
"World-renowned Palm Wine musician, guitarist Daniel Amponsah, best known by his stage name Koo Nimo is often referred to as the “National Treasure” of Ghana. Thought of as a “living legend” by many Ghanaians, Koo Nimo's music has been a very relevant source of musical inspiration and continues to be after 40 years of performance.
Apart from his early exposure to music by his parents and playing in local groups, particularly I.E.'s Band, Koo Nimo also studied classical guitar style, harmony, counterpoint etc. at various times, to enhance his musical appreciation. "I didn't want to be a Segovia. I wanted to be an African guitarist, using my technique to do justice to my own music which I understand better," explains Agya Koo, as he is generally known in Ghana.
Although a great consumer of jazz music- from Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Count Basie through Antonio Carlos Jobim and Lorendo Almeida to Thelonius Monk- Agya Koo drew inspiration first from Ghanaian guitarist Kwabena Onyina. But as he explains, "I didn't, however, want to be a second-rate guitarist, hence my determination to dig into my past for a traditional sound which I have now fashioned." He has represented his country with his Adadam Agofama Group at several international arts festivals and has also toured extensively throughout Europe and America, where he shared the stage with Puerto Rico's Yomo Toro during a 1988 "Guitar Summit".
Notwithstanding his stature and popularity, both within and outside Ghana, Agya Koo remains a man of the people committed to re-exposing his countrymen, particularly the young, to their own folk music. His priceless music represents a living art form - not a museum showpiece."
Here's an album of beautiful "palmwine" music by the Ayonko Asiwa Group. The record features two twenty-minute-long tracks in medley style, simple and perfect with just a few singers, guitar, and light percussion.
If you're interested, here's a brief bit of historical background on Ghanaian palmwine music from scholar John Collins:
In Ghana it was the Kru-taught musician Kwame Asare (Jacob Sam) whose Kumasi Trio made the first recordings of "palm wine music" in 1928 when they went to London to record for Zonophone. This session also included the first recording of the famous song "Yaa Amponsah" which provided one of the most enduring and important melodo-rhythmic riffs found in Ghanaian highlife.
Premprensua
When the costal Fante-style music moved inland into Asante and Kwahu during the 1930s it blended with the music of the local seprewa harp-lute. The result was a more Africanised or rather Akan variety of palm wine guitar music known as "Akan Blues" or "Odonson." It was sung in a recitative way rather than in structured verses using African modal progressions (between two tone centres a full tone apart) rather than the western harmonic progressions (I, IV, V chords) of the earlier costal style. These small palm wine guitar bands consisted of just one or two guitars accompanied by "clips" (i.e. claves), "Adakam" (wooden box as drum), and Gome (giant bass frame drum) or "Premprensua" (hand-piano).
Koo Nimo, one of the truly great living palmwine musicians, gives his own perspective on the origins of this genre:
"Palmwine is a local drink. In villages you find, under a shady tree, in the afternoons old men would relax and be telling stories about life. Marriage experiences, disappointments. Now, at that time seprewa was the instrument, the African harp-lute. And the seprewa player might be sitting around, then a palmwine tapper would bring a pot of palmwine, usually identified by the foam on top. Then the calabash is passed round and they drink of palmwine. Now the music that is played under that environment was called palmwine guitar music. In this way, acoustic and folklore Highlife music inherited its name from the fact that it gained its popularity at Palm Wine bars, which symbolically represented music of the masses."
If you're further interested in this music be sure to check out the "Vintage Palmwine" album (recorded and released by John Collins) featuring classic palmwine musicians T.O. Jazz, Kwaa Mensah, and Koo Nimo.
Also, this album by Kwabena Nyama will simply blow you away!
