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Mustapha Tettey Addy: International Ga Master Drummer

Born in the Ga village of Avenor near Accra in 1942, Mustapha and his brothers, Jacob, Emma and Obo learned traditional music from their father, who was a traditional Wonche
or 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) in the beach village of Kokrobite near Accra. This hotel and drum center became a major focus in Ghana for international visitors, musicians and students. AAMA was the first of what has become a large number of private drum and dance centers that are helping to boost Ghanaian Tourism.
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 AAMA drum center, Mustapha has become a major player in spreading Ghanaian drum culture internationally.
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Kwesi Asare: Pan African musician & cultural custodian

Born in Larteh in 1931, Kwesi learned to play percussion at the Akonedi Shrine of his grand-aunt Nana Oparebea, high-priestess of a shrine, which has branches in the United States.
In 1955 Kwesi travelled to the United Kingdom to study mechanics but gravitated back to music. His Manchester house became a spot to visit for touring African American jazz artists, and during the fifties,Kwesi met and played with Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Basie’s guitarist, Freddie Green. In the sixties Kwesi played percussion with The Ionius Monk, Roland Kirk and Sarah Vaughan. In the 1970s Kwesi began to teach African  drumming to unemployed Afro-Caribbean youth in Manchester, and in 1982, with the help ofthe UK /Arts Council he created the Kantamanto Cultural Group, which has played at the
Royal Festival Hall and collaborated with British composerDavidFanshaw.
In 1987 Kwesi gave a series of workshops with jazz drummer Edgar Bateman and poetess Elizabeth Suber Bennett at Coltrane House in Philadelphia. While in the US, he also jammed withAl Grey, the Count Basie Band and the Sun Ra Arkestra. In 1995 Kwesi returned home to retire in Larteh where he established the African CuIrural Research Centre and has become a respected elder.

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J. H. Kwabena Nketia: The guru of African ethno-musicology

Professor Nketia was born in Mampong  Ashanti in 1921. He attended the Presbyterian
Training College at Akropong from 1937- 41, and then spent three years in London at
the School for Oriental and African Studies and Trinity College of Music. He did further
studies in the U.S. at the Julliard School of Music, Columbia College and Northwestern
University.
He joined the staff of the University of Ghana in 1952 and made extensive field trips to collect traditional music on a portable recording machine. He was also a member of the African music society that encouraged the music of local highlife guitar bands such as Onyina and E.K. Nyame. He has over 200 publications to his credit including the “Music of Africa” , a pioneering ethno-musicologica1 work that has been translated into numerous
languages. He is, what he calls, a ‘creative ethnomusicologist’ and has composed 80 pieces of Ghanaian art-music for piano, flute piano and atenteben bamboo flute. In 1966 he became Director of the Institute of African Studies until he was awarded an Emeritus Professorship from UCLA, where he taught from 1969-1982. He also was the Andrew Mellon Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught from 1981-1991.
In the mid 1990s he returned to Ghana to establish the International Centre for African Music and Dance in the School of Performing Arts at Legon.
His awards include the Ghana Grand Medal, the International Music Council Prize, the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Dutch Prince Claus Award.

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George Darko

George Darko was born 1951 at Akropong, the son of a Paramount Chief. He began learning guitar in 1957 at the Presbyterian School, Akropong.
His father wanted him to become a lawyer so he left home and stayed with his uncle, Nana Boafo. He joined Gaby Nick Valdo ‘s Avengers band in 1969 when he was only 18 years of age, and moved on to become guitarist for the Soul Believers, the Blue Monks, and for the army band, the Fourth Dimension, which entertained troops in the Middle East.
He then formed the Golden Stool Band and they left Ghana for Germany in the late 1970s. In Hamburg he went solo and in 1982 composed the song ‘Akoo Te Brofo ‘ that catapulted him and his Bus Stop Band (singer Lee Duodu, keyboardist Bob Fiscian) to fame. His style of disco-highlife became known as ‘burgher highlife’ since it was created in Hamburg, where
many Ghanaians had resettled. His style became immensely popular in Ghana and was copied by many highlife musicians, such as The Lumba Brothers, Rex Gyamji, and Sloopy Mike Gyamji. In 1988 he returned to settle in his hometown and was made a chief in 1991 with the stool (throne) name of Nana Yaw Ampem Darko.
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Rocky Dawuni

Rocky Dawuni was born in 1969 and originally comes from the northern Yendi Dagbon
traditional area of Ghana but he was raised at Michel Camp Army Barracks near Accra, where his father was a sergeant.
He was influenced by the Hot Barrels army band. He attended the University of Ghana, where he studied psychology and philosophy. While still a student, he formed his fIrst reggae group, Local Crisis, in 1991.
ROcky later left for the USA and in 1996 he released his first album, ‘Movement’ followed by ‘Crusade’, which was recorded in Ghana as a tribute to the country’s 40th anniversary. It was released on Aquarian Records, a company run by his wife, Carey Sullivan, and by Rocky’s older brother, Bob Dawuni. Crusade was first performed at a special concert in Abidjan that also featured Steel Pulse, Rita Marley and Sister Carol. In 2000 Rocky made his first US tour, appearing at festivals, such as the Jazz and Reggae Festival and the 6th  Annual Sierra Nevada World Music Festival.
In 2001 Rocky released his third album, ‘Awakening’, at the Rocky Dawuni Reggae Sunsplash on Ghana’s Independence Day (March 6th ) to a crowd of 20,000 in Accra. Rocky Dawuni works with’ AfricaLive,’ an NGO that promotes live music in Ghana and supports music education in Ghanaian schools.
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Kwadwo Julius Antwi Ghanaian reggae star

Kwadwo Antwi is popular for his romantic Twi songs, backed by a ‘lovers’ rock’ form of reggae (a romantic style of reggae popularised by Jamaican singer, Gregory Isaacs.). Kwadwo began his career in two early Ghanaian reggae bands of the 1970s: the Classic Handels and then the Classic Vibes. It was with the six-piece Classic Vibes band that he first left Ghanaian shores for Denmark and then Switzerland. Since then he has been partly based in Switzerland, where he has released a string of successful records and CDs. In fact
his wife is Swiss, and often sings chorus on his records.
Kwadwo’s first albums were ‘All I Need Is You’ and ‘Saman’ released in 1986 and 1987. During the 1990s Kwadwo produced many solo albums, such as ‘Akwanoma Anokye’ ‘Don’t Stop the Music’ and ‘Akuaba’, Every Christmas, he returns to Ghana to perform live at the National Theatre for his Ghanaian fans.
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Nil Noi Nortey: Afro-jazz fusions

Nii Noi was born in Accra in 1953. In the 1980s he spent time in London, where he played saxophone with Dade Krama and the reggae band, Misty-In-Roots. In 1988 he returned to Ghana and in the 1990s he set upMau  Mau Musiki, consisting of traditional African flutes, hand-pianos flutes percussion instruments, wooden xylophones, blown conch-shells and double-reed North African al-gaita. The group worked with Ghanaba and in 1992 with the Pharoah Saunders Quintet. The group is now known as Muziki w’Afrika and plays a combination of traditional African music and free-jazz. NU Noi Nortey is also Director of the Anyah Arts Library in Accra, which has a wide collection of music, books and art pieces.

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Nana Danso Abiam & the Pan African Orchestra

Danso Abiam, who was trained at a French music conservatory, taught at the University of Ghana from 1979-1984, and while there, he devised a chromatic fingering system for the local atenteben bamboo flute. He was later selected as Director of Ghana’s National Symphony Orchestra.

He founded the 48-piece Pan-African Orchestra (PAO) in 1988 to develop an Afro-centric system of making symphonic music. It uses solely African instruments, which are organized into symphonic-like sections and led by a conductor (i.e Nana Danso). Its creations are presented in an artistic, rather than dance music, context. The orchestra’s repertoire includes Nana’s own compositions and his arrangements of traditional songs,
as well as highlife, Afro-rock and Fela-Kuti’ s Afro-beat, After performing at the 1994 World Music and Dance (WOMAD) festival in Britain, the orchestra recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio in the west of England. In 1996 the resulting CD entitled ‘Opus One’ went to the top of the international New World Music Charts for six weeks.
In 2001 and in collaboration with the UK-based dance company,Adzido, the PAO toured the UK with the musical play’ YaaAsantewaa – Warrior Queen’ written by Ghanaian Margaret Busby and directed by West Indian Geraldine O’Connor. In 2003 the PAO collaborated with the Nigerian Kora player, Tunde Jegede. Nana Danso’s current project is to establish
an international conservatory of African music.
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Saka Acquaye: ‘Grand Old Man’ of the Ghanaian arts

Saka is a well-known Ghanaian musician, sculptor and dramatist, who was born in Accra in 1923. He learned to play saxophone in the 1950s and was Tempos highlife dance band. Saka helped King Bruce found the Black Beats highlife dance band in 1952. He left for the United States to do further art studies and while in Philadelphia he formed the West African Ensemble that made an album.
Saka returned to Ghana in 1961 and formed the African Tones band and dance group that toured Russia. He was appointed as Head of the Arts Council from 1968-72 and during that period, his musical play, “The Lost Fishermen” was produced and the popular Saturday Anansekrom (variety) programs were initiated.
In the early 1970s Saka discovered Nii Ashitey’s talented Ga group, Wulomei, and he and Kwadwo Donkor helped produce the group’s first record ‘Walatu Walasa ‘, Saka was also involved as one of the Ghana organizers of the ‘Soul to Soul’ concert at Black Star Square in 1971 that brought many top American acts to Ghana, including Wilson Pickett, the Voices of East Harlem, the Staple Singers, Ike & Tina Turner, Roberta Flack, Les McCann, Eddie Harris and Santana.
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Otoo Lincoln: Creator of Kpanlogo

After the Djembe drum, the Kpanlogo drum is perhaps the most popular and widely played of all West African drums.

Kpanlogo drumming, a traditional type of drum-dance music, was created by Otoo Lincoln, who composed well-known tunes like’Kpanlogo Alogodzan’, ‘ABC Kpanlogo’ & ‘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
44 about, which involved three Ga princesses calledKpanlogo, Alogodzan &
Mma-Mma.
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 ‘n’ 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.