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.

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