ABOUT

Kosoa: a sleepy quarter that sits along the Gulf of Guinea, west of Accra, one of the largest cities in West Africa.

Nosway/African Vintage Studio: a one-room studio, recording local Hip-Life, gospel, reggae, highlife, and folkloric musicians.

Palmwine music: Africa’s earliest guitar tradition, developing in a network of coastal cities where African sailors shared a repertoire of songs collected across many traditions with local musicians, mediated through the new instrument of the European guitar. It’s founded around a core set of “rhythms”—song forms, fingerstyle techniques, chord progressions. The fort town of Cape Coast in the Fante zone is a critical hub of transmission. It is acoustic string music, accompanied by percussion from the Ga and Ashanti traditions.

The American guitarist, Nathaniel Braddock, first traveled to Ghana in 2008 and was met at Kotoka Airport by Akablay. They had been connected by Nathaniel’s bandmate in the Occidental Brothers Dance Band Int’l, Asamoah Rambo (percussionist on this recording). Aka was a busy guitarist who had spent many years playing w Rambo in the Ghana’s leading group of the 1990s, the Western Diamonds. The pair have been collaborating on music projects since—playing shows across Ghana and researching palmwine for Braddock’s teaching and writing.

In 2011 Braddock began working with the octogenarian Ghanian guitarist Koo Nimo. He has also collaborated with musicians from Zambia, Uganda, Mali, Congo-Kinshasa, Mozambique, and elsewhere, and continued to perform with the Occidental Brothers Dance Band Int’l (with Rambo), Trio Mokili, and the Accra Quartet. Akablay is still a busy session player and tours with his Abiza band regularly in Europe, as well as having giant hits in Ghana, like “Takeaway.” Shortly before this session, Asamoah returned from the States to live again in Ghana, and when Nathaniel visited in 2023 they reunited for this session, together with Akablay for the first time.