Bokoor Beats - CD Home Page | Newest Releases More music from Ghana

Search for music Need Help?

various Bokoor Beats: Vintage Afro-beat, afro-rock and electric highlife from Ghana () $18.99 Highlife, afrobeat, rock and blends of all that and more, recorded in Ghana's Bokoor Studio in the early 70s

Tracks: Maya Gari w/Bokoor Band Egbe Enyo w/Brekete & The Big Beats Atiadele w/Mangwana Stars Yeah Yeah Ku Yeah w/Bokoor Band Onukpa Scwarpo w/Bokoor Band There is Time w/Bokoor Band Trouble Man w/Bokoor Band Onam Bebe Basa w/TO Jazz Anoma Franoas w/Oyikwam Internationals Now Comes Another Day w/Bokoor Band Been To w/Bokoor Band Money In Bed w/Bokoor Band

ThePhoenix.com online says: Pop music in 1970s Ghana was a collision of lilting highlife — long the preferred local fare — with tougher sounds encroaching from abroad: funky Afrobeat from Nigeria, soukous pumping out of the Congo, and of course the worldwide wave of Western rock and roll. A local Accra band called the Bokoor Band did it all. Its young British co-founder, John Collins, was destined to become an important Ghanaian music producer in the ’80s and ’90s; that’s one reason these piquant tracks survive to be presented with such meaty and evocative sleeve notes. Bokoor means “cool,” and this outfit is never cooler than when tearing up the emerging Afrobeat sound, as on “Yeah Yeah Ku Yeah” and “Onukpa Shwarpo (Bigman’s Shop),” both of them spiked with chicken-scratch guitar vamps, call-and-response vocals, and Collins on searing harmonica that takes the place of the genre’s characteristic brass section. Laced with snapping Ghanaian percussion, the Bokoor Band’s soukous is raggedy but eminently enjoyable. Four tracks by contemporary bands better versed in the sweet, sunny art of highlife round out this collection, which is indispensable for the connoisseur of golden-age Afropop. From the record label: Otrabanda Records joins in the celebrations of 50 years of Ghana's status as an independent nation on March 6, 2007 with the release of BOKOOR BEATS, - Vintage afro-beat, afro-rock and electric highlife from Ghana (OTB08) its third CD with Ghanaian music. March 6, 1957 heralded an upsurge in the production of all forms of local music. A great deal of Ghana's rich musical traditions have been documented, recorded and played by the musician/musicologist Professor John Collins. His own Bokoor Band, founded in the 1970s, was at the forefront of blending western pop with indigenous African rhythms and musical traditions, inaugurating the first generation of so-called Afropop. By the time it had disbanded Collins transformed it into Bokoor Studios where he went on to record over 200 artists in various genres including palmwine and electric highlife, afro-beat, afro-rock, afro-jazz, gospel, reggae and traditional drumming. BOOKOR BEATS collects some of the vintage afro-beat, afro-rock and electric highlife by Brekete & The Big Beats, Mangwana Stars, Oyikwam Internationals and T.O. Jazz which Collins recorded as well as the Ghana Film Studio recordings of several of his own compositions with the Bokoor Band. All the tracks were remastered from the original tapes. With copious notes by Collins himself it documents another chapter in the history of Ghanaian music. The classic John Collins 1970s afro-rock composition Onukpa Shwarpo was recently covered in a remix version by upcoming star Atongo Zimba and the version included here has been completely remastered.

Other recordings you might like: various Authenticite - The Syliphone Years: 1965-1980 Songs of the African Coast Cafe Music of Liberia various Ewe Drumming From Ghana - the soup which is sweet draws the chairs in closer