Since the Rio Loco festival, a highlife music lesson with Emmanuel Ofori, bassist and leader of the group Santrofi, a Ghanaian combo made up of eight outstanding musicians, determined to breathe new life into the music of their illustrious peers (ET Mensah and Ebo Taylor in the lead). Attention, overpowering groove!
Ghana, this West African country located on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, between Togo and the Ivory Coast, was the first state in sub-Saharan Africa to free itself from colonial rule. It was in 1957, under the leadership of President Kwame Nkrumah. A music, the highlife, a mixture of local musical traditions mornings of calypso and jazz, accompanied this time. And it was the musician ET Mensah who pioneered it.
Today, the Santrofi group, which owes its name to a mythological bird with a powerful song, has decided to breathe new life into it. Just to remind the younger generation that highlife was a key element in the construction of modern African music, which notably inspired the Afrobeat of Nigerian neighbor Fela Kuti.
Result: even before the release of their first album, Alewain 2020, its eight outstanding musicians had already ignited the biggest festivals in Europe with intoxicating riffs, super-powerful percussion and a generous brass section carried by irresistible vocal harmonies.
While the autan wind, this typical wind of the south-west of France, has risen and the evening groups are swinging not far away on the main stage of the festival Rio Loco, bassist and leader of the Santrofi group, Emmanuel Ofori, awaits us at a table on the banks of the Garonne, in the shade of the trees. My goal: to get him the recipe for this real dancing machine!
SessionLab by Hortense Volle : a conversation in complete privacy and in 3D audio (spatialized sound).
A podcast to listen to, preferably, with headphones.
Achievement : Benjamin Sarralie
3D sound recording and mixing : Fabien Mugneret
Production : RFI Lab
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Titles broadcast:
► Extracts from the album Alewa (Outhere Records – 2020) : Kokrokoo ; Alewa (Black and white) ; Kwaa Kwaa ; Africa ; Odo Maba ; Cocoase ; Adwuma ; Kwabena amoah ; Konongo Kaya
And also :
► Sarkodie – No Living Thing (feat.Oxlade)
► Ebo Taylor- Saana
► 2Face Idibia – african queen
► Kwame Nkrumah – Independence Speech – Accra, 6th March 1957
► Excerpts from the Santrofi concert at the Rio Loco festival