Various – Essiebons Special 1973-1984 – Ghana Music Power House
Analog Africa – 3 December 2021
Analog Africa really is a gift that keeps on giving. Hot on the heels of Cameroon Garage Funk, reviewed in Folk Radio here, comes Essiebons Special 1973- 1984 – Ghana Music Power House, celebrating the legendary Ghanaian producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie; yet another powerhouse release from the German label compiled by founder and researcher Samy Ben Redjeb.
For those unaware of the label, Samy is akin to a one-man Smithsonian Folkways or Library of Congress operation, crate-digging in the extreme to unearth obscure, rare, and often unreleased musical gems which help exemplify and define genres, whilst at the same time frequently providing valuable contemporaneous sociological and ethnological context. All Analog Africa releases, and this is Number 34, share many common factors, not least the dazzling quality of the music proffered, and Essiebons Special continues this legacy.
Samy first met the legendary producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie back in September 2005, and their friendship was such that he had agreed to DJ at the latter’s 90th birthday party, planned for May 2020. When the Covid pandemic hit, however, the event was postponed. Samy spontaneously proposed a new compilation dedicated to Dick’s Essiebons label, celebrating his many achievements within the Ghanaian music scene. This album is the result.
Born in the coastal town of Apam in 1930, Essilfie-Bondzie relocated to Accra, the capital city, where he developed a love of music, the sound of highlife being ubiquitous. Initially, however, his destiny lay elsewhere, and he was sent to London at the age of 20 to learn business, returning home to undertake a governmental job. His passion for music, inspired by the highlife scene in Accra, remained, and he initially became involved in the Ghanaian scene through recording local musicians at a time when most involvement in the music business there was externally run. Inextricably linked to the colonial era, highlife bands tended to have evolved from the brass bands of the police and military, and this music style resulted from the intoxicating melding of Ghanaian melodies, dance rhythms popular at the time and the use of Western instruments. A reference to the well-off whom the music was intended to entertain; highlife flourished in the more exclusive nightclubs and hotels. Dick was a highly skilled and effective businessman, and in 1967, in partnership with the Philips label, he opened the first record pressing plant in West Africa, thus revolutionising and changing the course of West African music.
So successful was the venture that by the early 1970s, Essilfie-Bondzie had left his secure government job, having created his own Essiebons label, which earned him the Mr Essiebons sobriquet, along with a subsidiary label called Dix, uniquely dedicated to capturing the sound of Accra’s highlife bands for posterity.
However, by this time, there had been a fundamental shift in the highlife style. The larger, brass-heavy bands had been replaced by smaller bands, much influenced by funk music from the United States, in which electric guitar featured prominently. It was in this context that the Essiebons label would cement its unmistakable sound and by the mid-seventies, modern highlife album-after-album and hit-single after hit-single from his recording stable, which by this time featured most of the top artists, scouted by Mr Essiebons’ team, were all-pervasive in the country’s musical consciousness.
The amount of material available for this album is therefore immense, and whilst there are offerings from the label’s biggest stars, some of which are obscure, the highlight for many will be the six previously unreleased Afrobeat and instrumental tracks from the label’s golden mid-70’s, discovered by Mr Essiebons when he was digitising from his vast catalogue of analogue tapes.
Four of these unearthed gems are provided by organist Ernest Aubrey Honny, whose early hit for the label Psychedic Woman as Honny & the Bees Band marked him out as a rising star. His subsequent journey into the realms of synth-funk is well documented here, in particular with Kofi Psych (Interlude 1), which along with his other three contributions serve up a veritable mélange of jazzy organ, way-out synths and funky percussion on a range of instruments all of which are danceable delights. Far-fetched though it may be, on occasions, the sound resembles a Weather Report/Osibisa fusion.
The enigmatic Joe Meah provides the other two previously unheard tracks. Little information can be found on this artist, either on the usually forensically-detailed liner notes or searching the internet. However, one sure thing is that there is a definite Doors influence, especially on Dee Mmaa Pe, where over chunky, almost staccato brass lines, spasmodic vocal shout-outs, sax solos and clave-like percussion, the organist picks outlines very similar to the aforementioned LA rock band. This six-minute extravaganza is topped by Meah’s other contribution, the seven-minute epic that is Ahwene Pa Nkasa. Funky basslines, swirling, squelchy synths, a weird and wonderful slab of funk where the urge to dance is irresistible.
Perhaps the best-known name on this release is Charles Kofi Mann, better known by his initials C.K. Having risen to prominence as the leader of The Carousel 7, along with young vocalist Kofi Papa Yankson, the two were responsible for modernising the sound of Osode, a specific style of music played by the fishermen of Mann’s coastal hometown, through the use of western instruments. The second and third singles culled from the album are credited to Mann. The first of these Yeaba, credited toC.K. Mann & His Carousel 7, features CK’s funky wah-wah guitar over woozy organ, alongside a delicious trumpet solo, whilst Fa W‘akoma Ma Me, attributed to C.K. Mann & His Big Band, is probably the most chilled track on the album, with its smooth Latin rhythms, tasteful Cuban-sounding guitar and cultured brass.
One of the talents headhunted by the aforementioned team scouts was Joseph Nwozah Ebroni, better known as Seaboy. Initially, the vocalist in the Bekyere Guitar Band, his solo album Across The Seas,(coincidentally also featuring Ernest Honny on organ), provides the first single released from this compilation, Africa. At six and a half minutes in length, this track effuses good-times, the brass and flute, over enervating keys and thrashing percussion, at times sounding more akin to a rocksteady sound-system plate from Jamaica, is captivating in the extreme. Seaboy’s second contribution, a collaboration with
Nyame Bekyere, Tinitini, is a more psyched-out jam, heavy, unsurprisingly perhaps, on solo guitar. This latter artist also provides a cut under his own name by way of a Medley (Broken Heart, Aunty Yaa, Omo Yaba (Nzema). Over nigh-on 11 minutes and the opening trio of tracks taken from his 1976 Broken Heart album, the energy, the excitement of this funky, groove-based music is infectious, and to these ears recalls the wonderful mid-seventies band Boombaya.
Rounding up the remaining tracks, there are offerings from Santrofi-Ansa, (Shakabula), an otherworldly synth and sax led piece, The Black Masters Band, whoseWonnin a Bisa begins with a tremendous organ-centric wig-out preceding a sublime guitar solo which takes centre-stage before the album’s final track Egye Tu Gbe, from Sawaaba Soundz, another extraordinary offering, brings things to a most satisfactory conclusion.
Sadly, Essilfie-Bondzie passed away on 19th August 2020, before the compilation was finished. Essiebons Special 1973-1984 – Ghana Music Power House is, however, a testimony to the genius who not only helped to free the production of West African music from its colonial influences and a fitting legacy to the man who gave the world, through his releases, some of the most exhilarating highlife music ever heard.
Whether you are new to Afrobeat/Afrofunk/ Highlife or already an aficionado, this album is well-worth seeking out.
Essiebons Special 1973 – 1984 – Ghana Music Power House will be released in various formats – Double LP (140g virgin vinyl) with a gatefold cover and a full-colour 12-page booklet; CD with a full-colour 28-page booklet; Digital download & streaming.