Don't wait till Agya Koo Nimo dies, go visit & learn from him | Kafui Dey interviews Akablay

"If my guitar could speak after I am gone, it will say Africa unite. Because we can only emancipate ourselves. No other man can free your mind." — Akablay

The Man from Anochi: A Conversation with Akablay

He built his first guitar at the age of six from a Saturday Night powder tin, a piece of wood, grasscutter wire for strings, and sardine tin openers for tuning pegs. He made four of them and gave them to the neighbourhood children. That was the beginning of Abiza Band — the name he gave the group when he was six years old, the same name he carries today. From Anochi in Zuma land, through Juapong Secondary School, through the legendary bands of Ghana's highlife golden era, through Europe, South America, East Africa, and a Nobel Peace Prize performance in Oslo, Akablay is the pioneer of Kundum Highlife — master guitarist, band leader, keeper of a tradition rooted in the dwarves of Zuma folklore, and one of the most quietly significant figures in Ghanaian music.

The First Guitar and the Earliest Memories

The clearest early memory he carries is of walking to school in Anochi as a small boy, wearing his school uniform, carrying a brown container his grandmother gave him that looked like a calabash, stepping along a cracked cemented road with grass growing through the cracks and trees on both sides. He was born Anthony Anom — Anom being the name given to the third born, and Ano meaning aura. The BL came later when Jua Akablay was getting passports for the band and a clerical error became his official name. The Anthony came from church baptism. His true name is Antona.

His mother was a good singer in the church. His father was not a musician. His parents divorced when he was three or four years old and he was raised by his grandparents — his grandfather Kwaku, a fetish priest and herbalist of considerable power, and his grandmother Doma, whose great-great-grandmothers came from Liberia, which is where her name originates.

His grandfather had a mirror. When money went missing in the community, people came to Kwaku and stood in front of the mirror one by one. If you were innocent, you saw no reflection. If you were guilty, the mirror showed you exactly how and when you took the money — like a video. Five strong men stood ready by the mirror for anyone who confessed. Most of Akablay's songs are stories his grandfather told him.

Mathematics and Music

His best subject in school was mathematics — aimed. By Class Five he was solving Form Four problems. The Form Four students would call him out of his class when they could not solve problems, and then chase him through town when he made them look foolish in front of the teacher. He has never lost his respect for the connection between mathematics and music — timing, counting, calculation, structure. They are the same discipline expressed in different forms.

He believes music is the hardest subject in the world. Other subjects let you study and reproduce. Music flows directly from the brain through the veins and out through the fingers without calculation. When he plays something for the first time, it is already composed in the same moment it is heard.

First Teacher: Pu and the Two-Octave Scale

His first guitar teacher was Pu, the band leader for the local band in Anochi. Pu taught him the two-octave scale. More importantly, he taught him a rhythm — bass on the top string, melody at the bottom — that Akablay later traced to its origins among Sironese coconut farmers who came to Zuma land during colonial times to work on a plantation three miles square belonging to a white man called Mr. Khali. The Sironese brought this rhythm with them. The local people learned it and composed the song Yan on top of it. The rhythm passed into Ghanaian music and became the structural backbone of highlife — but the name of the rhythm itself has been forgotten. Nobody knows what to call it. They call it Yan Poman, but Yan Poman is a song, not a rhythm.

When Akablay performed at the Hi-Fi Festival in Zimbabwe and a seventy-year-old guitarist came to teach him what he called Zimbabwean folk music, it was the exact same rhythm. He went home, recorded it, called it Night in Zimbabwe, played it back for his children, and they were singing along without ever having heard it before. Africa is one people. The same music, the same people, separated only by colonial borders.

Second Teacher: Jua Akablay

His second teacher, and still his teacher, is Jua Akablay himself. He joined the band around 1986 to 1989, roughly one and a half years after picking up guitar seriously, brought in by Pu to replace him when Pu left for Canada. The musicians already in Jua's band were top level — Masha the bassist, Amos the keyboard player, Akwaba the drummer, Abena Richard the percussionist. Akablay was the youngest, the most inexperienced, and entirely underprepared for what happened on his first professional night.

At Talk of the Town club in Community 2, Kumasi, a Sunday night show. The band played their way through the set and arrived at a song that required the guitarist to play an introduction — count of four, two guitar passes, then the whole band comes in. Akablay's hands shook. He missed the cue entirely. His opening fell apart in front of the crowd. Jua stopped the band, turned to the audience, and announced the disaster publicly. After the show, Akablay packed his bag and went to sit in the bus to return home to his village. Jua found him before the bus left, pulled him off, and drove him home. You are not going anywhere.

Tuesday rehearsal, Jua went to Accra. In his absence, the bass player brought a replacement guitarist. When Jua returned at one-thirty and heard what had happened — heard that somebody had told this young man he was low standard, that nobody was irreplaceable — he delivered a firm correction to those responsible, then took Akablay to a shop and bought him three video cassettes and books: Jonathan Butler, George Benson, Peter White. Watch. Take notes. Play what you see. Four months later the band reassembled and Akablay was ready.

Kundum: The Rhythm of the Dwarves

Kundum is the foundational cultural festival of the Nzema people. Its origins, according to tradition, lie with a hunter who went missing in the forest, was captured by dwarves, and was taught their music and their dance — the Abisa dance — before being returned to his village. The dwarves told him that every year they would come to town, playing drums, and he must teach the people to dance and to drum. The festival has been held every October and November ever since, marking the harvest and the beginning of the new year.

The kundum rhythm is built on the one — a particular pulse that Akablay demonstrates with his hands, a forward-stepping beat that mirrors the way the dwarves themselves walk, always moving backward through the steps. Kundum Highlife is his attempt to bring this rhythm into the world of modern guitar music — to digitise a traditional Nzema sound and make it accessible without stripping it of its origins.

If you come to Nzema land during the kundum festival, he says, you will see traditional food you have never heard of, traditional dress with rattles worn around the waist to make rhythm while dancing, and about three or four distinct rhythmic styles that have no equivalent anywhere else in the world. He wants you to come with a recorder.

Butterfly Six and Western Diamonds

After mastering his craft under Jua Akablay, he joined Butterfly Six — the band managed by Angry Ibuka, owner of Western Diamonds. It was Ibuka's plan from the beginning to build a new band around strong musicians pulled from across the country. The founding lineup of Western Diamonds included Benella on keyboard and as band leader, Akablay as assistant band leader and guitarist, Echo Fry on drums, Chazb on bass, Justice J as singer, Kofi Tiger as second singer, Cromwell on trumpet, and the brothers on trumpet and trombone. After one month, Papa Yamson was brought in as music director and composer. The first recording of Western Diamonds featured Papa Yamson's songs, and Akablay played on all of them.

Western Diamonds was a big band. He has never seen anything like it before or since — the management, the production, the reach, the audience. When they played in Accra, followers would press money on them all night, so much that their monthly salaries went untouched for four and five months at a stretch. The band toured Europe — the Womad Festival in the UK, the Flinn Festival in Belgium, Rotterdam Black African Music Festival in the Netherlands, Delft Festival. They toured the Americas — the Bronx, Washington, Puerto Rico. They went to Nairobi for the Rotary Club Africa.

The band broke apart when the musicians' desire to tour clashed with the manager's preference for keeping them home where he made more per gig without splitting travel profits. One day the musicians called a meeting. Scatter. A great band, finished by misaligned incentives. If he had adjusted the revenue structure, it could have lasted for decades.

The Founding of Abiza Band

After Western Diamonds, Akablay came to Accra, formed New Ashanti briefly with Rexumar, and then returned to the name Abiza — the word he gave his six-piece childhood band in Anochi. Abiza means to ask. His band completed a 23-country African tour — starting at Djibouti, moving through Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, south through Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Angola, and Eswatini. He has three or four more countries before he completes the continent. Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria are still on the list.

The Hard Years in Accra

When he relocated his family to Accra in 2002, an agent and a landlord took his rent money and gave him an occupied apartment. He lodged his family in a hotel for three months, unable to pay. They were eventually evicted. For two months his wife and children slept on the floor of a friend's recording studio, spreading clothes on the floor when the studio closed at nine, waking at five, buying pure water for the children, cleaning them for school. His wife sat with her head in his lap on a bench by the wall while the children lay on the floor.

Eventually a family member took the children and his wife to New Town. He continued hustling — 50 cedis a session, 100 cedis a session, chasing gigs in a city that did not yet know him. When the children arrived at the New Town compound house and saw the pit toilet for the first time, they were so frightened they went nearly two days without using the bathroom. He brought them to the studio instead.

At one point his car was impounded at the police station because the hotel he had fled was pursuing him for unpaid bills. He negotiated his freedom by offering the car as collateral, went home without telling his wife what had happened, retrieved it a month later when he had the money, and only told her the story over dinner one evening when things had long settled. She did not go to look for him. She stayed. His late wife understood what the guitar meant. If he went a day without playing, she reminded him. Play.

Sessions and the Studio Work

As his reputation grew, the session calls came. He became one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Accra, playing on recordings that span the full range of Ghanaian popular music. He played on roughly eighty percent of CK Man's songs — including Emmanuela and dozens of others. He played on Rex Omar's Are You Serious Africa. He played on George Forest's Nana Cho productions. He played on Becca's Woman, African Woman album. He played on Papa Yamson's recordings. He played on gospel productions across multiple artists including Mama Christie.

He recorded five different songs in a single day at a studio in Labone, varying his approach for each one because a session guitarist who repeats himself becomes useless. The secret is to learn every rhythm, every style, so that any context can be met with something fresh.

The producers call. You come early. You do the work. Sometimes you play what they ask. Sometimes you play what they ask and then play what you hear, and let them choose. That is the way to do it.

Peter White, Clue, and the Copenhagen Jazz Festival

Peter White — one of the three guitarists whose video cassettes Jua Akablay bought him in 1989 — performed at the first Stanbic Jazz Festival in Ghana. Akablay had been in Denmark with his band and they rehearsed Peter White's material for weeks before flying home for the event. There was one song they did not fully understand. When they picked Peter White up from his hotel, Akablay explained the problem, assuming he could read a music sheet and clarify it. Peter White looked at him and said: my brother, I don't read music. You play what you hear.

At the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Akablay performed last. Clue — one of the great smooth jazz guitarists of his generation — was in the audience. After the set, Clue sent someone to find him. When they met, Clue said he liked Akablay's style and wanted to learn from him. Akablay told him: I was inspired by you. I learned from you. Clue said: no, you play your thing. I play my thing. I want what you have. The young people of Ghana who run away from their own music do not understand what they are giving up.

The Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo

In 2010, Akablay performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo's great hall, brought in by Miata Foulee to play for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia when she received her award. The Friday before the ceremony, he performed a trio with Eric Antonio on piano and Laboratori on flute for the King of Norway. He played Ghanaian highlife for the king. On the Saturday, the trio performed again — this time alongside the full Norwegian orchestra, strings, cellos, everything — while Akablay dropped his guitar into the mix. Seventeen thousand people in tuxedos. The man from Anochi, playing in Oslo.

World Highlife Day

He founded World Highlife Day five years ago. His reasoning is simple: the world celebrates World Jazz Day. World Reggae Day. World R&B Day. These are children of highlife — reggae, funk, R&B, jazz, all carry the DNA of highlife rhythms and harmonics. The mother has never been celebrated. He wants that changed.

The vision is Independence Square, a big stage, every young artist in Ghana performing whatever music they play — whether it is reggae, hip-hop, afrobeats, amapiano — and calling it all highlife. Because highlife is Ghana and Ghana is highlife. If you are born in Ghana, you are highlife. He has artists ready to celebrate the day simultaneously in Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. The first editions were held at Plus 233, at Alliance Française, and subsequently at Goethe Institut — the only consistent sponsor so far, a German cultural organisation, while Ghanaian institutions have not yet stepped in. He wants government support. He believes it will come.

The Guitar and the Legacy

He plays a LAG guitar — handmade in Marseille, France. He believes he and one other guitarist in Africa play this instrument. He keeps it beside him when he sleeps. His late wife never complained. If he missed a day of playing, she reminded him.

To build finger speed and strength, he fills small bottles with sand, ties them with rope to his fingers, and plays against the weight. When the bottles come off, the fingers fly. The technique was taught to him by Jua Akablay, who is still alive at ninety-five and still teaching — still giving out books and assignments, still waiting for students who are serious enough to show up.

His albums include Life in the Pot, Flip Side of Life, Genesis of Life, Gospel According to My Guitar, and Edok — the last named after the process of pounding food in a mortar. He is currently working on a new album. He is establishing a festival in his village in Anochi, to be held on Easter weekend when the indigenous diaspora returns home. He runs an online guitar class called My African Guitar Class with thirty-six students on WhatsApp, currently free — and soon to move to a paid platform, because he has learned that what people get for nothing they do not value.

When the day comes and the strings go silent, he wants to be remembered for founding World Highlife Day and for the songs — especially Take Away, which he says he now plays third on the setlist because if he plays it too early, the women leave for someone else. He wants to be remembered as one who lived well and produced great music. As for who carries Kundum Highlife after him, he looks to his children — guitar, drums, bass, and singing already distributed among them — and imagines a family band. The next generation.

The Guitar's Final Word

If his guitar could speak after he is gone, it would say Africa unite. Not as a slogan but as a recognition. He has stood in Nairobi and been mistaken for a Tanzanian. He has heard the same rhythm in Zimbabwe and in Anochi and understood they were one thing. He has crossed borders between Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire and found the same language, the same food, the same people separated by lines drawn by someone else. His grandmother's people came from Liberia. His grandfather's name carries the name of the first king of Zuma. Africa is not poor — Africans are poor. The continent feeds the world and its people struggle. We harvest the cocoa and buy the chocolate back from them. The IDC factory in his village — which once made coconut oil, mosquito coils, carpets, and soap, and gave the whole community employment — is gone. His childhood friends are scattered. The solution is not elsewhere. It begins here. Africa unite.