Alogte Oho and His Sounds of Joy

O Yinne!

This Ghanaian troupe owe a debt to their local market place in Bolgatanga, which was blasting their 2014 hit Mam Yinne Wa just as producer Max Weissenfeldt alighted from the bus station for a visit. The Berlin scene-maker had fallen in love with vintage Ghanaian highlife music a few years earlier, and had decided to check out Ghana’s northern savannah lands, home of the Frafra people. Having found the creator of the song – gospel singer Alogte Oho – Weissenfeldt was soon working with him, with an album following in 2019, its title track a remake of Ma Yinne Wa (“God, You Love Me So”).

This follow-up reiterates that beyond devotion to the Almighty, Frafra gospel owes little to its US counterpart. The title cut dispenses with vocals to deliver rolling West African Afrobeat punctuated by blasts of brass. More typical are choral tracks such as A Lemine Me and Doose Mam, whose call and response vocals are set to loping reggae-ish rhythms and sinuous keyboards, while the tumbling guitar of Te Bola Be? (“Where Are We?”) harks back to the 1950s era of Ghanaian highlife. A great advert for the group’s vibrant live performances.