Obiaa!

This is the second release from veteran Ghanaian highlife singer Pat Tomas in his latest incarnation as leader of the Kwashibu Area Band. His career dates back to the 1960s when he was a member of the Broadway Dance Band alongside Ebo Taylor. During the 80s he was based in Germany and eventually settled in Canada. Now in his 70s Pat Thomas has experienced a resurgence of interest in recent years and since 2015 has been successfully touring. During his long career he has performed classic dance band highlife, soul, reggae and disco highlife. The Kwashibu Area Band (Kwashibu is a district in Accra) play a beautifully relaxed rolling highlife style and their own fluid version of Afrobeat. It's very much old-school guitar band highlife with a horn section and pumping Farfisa keyboard. Dubbed the ‘Golden Voice of Africa’, Pat Tomas shows no sign of faltering – particularly on a remake of his hit ‘Yamona’ – and the band excel instrumentally on the punchy Afrobeat track ‘Bubu’.

This excellent new release pairs up nicely with the previous album and a retrospective double CD, Coming Home, released by Strut in 2015 and 2016 respectively.