Sycophantic Friends

Attentive listeners may have first heard Atamina on the 2016 compilation This is Kologo Power!, on which he appeared alongside King Ayisoba, the best-known exponent of the two-stringed kologo that characterises the traditional rhythms of Ghana's north-eastern region, close to the border with Burkina Faso. Now he steps out on his own with a set of funky, stripped-down beats that modernises the kologo sound with a punk attitude and a ranting voice that makes your average ghetto rapper sound soft in comparison. The production is frankly as crude as it gets and the horns that blare disconcertingly on several tracks are very dodgily sampled – yet Atamina's earthy energy wins through. He sounds at his best on ‘Bakolko’, on which his ranting vice is accompanied only by the scratchy two-string rhythms of the kologo, and on the tongue-in-cheek ‘When Two Elephants Fight’, on which the djembé (drum) strikes up a jumbo-sized rhythm of raw power as Atamina rails that ‘without justice there can be no peace.’ On ‘The Rubber Song’ he calls on Africa to ban plastic bags, which he bemoans are ruining both the land and the ocean. Sir David Attenborough would probably approve of the sentiment, although somehow it's hard to imagine Atamina's raucously clattering kologo-punk soundtracking Blue Planet.