Name: Highwayman by Sludge Country
Duration: 5 min 47 s
Description: From the upcoming O Key album Common Regular Music.

From the upcoming O Key album Common Regular Music.

Highwayman

From the O Key album Common Regular Music

Jeffrey Lewis

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One "Our Garden Needs Its Flowers" was a revelation to many folks outside West Africa when it was reissued worldwide a few years ago. However, the Country-Americana duo from Ivory Coast has been massive since they emerged in the mid-80s, playing stadiums and making a beloved home in peoples' ears across the region for decades. The enormous response from listeners and press around the globe speaks for itself.

Now we are making Jess Sah Bi's beautiful first solo album widely available for the first time. Recorded in South Carolina and released in Ivory Coast in 1991 only on cassette, Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas [Jesus Christ Never Gives Up] comes out April 18 in restored and remastered audio on digital and tape formats. It is the first in ATFA's new African Devotional Music series.

Jess Sah Bi narrowly survived a brush with death and promised himself and God that he would record an album in praise. While on an exchange visit to South Carolina he arranged to record some new songs and later released the album in Ivory Coast. At the time, locally-produced gospel music wasn't big yet—most of the well-known West African gospel artists hailed from Ghana and Nigeria. But with the success of Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas, Jess Sah Bi helped kick off a homegrown Ivorian gospel music movement that today thrives in many parts of the country and beyond.

Jess Sah Bi—Ile De Goree (Album Out 18 April)

Preorder

Moskito—Mashonisa (Album out 23 May)

Moskito—Why Wena

Ata Kak's first new song in over 30 years!

Ata Kak created a peculiar slice of Ghanaian music history with his debut album “Obaa Sima”. While it barely made a ripple at the time of its release in 1994, the cassette found a new life online in 2006. A not-so-underground cult obsession grew after it appeared on  the blog Awesome Tapes From Africa as its very first post, a sort of manifesto for the project. His addictive amalgam of left-field electronic music and Twi-language hiplife reached surprising levels of awareness among music fans of many stripes. The mystery behind the musician’s identity grew. Eventually Yaw Atta-Owusu came out of the shadows, from his quiet home in Kumasi, to tour the world playing high-energy, sweat-soaked performances at major festivals like Glastonbury, Sónar and Pop Montreal. 

Now, for the first time since 1994, Ata Kak releases new music. Honed in studios around Kumasi over the last several years, the songs feature the rapper-singer’s acrobatic rap, signature scatting, dramatic drums and even traditional Akan harp. The compositions are more ambitious than his earlier work, with more complex arrangements and layered harmonies. Ata Kak’s new songs are also the natural expression of a restless artist—he is a prolific poet and author of a half-dozen books, as well as an active gardener and busy painter. 

Born in Ghana in 1960, Ata Kak wasn’t always involved in music. But his travels and openness to the world lead him into the music industry. While living in Germany, he was invited to play drums in a reggae band and subsequently played in highlife bands in Ontario after moving to the Toronto area. He recorded “Obaa Sima” there at his home studio and released it in Ghana in 1994. He didn’t participate in music much in the intervening years until “Obaa Sima” was reissued in 2015. He started performing his song live with the help of a brilliant cast of London-based musicians and has toured three continents and played to thousands of fans in venues of all kinds.

Highwayman

Sludge Country

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