[CE07]

The Music of Ammasu

Ammasu Akapoma Group

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his is the first of our four albums giving a musical portrait of the Village of Ammasu in the Brong-Ahafu region of Ghana. This first album is on CD and digital and comes with a 28 page booklet with texts and pictures. The completing three albums are digital-only.

The music was recorded during our family’s stay between 1975 and 77 where I was studying drumming as a member of the Ammasu Akapuma Band and Prudence was doing anthropological field work and our two children were busy being children.

The Ammasu Akapoma Band was the hottest funeral band in the region. On these albums you will find ritual and recreational drumming, singing in sorrow and happiness, children’s music, a brass band and more. – Bengt Berger

Lets start with some good news as we enter 2023!

This is Amma Kyerenmaa who sings You Are So Brave, a funeral dirge on The Music of Ammasu album. During 2022 Country & Eastern joined Tracklib a site for legal download and licensing of music that sees to it that money will reach the original creators. During the summer of 2022 Brockhampton, a group from Texas with more than five million listeners per month used two seconds from Amma Kyerenmaas’ singing and offered a handsome sum of money in advance for use in the song Southside. My family did spend a long time in the mid seventies in this rather poor village in the cocoa district of the Brong-Ahafu region learning a lot from the generous people of Ammsu and later I was happy to release some of their great music. So you can imagine the satisfaction and happiness it gives me that a couple of weeks into 2023 (a year we all fear will carry a lot of bad news), the Swedish drummer and traditional Ewe priestess Kristina Aspeqvist will travel to Ammasu to hand over quite a lot of money to the Ammasu village and the Ammasu Akapoma Band.

tracks

Who Is The Chief - Greeting on Atumpan (0:23)
When I Die There Will Be Peace In The House - Aweso (10:11)
Proverbs on the Atumpan (1:41)
Fontomfrom - The Royal Drums (6:15)
The Royal Horn (0:23)
You Are So Brave - Funeral Dirge (3:26)
My Lover Is Stranded At The Opposite Side of the River - Funeral Dirge (3:04)
My Eyes Are Flooded With Tears - Funeral Dirge (1:32)
Akapoma (5:32)
Let Us Say Goodbye - Kununku (15:32)
Denseou (2:57)
New Love Is More Than Madness - Love Song (2:20)
If I Don't Marry You I'll Feel Embarrased - Love Song (2:34)
Nana Yago - Cantata (5:13)
Tana Tinana - Cantata (5:05)
The Brass Band (9:21)
Eggs Are Eggs - Proverb on the Atumpan (0:24)

musicians

The Ammasu Akapoma Group featuring Ahenkaan, Kwame Yeboah, Kofi Boanu et al
Children of Ammasu
The local Brass Band

more info

There are four albums in all from Ammasu:
Apart from The Music of Ammasu (ce07) with a broad portrait of music in the village, three more mp3-only albums from Ammasu have been released:

cex06 The Music of Ammasu – more drumming
cex07 The Music of Ammasu – more singing
cex08 The Music of Ammasu – analytical drumming

Download the CE07 booklet as pdf.
If you print a physical from your download, here is a pocket for the cd.
Reviews from Songlines and The Wire

“Ammasu – an anthropological narrative” by Prudence Woodford-Berger

Video of Atumpan making with music in Ghana 1976: