GH jazz: Then and now
Today, April 30, is being celebrated all over the world as International Jazz Day. Nii Laryea Korley takes a broad look at the jazz music scene in the country.
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It is Saturday night and the Sound Factree band, led on piano by Victor Dey, are in full stride at the +233 Jazz Bar and Grill at North Ridge in Accra.
Not far away from +233 at the Table Bay Jazz Club of the Alisa Hotel, trumpeter and saxophonist Dela Jackson and his Sahel Breeze band are also enchanting listeners with some inventive playing, while at the Piano Bar at Teshie-Nungua Estates, saxophonist Bernard Ayisa and friends swing away with relish.
The three venues are among the joints in the nation’s capital where one can hear that brand of music, born at the beginning of the last century in America by African-American musicians but which has flourished and grown fangs in numerous directions.
Simply called jazz, it has spawned several movements and styles and has become part of the culture of virtually every country in the world. So depending on how fast or slow you want to pop your fingers or tap your feet, you could opt for bebop, post-bop, Third Stream, Dixieland, jazz-rock-fusion, post-fusion, Afro-jazz, cool jazz, acid jazz, progressive jazz, smooth jazz, crossover jazz, free jazz and many other permutations.
Force for peace and unity
How deeply jazz has permeated the world was illustrated by UNESCO in 2012 when it proclaimed April 30 as a day to raise awareness of the virtues of the music as an educational tool and a force for peace, unity,dialogue and enhanced co-operation among people.
Ghana celebrated the 2013 International Jazz Day at +233 with a concert organised by the Jazz Society of Ghana with support from the United Nations Educationa Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Arterial Network and a few other outfits.
The 2014 International Jazz Day was also marked at +233 and the occasion was used to celebrate Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson and Nina Simone, African-American women who made significant contributions to the development of jazz. Two Ghanaian women -Ofie Kodjoe and SandraHuson- as well as two American women - Brenda Joyce and Michelle Mckinney-Hammond - sang on the night.
Improvisation
Interestingly, the first dance band said to have been formed in the Gold Coast after the First World War was called the Jazz Kings. The members, obviously, had no way of figuring out that about a century after the birth of their band, many people in this nation would be fiercely in love with the music that has improvisation as its vital inner core.
Ghanaian dance bands that flourished in the 1950s through to the 1970s such as ET Mensah and the Tempos, Black Beats, Ramblers, Uhuru, Broadway, Globemasters, Rhythm Aces and Star Gazers all fancied jazz though they were also extremely conversant with styles such as highlife, bossa nova, blues and Latin.
The visit of American jazz trumpeter and singer Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong and the All-Stars band to this country in 1956 was a useful one for local musicians as some of them had the opportunity to jam with the jazz great and pick some points from him.
Well-known musicologist Prof. John Collins noted: “Though jazz had been known in Ghana for some time, it was more of the ragtime and later the swing variety. It was Louis Armstrong who brought in the Dixieland jazz and many Accra trumpeters started using his phrasing and singers copied Satchmo’s voice.”
Ghanaba
If some musicians here were happy to copy aspects of Satchmo’s trumpet playing and singing, drummer Ghanaba, known at the beginning of his career as Guy Warren of Ghana, opted to go in the other direction. He created his own profoundly African approach to jazz and was known for his powerful pounding on the unique set of ‘fontomfrom’ drums which he switched to after abandoning the conventional Western drum set.
He met and befriended many jazz legends when he lived and worked in the United States in the 1950s. They included Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Lester Young and Billie Holiday. Ghanaba’s albums known widely in international circles include ‘Africa Speaks, America Answers’; ‘Themes for African Drums’; ‘Emergent Drums’ and ‘Afro-Jazz.’
For Ghanaian jazz lovers, especially those who were in Accra in the 1980s and 1990s, there were dedicated venues for them to enjoy the frenetic key and tempo changes, brief and prolonged solo spots and the general jolly air about the music.
The Harmattan Club at the Shangri-La Hotel used to host clarinettist and flutist Jimmy Beckley and his quintet. Singer Rama Brew and pianist Charles Dumor played regularly at the Golden Tulip backed by experienced hands from Ghana, Togo and Cameroun.
Singer Toni Manieson held sway at the Jazz Tone near Labone Junction and the Baseline, predecessor of +233, hosted bands such as Butubutu, Jazz Friends, Little Heroes and Zed Kankari.
Excellent players
While local musicians have tried through the years to satisfy fans, many excellent players from abroad have also passed through with varying degrees of rhythmic adventure and spontaneity.
The list of such jazz advocates include Pharaoh Sanders, Roy Ayers, Nathan Davis, Richard Bona, Marion Meadows, Vinx, Native Vibe, Hugh Masekela and Jimmy Dludlu.
Some of our own have also been doing well away from our shores with styles that often blend in elements of their roots. They include pianists Ed Bentley in the United Kingdom and Kofi Wilmot in the United States.
Saxophonist Bernard Ayisa, who spends a lot of time in the Gulf region but travels the world for concerts, is a clear reminder of the great versatile saxophonists produced in this country such as Ray Allen, Amon Kotei, Sammy Lartey, Spike Anyankor, George Amissah, George Lee,Tex Korley and Teddy Osei.
Stanbic festival
The two-year-old Stanbic Ghana Jazz Festival has also brought some renewed interest in the genre. The variety of home-grown talents that featured alongside guest players, Peter White (2014) from England and Earl Klugh (2015) from the United States, was a clear indication of the many young folks brimming with talent on all kinds of instruments on the local jazz scene and who are giving moments of listening pleasure to jazz fans.
Whether at +233 or Alisa Hotel’s Table Bay, Piano Bar or any other place across the country where jazz seeps through the repertoire, the pronouncement is that music will always pull at our hearts and jazz will always be in the air.
