Alewa

Description

"THE FIRST ALBUM BY SANTROFI IS THE STARTING POINT OF A NEW HIGHLIFE WAVE, ROOTED IN THE PAST, ENRICHED BY THE CONTEMPORARY CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE STREETS OF ACCRA AND CUT OUT TO CONQUER THE FUTURE."In Ghanaian mythology, the "santrofi" is a brightly colored bird with symbolic significance: according to belief, killing it or keeping it at home brings bad luck, while releasing it wards off the evil eye. It is also a bird with a powerful song: the name was therefore a natural fit for Santrofi, an Accra-based group dedicated to preserving and spreading Ghanaian musical heritage, and in particular, highlife. The eight members of the collective all learned from the great names of the genre, namely Ebo Taylor, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, or Pat Thomas. Alongside the newer, more electronic and urban trends of the capital, Santrofi seeks to maintain the essence of highlife, played entirely live and carrying messages. Thus, their album, like the opening track, is called "Alewa," after the name of a popular local candy made of black and white stripes."In Ghana, the spirit of highlife is still very much alive with Santrofi." --- NOVA ---."Santrofi brings back the lost magic of Ghana, which was, in terms of music, one of the richest places in the world." --- André MANOUKIAN, FRANCE INTER ---."After the return of the old masters, it's the turn of young Ghanaians to take up highlife. Not only to embody its revival on European stages, like Ebo Taylor, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, or Pat Thomas, but also with the firm intention of making this vintage music flourish again in the streets of Accra, where it has since been largely diluted into hiplife and afropop. At the crossroads of generations, the eight musicians of Santrofi have been schooled by the elders, like Emmanuel Ofori, the bassist and director of the collective, who has toured with Pat Thomas and Ebo Taylor, but they also accompany the stars of current African pop. They blend the up-tempo guitars and brass polyrhythms of the seventies all the better on a fluid and breathless first album, which kneads echoes of calypso, afrobeat syncopations, old-school funk, and sputtering brass: everything that made the success of this progressive music from which Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela, or even Tina Turner drew. Santrofi adds its energy, its cajoling cheekiness, allows itself a sampled nod to the pan-Africanist speech of former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, as well as sounds very much of today, which refresh the message and warm the legs." --- Anne Berthod, TÉLÉRAMA n°3669 on 05/05/2020.---