MUSIC INDEED does wonders for the soul, and that is why the music of Ghana’s s old masters should be remembered and prevented from getting lost.
The music of our old masters should be urgently digitalised and made freely available online. They do this all over the world.
In the USA for instance, a song by Bob Dylan has just been re-mastered on vinyl and sold for over £1 million! This has been done while Bob Dylan is still alive. What will be the cost of his music when he dies? I leave that to your imagination!
Just as our old masters – Jacob Sam, Kwasi Manu, Kwaa Mensah and others — were inspired by the work of the (then) unrecorded traditional musicians whom they imitated by ear, so must we ensure that what was, (by good fortune) actually recorded for us by the old masters before they passed, is retrieved from any surviving, old and crackly recordings and restored, to inspire the generations yet unborn.
Personally, it was during the moonlit hours in my village that pubescent girls of my childhood sang lovely songs to arouse our desire. One I remember best was sung after they had asked us boys to line up. They would then take turns to sing around us, saying “Look well amongst them/and pick the one you fancy!”
Need I say that when a lovely hand was delicately placed on your shoulder, you felt as if heaven itself had turned into gold dust and been sprayed on you?
We also had music played on gramophones. My father had one of those wind-up gramophones which used a “needle” to reproduce the music on vinyl records. It was a major attraction to customers who patronised his shop. So we heard all the popular recorded songs of the time.
One question that was never absent from the debates over music at the time, between my father and his friends, was this: Was Jacob “Sam” – alias Kwame Asare – leader of the Kumasi Trio, a greater guitarist than his contemporary and rival, Kwasi Manu?
Both guitarists could use their strings to play almost the entire melody of their song before vocalising it. But whereas Sam used his strings as a constant accompaniment to his vocals, Kwasi Manu kept weaving chords in and out, with his guitar, as he sang. So, in terms of the intricacy of artistry, I would put him slightly above Sam.
But Sam’s voice was another thing – quite unique. Its richness was lost by being “lightened” into near-soprano, but one could sense that there was some good bas hiding within it, drying to get out. This was evident in one song in particular – a favourite of my father’s entitled, “Lamle AA na mewaa no!”
A great plus for Sam was the beautiful stories he told with his songs, such as what he said about Lamle, the woman “with a neck as beautiful as that of a gourd!”. He said that when he saw Lamle, he could not sleep; yet when he saw her, he still couldn’t sleep! He added that when he was eating and he caught of sight of her, his food fell from the plate onto the ground! Imagine being madly in love and having someone describe your feelings for you in this manner!
Now, one day, something happened at Asiakwa which could have come straight out of a storybook, as far as we music-lovers were concerned. My father travelled a lot to buy supplies for his shop, and so he knew almost every driver in the area. One of his best friends was a good-looking driver who lived at Kyebi and whom we kids called “Papa ‘Sei” (for Osei).
Well, one day, Papa Sei, on his way back to Kyebi, Papa Sei stopped and parked right in front of my father’s shop.
Papa ‘Sei stepped out of the truck. A smallish man stepped out behind him.
They came into the shop and my father greeted them cheerfully and offered them seats. He opened a beer and served them both.
After taking a sip of the beer, Papa ‘Sei said, with a mysterious grin, “Agya Kwaam, you won’t believe it when I tell you who this man with me is!!”
My father was intrigued. “Who is he”? He eagerly asked.
Papa ‘Sei then announced: “He is the famous musician, Kwasi Manu!”
We all shouted in disbelief: “KWASI MAAAANU?”
For, Kwasi Manu was, in our terms, the equivalent of a member of the Beatles in England circa 196-4! You only heard his music. To see him was unimaginable.
Now, my father was quite a tease, and although Papa ‘Sei wasn’t someone he would normally challenge, he said skeptically: “Kwasi Manu? Na ne ho he n’ἑsἑ Kwasi Manu Ne nsa a ↄde bↄ guitar no wↄ he?” [What part of him looks like Kwasi Manu? Where are the fingers with which he strums the guitar?]
Papa ‘Sei probably expected precisely such a reaction.
The man purporting to be Kwasi Manu too didn’t say anything. He just sat there expressionless.
Then Papa ‘Sei whispered something to him. The man got up quietly and went to the truck. When he came back, he was carrying something wrapped in cloth. It was — a guitar!
We all held our breath and waited.
I don’t know exactly how the news spread from the shop to other parts of the town, but before the man had strummed a single note on his guitar, the shop was surrounded by a fairly large crowd.
The man looked at my father and asked, “What song would you like me to play?”
The crowd answered for my father: “Yaw Ampoma!” everyone shouted.
As soon as the man struck the opening chords, we knew it was Kwasi Manu. For no one else could possibly play a guitar like that. He reproduced the opening sequence of the song exactly as it was on the record. It was uniquely beautiful and everyone fell completely silent.
We all let out a might cheer when the song ended. We l realised that we had been extremely privileged to hear a live performance by a master guitarist and singer.
My father opened some more bottles of beer and entreated them to stay and play a few more songs for us. But Papa ‘Sei explained that they had to go.
That was in 1948 or ’49. We never saw Kwasi Manu again. We didn’t even get to hear about his eventual death.
Nor did we hear of the death of Jacob Sam, either.
Shame on the journalists of the time! Sadly, politics seemed to be the only thing that interested them!
BY Cameron Duodu