I came back to Accra from Boston with a head full of Coltrane and a heart full of something I could not name. I had spent four years at Berklee studying jazz theory, playing standards, learning to navigate the American jazz tradition. And all the while, something in me was reaching for something else.
When I landed at Kotoka, I understood what it was.
The rhythm is already there
Jazz was always in conversation with Africa — whether it knew it or not. The blues, which jazz grew from, carries the memory of West African music in its bones. The call-and-response structure. The blue notes. The emphasis on rhythm as a communicative force, not just a time-keeper.
What Fela Kuti understood, what Hugh Masekela understood, what the musicians of 1960s Accra understood, was that this conversation could be explicit. You could put West African rhythm in direct dialogue with American jazz and let them talk to each other.
What that sounds like in Accra now
There is a scene here. It is small and it is real. Musicians who have studied jazz formally — in Ghana, abroad, or both — and come back to make something that does not have a name yet. Afro-jazz is the closest we have, but it undersells the specificity of what is happening.
The Accra sound uses the kpanlogo drum where an American jazz musician would use a hi-hat. It uses the rhythmic patterns of Ghanaian traditional music as the underlying pulse, and builds jazz harmony on top. The result is music that surprises jazz listeners and traditional music listeners in equal measure.
Jazz × Accra on Akwaaba Radio
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8 to 10pm, Jazz × Accra gives this music the space it needs. No genre policing. No purity tests. Just the music that happens when jazz and West Africa decide to have a proper conversation.
I host the show. I play what I love. I talk about it honestly. Some nights we go deep into the archives — Masekela, Dudu Pukwana, Manu Dibango. Some nights we play the newest recordings from studios in Accra and Kumasi. Always, the question is the same: what happens when jazz meets the Gold Coast?
Come find out.