In the 1950s, American jazz musicians were starting to look to Africa for rhythm and identity. A drummer from Accra was already there, playing African drums in Chicago clubs.
Guy Warren was born in Accra in 1923. He became a drummer as a young man and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, played with the Tempos, the dance band led by E. T. Mensah that helped define highlife. Warren brought ideas from swing and bebop, which he had encountered on trips abroad, into the band.
To America
In the mid-1950s, Warren moved to the United States. In Chicago and New York, he played African drums alongside jazz musicians, arguing that jazz needed to reconnect with its African roots.
Africa Speaks, America Answers
In 1956, he recorded Africa Speaks, America Answers, an album combining African drumming with American jazz. It was one of the earliest records to fuse the two deliberately. Drummers including Max Roach and Art Blakey admired his work, and Warren later claimed to have influenced many of the Afro-centric experiments of 1960s jazz.
Return to Ghana
Warren returned to Ghana and continued to perform and record, developing a style he called Afro-jazz. In 1974, he changed his name to Kofi Ghanaba, meaning “Kofi, child of Ghana”, a statement of identity and pride.
Sankofa
In 1993, Ghanaba appeared in Haile Gerima’s film Sankofa, playing the drummer who calls the characters back to their history at Cape Coast Castle. The role fitted his life’s work.
The drums
Ghanaba played a set of traditional drums rather than only a Western drum kit, including the atumpan talking drums of the Akan. He argued that African drumming was a complete musical language, with its own grammar of rhythm and tone, not simply accompaniment for other instruments.
Eccentric and outspoken
Ghanaba was known as a strong personality, outspoken about his influence and about the neglect of African musicians. His home in Medie, near Accra, became a meeting place for artists and students.
Death
Kofi Ghanaba died in December 2008, aged 85. His legacy lives on in Ghanaian jazz and in the drummers who followed him.
Legacy
Before African music became fashionable in the West, Ghanaba was already arguing that jazz was an African art form. His recordings are rare but reward listening.
He left Accra as Guy Warren and came home as Kofi Ghanaba. The name told the whole story.
