In the 1970s, Ghanaians called him the Golden Voice of Africa. Four decades later, crowds at European festivals who had never heard of him were singing along.
Pat Thomas became one of Ghana’s great highlife vocalists in the 1970s, working with bands such as Sweet Beans and Marijata and with the guitarist and arranger Ebo Taylor. His smooth, powerful voice made him a domestic star.
The golden years of highlife
Ghanaian highlife in the 1970s absorbed funk, soul and Afrobeat. Bands played long dance tracks with horns, electric guitars and organ. Pat Thomas’s voice sat on top of these grooves, and his songs about love, life and struggle became hits in Accra, Kumasi and beyond.
His work with Ebo Taylor, one of the most inventive arrangers in Ghanaian music, produced some of the best highlife of the era.
Hard times
In the late 1970s and 1980s, Ghana’s economic crisis, a curfew and political upheaval hit the music scene hard. Many musicians left the country or stopped recording. Pat Thomas spent periods abroad, and his older records became rare.
Rediscovery
Collectors of African vinyl rediscovered 1970s Ghanaian highlife in the 2000s. Reissue labels brought out compilations, and names like Pat Thomas and Ebo Taylor found audiences in Europe and North America who had never heard them before.
The Kwashibu Area Band
In 2015, Strut Records released Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band, a new studio album. The band was led by multi-instrumentalist Kwame Yeboah and saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff. The album was recorded in Accra and mixed in Berlin.
Old friends joined in. Ebo Taylor provided horn arrangements, and the Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen played on several tracks.
On tour
Critics praised the album as a benchmark for contemporary highlife. Its success led to a world tour, with the band playing major festivals including Glastonbury and Roskilde.
Why his voice mattered
Highlife depends on the singer. The band can groove for ten minutes, but the voice carries the story and the emotion. Pat Thomas had the range to sing a ballad and the power to ride a fast dance track, which is why his nickname stuck.
Where to start
Listeners can start with the 2015 Strut album, then go back to the 1970s recordings with Ebo Taylor and Marijata. Hearing the same voice across forty years is a lesson in how highlife carries its past forward.
Few singers get a second audience decades after their first. Pat Thomas got his in fields in England and Denmark, singing in Twi to crowds who learned the words phonetically.
