A.O.E.I.U (An Ordinary Exercise in Unity)

Florence Adooni is a singer born to the Frafra people of northeast Ghana. She grew up performing in church choirs and forging a career in the thriving Frafra gospel scene but grew up in the Ashanti capital of Kumasi, where highlife music pulses from bars, cars and open doorways. Having collaborated with name artists such as Jimi Tenor and the north Ghanaian kologo (two-string proto-banjo) master Guy One, and after touring Europe, Adooni went into the studio with her eight-piece, synth-sexy band and delivered this fine seven-track album, one strafed with psychedelic funk, dancefloor polyrhythms and jittery highlife guitar grooves, all melded through Frafra-Kumasi influences. Adooni’s voice is the album’s real USP, rich and powerful on stand-out tracks such as the horn-heavy opener ‘Mam Pe’ela Su’ure’ (My Heart is Pure), the dynamic, get-down-on-it hit ‘Uh-Ah Song’ and, out of leftfield, ‘Otoma Da Naba’ and its Ethiopian pentatonics. A fast-rising star.