Love Warrior’s Anthem

Kwashibu Area Band’s two well-received album collaborations with Pat Thomas have placed them at the centre of a renaissance in highlife music. The Ghanaian group’s first solo record, Love Warrior’s Anthem, was recorded in Berlin. Here, they deftly expand the highlife form into mellower territory. The principal ingredient of innovation is space. The laid-back DNA of reggae has been spliced in via sultry horn lines and dub snare cracks. This slower pace highlights the intricacy of the interaction between fluttering guitar, moody bass and organ swells and stabs. ‘Nkwanta Bisa (At the Junction)’ centres on a serpentine guitar line, around which subtle piano figures, judicious percussive patter and wordless vocal textures are expertly wrapped. Kwashibu Area Band’s buoyant horn-led B section supplies jazz-like harmonic variation not typically seen on ‘traditional’ highlife cuts. Love Warrior’s Anthem is an elegant statement of highlife’s potential for evolution, from sidemen who have rightly taken centre stage.