Music
Landmark
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley
born 1947
Invented simigwa, and rapped over highlife before rap had a name
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Ghana Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
The creator of the simigwa genre, and — on a 1973 record — one of the earliest musicians anywhere to put rhythmic spoken verse over a groove.
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley grew up in Sekondi-Takoradi and came up through the Ghanaian dance bands of the 1960s, playing bass and saxophone with Ebo Taylor and the Uhuru Dance Band.
Simigwa-Do, released in 1973, is the record the claim rests on. Over a highlife groove Ambolley delivers rhythmic spoken Fante — talking in metre, in rhyme, against the beat — which he named simigwa, and which predates the commercial emergence of rap in New York by several years. Whether it is rap depends on what one thinks rap is, and Ambolley has always framed it as something Ghanaian rather than as anticipating anybody; the Akan tradition of rhythmic speech over drumming is older than either.
He has recorded more than thirty albums in a career of over fifty years, fusing highlife with funk, jazz and Afrobeat, and remained a working bandleader rather than a heritage act. The younger generation of Ghanaian musicians, and the international crate-digging revival of 1970s Ghanaian funk, have brought his early records back into circulation.
Simigwa-Do, released in 1973, is the record the claim rests on. Over a highlife groove Ambolley delivers rhythmic spoken Fante — talking in metre, in rhyme, against the beat — which he named simigwa, and which predates the commercial emergence of rap in New York by several years. Whether it is rap depends on what one thinks rap is, and Ambolley has always framed it as something Ghanaian rather than as anticipating anybody; the Akan tradition of rhythmic speech over drumming is older than either.
He has recorded more than thirty albums in a career of over fifty years, fusing highlife with funk, jazz and Afrobeat, and remained a working bandleader rather than a heritage act. The younger generation of Ghanaian musicians, and the international crate-digging revival of 1970s Ghanaian funk, have brought his early records back into circulation.
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