Self-taught musician Yaw Atta-Owusu, better known as Ata Kak, hails from Kumasi, Ghana and represents the country’s exciting, emerging musical style. His style is referred to as “Hiplife”: a fusion of American hip-hop and Afro-Caribbean music. Ata Kak represents Ghana’s unclassifiable styles: it is most likely that you’ve never heard anything like this before.
The tapes of Ata Kak were found by Brian Shimkovitz, who spent a year traveling in Ghana, Ethiopia and Mali, among many other countries, collecting cassette tapes by semi-underground artists from local street sellers. The tapes Shimkovitz discovered in 2002 formed the blog and Youtube channel-turned record label “Awesome Tapes from Africa.Û Since then, Awesome Tapes from Africa along with Ata Kak have peaked the interest of music bloggers and publications everywhere.
Obaa Sima by Ata Kak
You cannot be really sure of what you’re listening to when listening to the sounds of Ata Kak, but that it is perhaps a portal into another dimension. Reminiscent of go-go fused with rap, with a touch of irony, his tracks are as captivating as they are weird. The track “Yemmpa Aba” seems to make a direct reference to hip-hop anthem “It Takes TwoÛ (1988). Fact magazine describes Ata Kak’s sounds as “Spongebob Squarepants scats…in Ghanaian Twi dialect.” I tend to imagine this tape to be Space Jam turned into an 80s cereal commercial.
Shimkovitz, once again, had to cross continents in order to find the man behind Ata Kak – Yaw Atta-Owusu – after his tape had gained so much notoriety in music circles. Yaw Atta-Owusu would leave his home of Kumasi for Germany in 1985 in order to flee military coups and political repression, he states in an interview with The 405.
The album Obaa Sima was recorded in Ata Kak’s studio in Ontario, while he was the member of a Canadian highlife-reggae band, Marijata. Ata Kak revealed that the album had many influences: reggae, dancehall, Ghanaian highlife, American soul, disco and rap. Obaa Sima is a tropical amalgamation of Americana styles created in the transcontinental nexus of Ghana, Germany and Canada.
What makes us gravitate towards Ata Kak’s bubblegum beats and Twi raps, is their esoteric nature. Ata revealed to The 405 that his music has a story “which the whole world must know.Û Perhaps the cryptic nature of this overtly enthralling story is what will continue to peak our interest.
Yemmpa Aba by Ata Kak
Daa Nyinaa by Ata Kak
Boma Nnwom by Ata Kak
You can listen to the whole Obaa Sima album on Spotify.