It took longer than expected, but here's our first offering, a stellar brass band from the Volta region of Ghana. Ghanaian brass bands are usually connected to some organization like a church or political party or run by a brass band society that raises funds, owns instruments, and organizes the band. The Aflao Brass Band is a society band.
Aflao is on the east coast of Ghana on the border to Togo and is ethnically Ewe. Ghanaian Ewe music is rich with large groups of drummers playing complex interlocking compositions behind hymn-like melodies.
'Kale Hawo' sets the traditional Ewe forms of Agbadja and Kinka with traditional drums and brass. Often, brass bands from Ghana can sound wonderfully ramshackle due to instruments in horrible states of repair, but the Aflao band sounds in tune and tight.
Agbadja is played at funerals, and the music here is beautiful: triumphant but mournful.
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