King Ayisoba: The legend reinventing Ghana’s kologo music
Among Ghana’s thriving hiplife pop scene, King Ayisoba inhabits an intriguing creative intersection between the movement’s buoyant, hip-hop flavoured grooves and the indigenous music of his Bongo Soe upbringing.
Cutting records since the 2000s, Ayisoba has centred his upbeat sound on the perennial use of the two-stringed kologo, anchoring his dynamic songcraft with an earthy and traditional footing that can score the capital city of Accra’s urban music world while also being at home in the villages of his rural Upper East home.
Born in 1974, Ayibosa, also known as Albert Apoozore, was as young as three when first gifted with his associated kologa instrument. Reportedly, a ritualist came to the village near Bolgatanga upon familial concerns that the young Ayisoba was yet to be able to walk, suggesting the lute to his father, often called a Xalam but ‘kologa’ in the West African Frafra tongue. Ayibosa soon found himself attached to the instrument before most children start school, strumming tunes as he took the family sheep and cattle out grazing.
Before long, he was playing markets, funerals, and local bars, then heading off to major cities, such as Kumasi and Accra, to forge the dreamed-of music career. It was during his time in Accra that he crossed paths with producer and engineer Panji Anoff, resulting in 2006’s Modern Ghanaians cassette and his first CD.
Mixing his traditional kologa sounds with the hiplife edge, inspired by the late former collaborator Terry Bonchaka, single ‘I Want to See You My Father’ became a huge national hit and won ‘Most Popular Song’ at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards the following year.
“I want to inspire my fans to work hard and focus no matter the situation. They should be motivated and believe God will do the rest”.
King Ayisoba
Popularity would continue to propel Ayisoba to West African pop presence, continuing his blend of the indigenous and modernist sheen with 2008’s Africa, coating the kologa rhythms with blends of electronic beat-driven production.
Such international appeal saw Ayisoba travel around the world over the years, playing everywhere from America, China, Russia, and even a spot at the famed Roskilde and Fusion Festivals in Denmark and Germany, respectively. That same year, he founded the Batakari Festival, an annual fashion event designed to celebrate and showcase the sartorial flair of the Upper East communities he grew up in.
Ayisoba kept a busy pace with his music and ventures until the pandemic struck. Working on his tenth album in the Netherlands, Work Hard saw Ayisoba delve further into his spiritual relationship with God, the virtues of single-minded ambition, political corruption across border criminality and broken election pledges, and the veneration of the customs and rituals he grew up with outside the Bolgatanga town.
It’s quite a feat to promote the eternal pushing of one’s own creative peripheries and still remain connected to the musical traditions that shaped you. However, Ayisoba has spoken candidly of the need for any artists of any stripe to forever push themselves and embrace artistic opportunity when the road reveals itself.
Currently working on his follow-up to Work Hard amid a keen attention to African music heralded by the likes of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes and the Amapiano scoring South Africa’s townships, Ayisoba looks set to drop his new record in a climate he’d presaged years ago already.
