Moving On...

Wow. This trip has been a straight trip! Sorry I haven't given y'all an update in a while. There has been soooo much that has happened in the last few days. At this point it's like we know a good number of the major players in the Ghanaian music industry, and are within 1 degree of separation from ALL of them. We have accomplished a lot in the last few weeks. We have also had a lot of fun. I really love coming home. The last few days myself, Quao & Abeka have been near inseparable. Then last night Baka came out with us, meaning all the Ashong boys were in effect for the first time in a couple of years. I am now feeling the pinch. I am really going to miss my brothers and I'm trying not to be too sad. I also recently met someone very special who has also made a surprising impact on me. It's like my eyes are opening to a whole new world around me and there's a part of me that wants to stay here and build on what's been started. At the same time, I have a pretty clear vision of what we've got to do to take the SMT to the next level and it requires me to head back to Beantown with the swiftness. We are leaving Ghana w/ some phenomenal work accomplished. If all goes well with our followup, in the next few weeks the "Sweetremix" video will begin airing regularly all over the African continent. I am particularly indebted to your girl Sheila on this trip. Sheila has gone way beyond being our Public Relations Officer out here, and become more like a sister. She has fed & housed me and Steven for 2wks and given us food to eat and advice to chew on. To look back and see how far we've all come since Osekre introduced us to her at Labadi Beach back in '03, is incredible. Big love to homegirl. I could go further, but I should just go. On the personal/romantic tip, I lost one person who was very special to me and discovered someone who may very well become so. There's something wonderful about African women...a combination of strength and tenderness that I haven't really encountered elsewhere. Someday I hope I can come home to stay... Off to finish the biz. Catch y'all soon! Mad love from home, D.N.A

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Back to Making Sense

Ok, this one is going to be short. Man, we are getting busy over here. We had a great session last night with a group of youth, mostly from Legon, and went over a million and one issues on their minds mostly having to do with sex & relationships. It's hilarious how kids are the same everywhere. But they raised some really interesting points that y'all will definitely see in the film... We also got a chance to film a presentation by African music scholar John Collins who is the head of the Music Dept. at Legon. Tomorrow we get to rap to him in person and in detail about the history of Highlife. Between Prof. Nketia, Koo Nimo & Prof. Collins, we really have tapped the experts on traditional Highlife. Tonight we went to peep the music in action. We had a PHENOMENAL shoot at Cabane Bamboo, a dop night spot run by a Nigerian lady named Francesca. She is off the hook and has been around the continent doing work in music. The band she brought down was ridiculous kid. I wish we had more gear to really capture the sound and feeling in the spot tonight, but I gotta' tell you it was beautiful. The spirit was really moving and I couldn't help but think how proud I am to be a part of this project and to be able to soon share more of our sound & culture w/ the world. We interviewed Francesca and Kwame Frimpong, lead singer of the band along w/ one of the key musicians. They broke down some serious biz and gave us NUFF words to work with on the power and significance of African music. I left the place feeling so inspired, I just want to go home and grab my guitar. Yeah, yeah go home on a Friday night and grab your guitar. Please, no comments thanks. And since some of you have been wondering all along, yes, we have met some young ladies too. Akwaaba had 3 propositions in like one day. It's got to be the corn rows... Anyway he's a goodie-goodie so it don't matter. I on the other hand would be horrible except that I have been recently cuckolded. My lovely pseudo-platonic, hyper squishy, someday-potential-wife-to-be has dumped me for a doctor. 2 years of trans-Atlantic text messaging and once a year visits and I get traded in for a dude w/ a real job...what's that all about?! Pick up yer ego, D it's going to be alright. Fortunately, I am an artist and we manage to attract women despite extreme brokeness and a reportedly high incidence of insanity. So...I've managed to meet some new people. Now to start another fruitless long distance relationship with a beautiful African woman who will wind up being some sort of distant relative. Gotta' love coming home! Anyway, don't worry y'all I'm being good and will not be coming home w/ no babies or any other drama. Like I said, I'm going home to my guitar. Tomorrow we go drink a lil' Guinness (tonight was ALL about the Palm Wine), and get back to bidness. Oh, and when y'all see Akwaaba Jenkins give that fool a hug. He was out there looking like the Camera MACK tonight, doing hand stands n' such to get the ill shots. This film is going to be hot! I'm off to bed! Unless Alligator Jones drags me to this spot where we met these lovely young women the other night... Did I mention that I LOVE IT HERE?! :) Off to da' crib, D.N.A

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Back in Effect

What's up y'all. Sorry for the delay in posting. The last couple of days have been buck wild bizzy. We slept for like an hour after the last posting I made on Tue night and got up dumb early Wed morning to make a bus to Kumasi. Of course we got to the station and the people were like "all the tix are sold out." This caused a certain amount of um...consternation as we were supposed to meet some key people up there. Turns out there were plenty of tix left on a bus that stopped in Kumasi on it's way to another city. Why couldn't they tell us that before we started beating people? Ok, we didn't beat nobody. Ghanaians be tuff. Though not nearly as tuff as Nigerians judging from the films we've been watching since we got in. Yo, don't never to go a juju priest/ess to try and get a hook up. Your life will inevitably be screwed up and you will die. Now that you know this you don't actually have to watch ANY of these films... Back on track. We got to Kumasi and things were DOPE. Koo Nimo was waiting for us at the bus stop by the University. Imagine that - we showed up in town and Koo Nimo came to pick us up! :) If you're Ghanaian you know this is special. Ok, now this blog is all out of order. I don't care, I"m hella' sleepy. I already told y'all about Kumasi. Ok, I will start a better post. Don't forget what I said about that juju! D

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Quickie

Yo, we are straight pooped right about now. Stayed up 'til pretty late doing interviews for the film last night at a cool new lounge/fashion spot called "Rema's" in Osu. The place is not only georgous but it is owned by a beautiful 25 year old designer (ie. Rema) and operated by a staff of other beautiful young women. So of course we had to take the camera and rap to all of them. :) We got a TON of other interviews done yesterday and just generally met some phenomenal people. I am being crazy general because I'm dumb sleepy right now. That's because we napped for an hour yesterday, then got up and went to catch a bus to Kumasi where we met up w/ legendary Highlife musician Koo Nimo, before taking another 5hr bus ride back to Accra. We also had a wonderful chance to interview one of his colleagues, Peter Arthur, who studies Hip Life, as well as a young star on the Hip Life scene, Okyeame Kwame. The response we are getting to the project has been phenomenal. By the time we got there Prof. Arthur had already done a bunch of web-research on the SMT. The irony is he didn't even know we were coming until Koo Nimo mentioned it to him this morning. We wound up doing a series of interviews that really got into some interesting territory. Speaking of interesting territory, yesterday we interviewed a sista named Senam Okudzato who is straight up off the hook. She brought up some stuff that had never even OCCURRED to us. I know I'm being mad general, but my head is still spinning with a lot of the information we've been getting and I don't want to give up the whole ghost on the documentary. I think this has the potential to be a very cool film. Also, more artists have expressed an interest in contributing to the sdtrk. That in itself could be truly hot. And finally, I was speaking w/ Reggie over the weekend and he mentioned an interest in working w/ Koo Nimo. So I brought it up to Koo and he is DOWN. This could be a phenomenal addition to the SMT. We are literally bridging the gap between generations of musicians here at home. And its all because we've been running around asking questions and sharing music w/ people who care. So it's not just theory that we can make a difference on the scene. We already ARE. A'ight, my final confession is...it's like 12:20 in the morning and I am sitting at the cafe at Busy Internet getting my email on, when I hear someone mention something about "consulting." The place is damn near empty so I can't help but overhear the person ask someone else if her position will be in Boston. I'm like, "oh, are you from Boston?" The young lady next to me says "yeah." "Where in Boston?" "Cambridge..." Y'all know the rest of the drill. Why I am sitting up in the internet spot in the heart of Accra and the ONLY 4 people here are all HARVARD GRAD STUDENTS!!! AAAARRRGHHH!! Ha, ha. They are mad cool though. Two HLS and one Public Health. Harvard people are ridiculous. I'm off to go read a book or make an argument or something... Peace, D.N.A

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We Begin Work - Part III

So once Sheila's eye was all good we went back to the crib to catch up w/ Steve. Once we were all in effect we went out to hang w/ Reggie Rockstone. For those that don't know, Reggie is basically the godfather of "Hip Life" which is currently the most popular form of music among Ghanaian youth. Dude won a Kora award last month in Johannesburg and his face is plastered on gigantic Guinness billboards all over Accra. Reggie is also one of the key heads in our upcoming documentary on what's going on w/ kids over here. So me, Steve & Sheila linked up w/ Reggie at this spot called Zanzibar and started getting our Guinness on (Akwaaba had fruit juice). It was mad fun and we caught up on a bunch of different things. Rockstone brought up the idea of doing a collab and I am feeling it. I will holla' at KJ & J when I get back and we'll see what's good. Apparently Reggie is going to be hosting a 10 year anniversary of Hip Life in March and I would LOVE to come film that. BUT...the budget is mad tight and school will be on like "whoah" so I don't know if I can get the time off. Saving the world is no joke, especially when you're on a budget. So after Zanzibar we all rolled out to this spot called Rema's place. Rema is a young woman from Liberia who has opened up a cool after hours lounge thhat is actually connected to a store where she sells her own fashion designs. Her stuff is TIGHT. I'm hoping we can get some of her items for KJ and Leka down the road. While there I ran into my boy Kweku who is also a musician and has been doing stuff back and forth between Ghana and the U.S., similar to our own joint. I met him on a visit home 3yrs ago, then we ran into eachother in Boston sometime last year. Turns out his partner is Panji, who worked w/ us on the trax for "Heavy Structured," including "Sweet Mother." I never realized it because Kweku was always overseas whenever I was in town. Small world. A'ight I'm going to wrap up this series of weekend entries. Before I go though, I should mention a little bit about Sunday... So one of the artists who contacted us on Saturday put is in touch w/ a certain person who he said we should talk to. We called the gentleman and set up a time to meet on Sunday. Sunday we got up early (like 9am...we ain't sleep 'til like 6 tho) and my uncle PK scooped us to go hang w/ his boys. His boys are all proper grown and established in their gigs. We pulled up to this cat's house and it looked like a BMW convention in the driveway. Meanwhile cats were lounging under a Gazebo sipping on sizzurp. Periodically someone would get up and go get their haircut on the giant porch by a private barber. Ghana is a trip... Ok, I can't keep the suspense anymore. We went to lunch w/ the boys and had mad jokes w/ grown folks...ok we mostly just laughed on cue, but still we were chillin'. Afterwards we went to meet up w/ the person we had set up to interview the day before. So yesterday we had a chance to rap to Mac Tonto on camera along w/ one of his friends. Now for those of you who don't know, Mac Tonto is one of the founders of the band "Osibisa," and these cats are straight up LEGENDS. They started out in Ghana back in the day, but really blew up in the UK & US in the 70's. They are one of the biggest Ghanaian bands in history and Mac sat us down and broke down how they got started, how they blew up and what he thinks young musicians need to think about today. I was ridiculously inspired. I mean, just hearing about the struggle and the dream that they had and how they sacrificed and pushed and fought to make it happen...and then it happened...I was just like "this is us, this is exactly what we are going through and he understands." And I just came thinking the whole time "wow...we're really going to make it." Call me crazy, people do it all the time, but seriously I sat with the man and I just felt an energy that spoke straight to my soul. And he was straigh up like "Ghanaian artists need to learn their culture and their music, because it is our distinctive sound that will ultimately distinguish us on the global scale." And I'm thinking "YES, that's what we're trying to do." Anyway, I'm not going to go into all of what we discussed w/ Mac. Y'all will have to come watch the film to get all that. I will leave you with one last thing. As Mac and his colleague walked us out to catch a cab back to town, I told him that I really appreciated him rapping to us and that I really believed in what he was saying and that I am trying to do that with my own music. I mentioned that we had remade and remixed "Sweet Mother" and it was playing on TV in different countries now. He was like "you are the one who did the Sweet Mother video? Well then you are already doing great." I am still smiling. Praise ye Jah for bringing us this far. The saga continues... 'Til another day, D.N.A

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