Alogte Oho and His Sounds of Joy: O Yinne! review — funky Ghanaian gospel

Alogte Oho owes his fame in the west to two accidents. The first was when he was travelling to Accra from his home in the Bolgatanga district in Ghana’s arid northern savannah, where he had a lacklustre career as a gospel singer. His uncle dispatched him into the traffic on a motorbike and a head-on crash landed him in hospital for several weeks. While he was recovering he conceived “Mam Yinne Wa”, a song that became his calling card and ignited interest in the region’s Frafra gospel music.

The second accident was that German producer Max Weissenfeldt arrived at the bus station in Bolgatanga just as one of Oho’s cassettes was playing. Later they collaborated on the reggae-inflected “Zota Yinne”, released in 2014 as Oho’s first international single.

O Yinne!, Oho’s second album with Weissenfeldt as producer, continues in the same vein. The opening title track has a complex polyphonic rhythm, bright horn stabs and airy curlicues of retrofuturist synthesiser, with Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor leaning in on saxophone and flute. Elsewhere there is a swaggering reggae lope to “Yinne Te Yelle Be”, the horns sounding righteously as vibraphone drifts in and out. On closing track “Gure Yose Me” Oho comes under attack from the Devil over what sounds like Max Romeo chased by UFOs.

The most organic-sounding song is “Te Bola Be?”, with a dancing highlife guitar pattern from Akule Pepe, musically closer to the rainforest than the savannah. But the bulk of the album is firmly in the north: the lounging sway of “La Ka Ba’a”, with the high voices of the female chorus in full rush; the halting shuffle of “A Lemine Me” interrupted by brass like birdsong; the wah-wah romp of “Doose Mam”. And the animated plucked strings and funky backbeat of “This Is Bolga!” are a perfect advertisement for the region.

★★★★☆

‘O Yinne!’ is released by Philophon