Ata Kak Live at Market Hotel

Ata Kak is the Ghanaian electronic/rap/highlife icon who kick-started the Awesome Tapes From Africa phenomenon. After a long wait, he embarked on his first ever tour of the US in March 2022, including this performance with band members Pax Nindi, Akornefa Akyea, and Tim Tapsell at Market Hotel on April 1, 2022, produced by Pioneer Works.
Ata Kak’s Obaa Sima cassette was first self-released in Ghana in 1994 to little recognition or interest. Yet when American musicologist Brian Shimkovitz stumbled upon the tape at a street stall in Cape Coast, Ghana eight years later, it became the stimulus for him to launch the Awesome Tapes From Africa blog. As he wrote in his inaugural post: “This is it. The song is called ‘Moma Yendodo.’ You may never hear anything like this elsewhere. No one I know in Ghana listens to this frenetic leftfield rap madness.”
The music on the recording-an amalgam of highlife, Twi language rap, funk, hip-hop, and electronica-traverses a pop music landscape that encapsulates international modes while reflecting contemporary Ghanaian music of the period. Presented with the sweaty passion of a Prince record and the lo-fi recording charm of early Chicago house music, Obaa Sima’s joyous soul and casual brilliance made the enigmatic Ata Kak an underground internet sensation and party-starter the world over. After more than a decade of searching, Brian finally tracked down the singer and released the LP officially in March 2015.
This project is supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.
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[@KieranMckean]

Back from a forty year hiatus now touring world 🌎 wide 😃👍 you sir are a legend. 🥂🍾

[@mflutopia1717]

Love it! Thank you for posting.

[@ediseu.]

Yemmpa paradaaaaaaaa

[@paasolo8202]

The Legend

[@andrewking9454]

Obaasimaaaaa

[@riverriverchang5487]

slay

[@papasimon8327]

What a song 😂😂😂