Kwashibu Area Band

Highlife from Kwashibu

Kwashibu Area Band is a highlife band from Accra, co-led by the multi-instrumentalist and producer Kwame Yeboah and the German saxophonist and producer Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, formed in 2014 out of a shared love for highlife. Kwashibu is a suburb of Accra, like a village on the outskirts of the city center, where Yeboah lives and works. Yeboah, whose father A.K. Yeboah led K.K.'s No. 2 Band, started on drums at five and was leading a band by fourteen. The pair had written music for several songs and asked the singer Pat Thomas to write lyrics and sing; Thomas said the idea came from Yeboah and called him like a son.

The result, Pat Thomas and Kwashibu Area Band (Strut, STRUT126), was released in June 2015, Strut's first Thomas record in over a decade. It was recorded in Accra and mixed in Berlin, analog with no samples, and has eight songs: "Mewo Akoma", "Gyae Su", "Odoo Be Ba", "Me Ho Asem", "Oye Asem", "Odo Adaada", "Brebrebre" and "Amaehu". Ebo Taylor arranged horns and Tony Allen played drums on "Odoo Be Ba". Thomas was born Nana Kwabena Amo Mensah on August 14, 1946 and began with Ebo Taylor in the 1960s. The band played a nine-piece set at WOMAD in New Zealand on March 18, 2018, released "Obiaa!" on October 4, 2019, and put out its own album, Love Warrior's Anthem, on Soundway on April 11, 2025.