O Yinne!

One day in 2014, when Max Weissenfeldt stepped off a bus in the small town of Bolgatanga to stroll through the local market, he heard the song Mam Yinne Wa. Several years earlier, the Berlin-based producer had fallen so in love with vintage highlife that he decided to embark on a journey that led him to the northern savannas of Ghana, the homeland of the Frafra people. Finding the song's author — gospel singer Alogte Oho — Weissenfeldt proposed to work together, and in 2019 released an album, with the title track being Mam Yinne Wa.

The new work by Alogte Oho once again shows that, in addition to devotion to the Almighty, Frafra gospel has little in common with its American relative. The first track O Yinne! is an instrumental Afrobeat. Te Bola Be? with its Afro-Cuban rhythm and major guitar melodies takes us back to the era of Ghanaian highlife in the 1950s. And the composition Yinne Te Yelle Be is closer to reggae, although it still features the usual gospel choir parts.

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