Consumer Guide Album

Gyedu-Blay Ambolley: 11th Street, Sekondi [Agogo, 2019]
Singer-saxophonist Ambolley is a 1947-born Ghanaian whose 2019 album, said to be his 31st, I streamed on a tip and dug on the spot. What I noticed right away was not simply one more infectious African rhythm variant but the extra pleasure of hearing someone singing or rapping or commenting or interjecting atop/amid that variant in a language I could actually understand--to be specific, English rather than French. What my wife noticed was the variant itself, which she swore she recalled from an old Sunny Adé record she'd inscribed in her memory book. What you'll notice, I believe, is both. Special kudos to a guitarist billed simply as Dominic and Ambolley's trademark "Hey-up-pah!" A-