Ata Kak created a peculiar slice of Ghanaian music history with his debut album “Obaa Sima”. While it barely made a ripple at the time of its release in 1994,the cassette found a new life online in 2006. A not-sounderground cult obsession grew after it appeared on the blog Awesome Tapes From Africa as its veryfirst post, a sort of manifesto for the project. His addictive amalgam of left-field electronic music and Twi-language hiplife reached surprising levels ofawareness among music fans of many stripes. The mystery behind the musician’s identity grew. Eventually Yaw Atta-Owusu came out of the shadows, fromhis quiet home in Kumasi, to tour the world playing high-energy, sweat-soaked performances at major festivals like Glastonbury, Sónar and Pop Montreal.Now, for the first time since 1994, Ata Kak releases new music. Honed in studios around Kumasi over the last several years, the songs feature the rappersinger’s acrobatic rap, signature scatting, dramatic drums and even traditional Akan harp. The compositions are more ambitious than his earlier work, withmore complex arrangements and layered harmonies. Ata Kak’s new songs are also the natural expression of a restless artist—he is a prolific poet and authorof a half-dozen books, as well as an active gardener and busy painter. Born in Ghana in 1960, Ata Kak wasn’t always involved in music. But his travels andopenness to the world lead him into the music industry. While living in Germany, he was invited to play drums in a reggae band and subsequently played inhighlife bands in Ontario after moving to the Toronto area. He recorded “Obaa Sima” there at his home studio and released it in Ghana in 1994. He didn’tparticipate in music much in the intervening years until “Obaa Sima” was reissued in 2015. He started performing his song live with the help of a brilliant castof Londonbased musicians and has toured three continents and played to thousands of fans in venues of all kinds. Available on limited deluxe lilypad green marble vinyl
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