We Are In The War
Makkum Records/Red Wig (48 mins)
Prince Buju hails from the North East Region of Ghana and plays the kologo, a two-stringed lute related to the ngoni, and sharing common ancestry with the banjo. This album is entirely solo – and it’s not one of those fancy multi-track one-man-band things, every track is a single-take affair with only Prince Buju and his kologo.
Almost all of this release is taken from Buju’s debut Ghanaian cassette, which was released in 2011 under the title Roots And Culture Music. The only newly-recorded piece here is the title track. This version of the album retains the feeling of a local-market cassette, and not only because of the soft hiss that remains behind most of the tracks: the recent trend for cassettes has brought a refreshing slew of international music that hasn’t been ‘world musicked’ and Buju’s sound is no exception.
Much of the album’s associated literature talks up Buju’s links to King Ayisoba, a fellow Ghanaian kologo player, but Buju’s music feels even more rootsy. It’s great to hear the no-nonsense, bluesy riffs with Buju’s high-pitched yet gritty voice sing about personal and local matters, which all give the record a sense of that allusive, ill-defined but most important ‘authenticity’.
The manner in which the kologo is played means that all the tracks included here from the original cassette remain in one key – it’s a rather insignificant thing, but for someone who is used to albums using a variety of keys (which, when you think about it, is kind of arbitrary) this can grate slightly, with the ear becoming tired. But this is a very small issue. Don’t expect overly much from the production values and this could be an album that you really dig.