I thought we needed a break from professionalism and to tap back to the visceral thrills of being in a big fun crowd we're missing while socially distant, so today we're watching a raucous 12-minute stretch from an Ata Kak concert in Katowice, Poland, in August 2016.
Ata Kak is the enigma partially responsible for launching the beloved record label Awesome Tapes from Africa. Well, actually he's that guy in the sunglasses on stage having the absolute time of his life and his real name is Yaw Atta-Owusu but he took quite a journey to get there.
Atta-Owusu was born in Ghana and moved to Germany, where he began his music career as a drummer in a reggae band. In 1989, he left Germany for Canada, and while in Canada he recorded the tape Obaa Sima in his home studio with secondhand equipment, figuring out how it worked on his own. Seems like he sent the “final” product back to Ghana where his brother gave it a kind of micro-run.
Brian Shimkovitz at Awesome Tapes From Africa found the tape in 2002 in Cape Coast, Ghana, where no one he talked to had any idea what it was. Shimkovitz posted a track from the tape on his blog, as one did back then. The music was a weird, lo-fi mash-up of early hip-hop, funk and, people say, a touch of highlife, but I'm not sure what that's referring to. It's really, really cool, very singular. Anyway, Shimkovitz searched for Ata Kak for years and was even in Canada searching for him when one of Atta-Owusu's kids popped up on an Ata Kak fan Facebook page and was like, “Yo, that's my dad; he's in Ghana!”
Finally, Shimkovitz found the man behind this unique tape, and finally Atta-Owusu found support for his unique music. Obaa Sima got the Awesome Tapes From Africa rerelease, in 2016 Ata Kak became a touring concern, and by the looks of this video, an amazing one. Desk jockeys who secretly write songs and idly fantasize about launching a sudden musical career don't dare dream of crowds as enthusiastic as this one. But who can blame them—he's a natural!
I was really looking forward to seeing Ata Kak at Pioneer Works next Friday, but that's not going to happen. The show was rescheduled for September. I have no idea if that's optimistic or not.
