The 8-month trek will take Ghana’s contemporary and biggest highlife band, Santrofi on a limited run of exclusive performances to major amphitheaters and arenas across Ghana and Germany and will include multiple festival performances.

Emmanuel Jewel Peprah Mensah, Nov 06, 2021

Santrofi seems to be on a mission to dominate highlife genre in Ghana and the international landscape. With many successful international concerts under their belt so far, and credit for giving birth to a plethora of fresh and talented new highlife faces, Santrofi seems to have found a comfortable home both in Ghana and Europe.

Dubbed “Deep into Highlife”, the forthcoming concert will shine a light on the historical journey of Ghana’s Highlife music. From the funky Highlife of the 60’s to the disco Highlife of the late 70’s and then to the Afro-highlife of today, Highlife has been around reinventing itself in amazing and ever-changing methodologies. The concert seeks to open a new chapter in this historic and dramatic story.

Ghana’s portion of the concert begins Saturday November 13, 2021, at +233 Jazz Bar in Accra, to present an electrifying and sumptuous music brewed in African pot for dancing, soothing and revitalising the soul. The performances will also feature some Highlife heavyweights like AB Crentsil, and hosted by the MC extraordinaire Kofi Okyere Darko, popularly known as KOD. The European tour starts in May 2022 in Germany to rock the world with an amazing Highlife fusion, Afrobeats and Afro-highlife vibrations.

The concert is a cooperation between Santrofi from Ghana, Outhere Records – a highly-acclaimed German record company, and Eiden Music Agency – which is well known for touring bands from Brazil, Africa, UK and around the world.

Apart from several nominations received at the Songlines Music Awards in UK, 3 Music Awards-Ghana, and Ghana Music Awards UK, Santrofi debut album reached No. 1 on World Music Charts Europe (WMCE) in 2021, and it was also adjudged by France-based major music digital distributor, Pan African Music (PAM) as one of the biggest albums in 2020.

The band have already set the world on fire freaking out audiences all over Europe on their 2019 summer festival tour including Sines in Portugal, WOMAD in UK, Roskilde and WOMEX in Tampere.

The group is a collective of celebrated young musicians known within Ghana’s music circles. Led by Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area band’s bass player Emmanuel Ofori, are a force of nature deeply informed by vintage Ghanaian highlife music in all its forms – some largely unknown to the world ranging from the smelting soulful highlife sound that can only be nurtured by Accra’s afternoon scorch, to the riveting fast-paced pulse of 70s dance-guitar highlife, or to the other-worldly sound of Highlife funk, 50s big band highlife or the polyrhythmic beats and melodies that took Afrobeat across the globe. This wall of sound, although long lost and forgotten, is back with effortless ease and with a progressive edge like it never left.

Santrofi has on electric lead guitars, Dominic Quarchie (Ghana’s Music Awards’ winner of Instrumentalist of the year 2018), on rhythm guitar and lead vocals Nsoroma, Bernard Gyamfi on trombone and shekere, Norbert Wonkyi on trumpet, flugelhorn and bells, Prince Larbi on drums, Emmanuel Boakye Agyemang on organs, fender rhodes, Victor Nii Amoo on percussions and Kofi ‘IamBeatMenace’ as audio engineer and brands coordinator.

Catch full concert dates, updates and media tours on all their social media handles with the name, Santrofi.