Palm Wine Instrumentals, by Who Is John Smith

Palm Wine Instrumentals

by Who Is John Smith

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of My Tears Have Unusual Chemistry, Rest This Day (Geamat Remix), It's a Wake Time, So Much Things Special, Put That Dream in the Universe, Rhythmic Kaleidoscope: Palm Wine Guitar Music, I Want To Go About My Day, Synthesis (Music for Alexander's Theorem a Math-Dance by Nancy Scherich), and 63 more. , and , .
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1.	Shiny 02:12	info	buy track
2.	Chasing Frogs 02:01	info	buy track
3.	Free Chocolate at Bauhaus 03:40	info	buy track
4.	Black Beauty Blossoms 02:02	info	buy track
5.	Summer of 2014 02:41	info	buy track
6.	Found Her Lost Barrettes 02:03	info	buy track
7.	After The Big Bang (Drums) 03:36	info	buy track
8.	BTW 02:24	info	buy track
9.	Stage and Story (Drums) 03:34	info	buy track
10.	It Takes So Much Energy To Hate/ Buy When Death Sells 02:17	info	buy track
11.	Sun Clouds 03:00	info	buy track
12.	After The Big Bang (Rumba Box) 03:56	info	buy track
13.	Stage and Story (Rumba Box) 02:57	info	buy track
14.	Happy Birthday 02:13	info	buy track
15.	Go To Fly 02:30	info	buy track
16.	Tree Life 02:36	info	buy track

about

About the music:

Palm wine guitar music is a style of music from West Africa. Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone are some of the countries famous for the palm wine sound. Some of the music is based on adapting the music of indigenous harp instruments, like seprewa, to guitar. The style of guitar finger picking is highly rhythmic, and favors the use of only the thumb and forefinger to pick the strings. This style of picking makes the parts played more equal in volume, and this adds to the poly-rhythmic feeling of the music. Often palm wine guitar music played by only one guitarist may sound like it’s being played by at least two guitarists.

About the album:

As the name of the album suggests, this is an all-instrumental album. As such it is a somewhat rare thing, as generally vocals are a key element of the style. However, the music is beautiful with or without words, and we feel it’s worth exploring new permutations in palm wine style.

We hope you enjoy the album. “Shiny,” “Chasing Frogs,” “Free Chocolate at Bauhaus,” “Black Beauty Blossoms,” “Summer of 2014,” and “Found Her Lost Barrettes” are new original tunes. In tracks 7-16 some tracks appear twice, and this is because there are two different version, one with hand drums and one with rumba box. “After the Big Bang,” “Stage and Story,” “It Takes So Much Energy To Hate,” & “Go To Fly” are based on songs by Koo Nimo. “BTW,” “Sun Clouds,” “Happy Birthday,” and “Tree Life” are original tunes which also appeared, with vocals, on the first Who Is John Smith album “Go To Fly.”

About the band:

Drummer Yaw Amponsah is the son of the legendary Ghanaian musician and palm wine guitarist Koo Nimo (AKA Daniel Amponsah). Yaw is proud to continue his father’s musical legacy. He is a master drummer who is familiar with many styles of West African drumming, and is a specialist in Asante drumming styles such as Adowa, Fontomfon, and Kete. He is the leader of the Ghanaian drumming group Anokye Agofomma.

Guitarist James Whetzel was introduced to palm wine guitar music by the great Nigerian musician I.K. Dairo, and then studied palm wine music in depth with Koo Nimo. James is a multi-instrumentalist, DJ, and producer of hip hop beats, electronic music, and ambient music. He performs solo and in the groups Das Dhoom, DJ Baba James, Mean Deep and Yas/Whetzel. www.jameswhetzel.com

Special guest percussionist Greg Campbell is known for being a great Seattle based jazz drum kit player. He has performed in innumerable groups in Seattle in many different styles of music. We are very grateful to have such an excellent drummer playing the simple—but very important—bell, shaker, and rattle parts on this album! Greg has learned Asante drumming and palm wine rhythms from Yaw Amponsah and performs with him in the group Anokye Agofomma.

credits

released July 17, 2017

Recorded live at Egg Studios by Conrad Uno on July 21st, 2016
Mixed by Conrad Uno
Mastered by Emch at Subatomic Sound
Produced by Who Is John Smith

Yaw Amponsah: hand drums and prempremsoa aka rumba box
James Whetzel: guitar

With special guest, Greg Campbell: bells, rattles and shakers.

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about

Olin Place Seattle, Washington

Olin Place is a record label founded by James Whetzel in 1999. Styles of music include downtempo, instrumental hip hop, Indie Pop, West African and South Asian traditional music and fusion, ambient music, soundtrack music, and instrumental Christmas and Holiday music on sarod. ... more

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