Pat Thomas Introduces Marijata 

Pat Thomas, The “Golden Voice of Africa” has had a career that spans more than 50 years. In that time, he’s turned his hand to a seemingly endless array of genres – Big Band, Reggae, Soul, Disco and Funk –  but he’s a true master of Highlife. Highlife originated in Thomas’ native Ghana in the 1920s when was still colonised by the British. It’s a genre that absorbed a series of foreign influences – jazz, calypso, the back and forth of Afro-Cuban music, not to mention electric guitars – melded them with traditional Akan melodies and then spat them back out into the world, gaining popularity, first in neighbouring countries and eventually the world.

Like so much African popular music of the era, it’s a portmanteau, a genre that wears its historical and political circumstances even more explicitly than most. 

Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah became particularly influential in post-colonial thinking around art and culture, as African nations attempted to rediscover themselves in the second half of the 20th century. His argument was that it wasn’t enough to simply self-govern, Africans had to “decolonise the mind”, to mend the severed connections between people and their linguistic, artistic and musical histories. Colonisation, after all, steals more than just land and resources, or the dignity and freedom of a people.

As a genre, Highlife has an interesting place in that thinking — taking it’s name initially from its place as the upmarket good time music played in the exclusive clubs of the colonists, it spread into the streets and dance floors and became the perfect celebratory soundtrack to emancipation.

1976’s Pat Thomas Introduces Marijata is the first of two records he cut with the legendary funk trio Marijata, also from Ghana. Behind its wonderfully homemade looking orange cover, it’s probably the most straight up rock n soul record he ever did, but it’s still a distinctly Ghanaian product. It’s got those woozy Highlife horns and that reggae/ska guitar upstroke.

And thanks to Marijata’s razor sharp funk instincts – Kofi Addison on drums is on fire throughout – the album is relentless, yet light on its feet. 

Like the best Rock and Roll of the era, it’s loose-limbed to the point that it feels almost accidental, yet it never loses momentum.

The ebullient Thomas is still around, still remarkably consistent — The Guardian gave his most recent LP, Obiaa!, his second multi-generation collaboration with The Kwashibu Area Band, five stars. I’ll let you know if I agree with that estimation once my copy arrives, but the piece does make an important point: “Amid our penchant for curated archive compilations of far-flung genres, here is the living, breathing testament to a music that is very much still alive and being championed by those who have spent their lives perfecting its craft.”  

Highlife can tell you a lot about the history Ghana, and Pat Thomas can tell you a lot about the history of Highlife, and Pat Thomas introduces Marijata is as good a place as any to start.