Mac Tontoh In US Show

Mac Tontoh, the ace trumpeter of Osibisa fame, has started performing in a number of goodwill concerts outside the country as a special guest.

Last month, Mac Tontoh was the special guest at the Colorado University (CU) African Ensemble Concert in Colorado Boulder.

He is currently in London where he will also feature as the guest artiste in a special fund-raising dinner christened 'Water for Life African' targeted at sourcing funds for a number of water projects in Niger.

He will thereafter join his brother, Teddy Osei, still in London, in another fund-raising performance for the underprivileged in East Africa.

The concert in Colorado-Boulder was the sixth event of an annual celebration of highlife by the CU African Ensemble, a 30-member group made up of music students learning highlife and African Music under the instruction of Dr. Kwesi Ampene, a Ghanaian Musicologist and a Lecturer at the Music Department of the Colorado University in Boulder.

Audio and video clips of the sixth and previous events show that the generally lively programme which always sees the invitation of a least one established Ghanaian musician annually as a guest artiste, had Mac as the toast of the purely American audience who filled the auditorium.

On the audio CD that recorded Mac's live performance, the voices of the audience could be heard shouting themselves hoarse.

Mac Tontoh explains the audience's behaviour was due to the fact that they are more accustomed to the criss-cross rhythm of Osibisa and his latest recordings which he calls 'Kete Highlife' and which is not very different.

He performed the 'African blues' (Abyssinia), 'Nana Eba' (Kete highlife), 'Ayikoo Bia Ye' (Osibisa), 'Sunshine Day' (Osibisa), 'In the Ghetto' (Mac Tontoh) and 'Abidjan Bodeba' (Meiway, arranged by Kwesi Ampene).

Other highlights of the concert were the performance of 'Superman Ghanaian highlife' (a medley of popular old highlife tunes arranged by Kwesi Ampene). 'Ako Te Brofo', 'Ghana Success', (also a medley of popular highlife and African tunes) performed by the CU African Ensemble who because of the superiority in number of instruments they use, produce a heavier sound than the original composers of the songs. In addition, they use instruments, a number of African percussion, piccola, steel drum, violin and others.

E. A. Andam, Graphic Showbiz