Popular traditional Palm Wine Music band, Kwan Pa has shared the interesting origin behind the formation of their band, including how they spent weeks coming up with an appropriate name.

In an interview with Elsie Lamar on Talkertainment, the band leader, Andrew Asah Nkansah, traced how he fell in love with the sound he couldn't even name.

The story behind the music goes back to 1999, when the band's founder caught a performance on television that lodged itself permanently in his memory.

"I was watching TV and I saw somebody perform and it was beautiful. The sound I heard and everything kind of stuck with me. I don't know who it was. I didn't know the kind of music, but it was beautiful," he recalled.

Years later, he would discover the performer was none other than legendary Palm Wine guitarist Agya Koo Nimo.

His interest escalated when he arrived at the University of Ghana and encountered the Legon Palm Wine Band.

"I was like, wow, this is the sound. And it's beautiful," he said. "So later on I was like, okay, well, why don't we start a Palm Wine band to also help in the revitalisation?" he added.

According to Andrew, on Monday, July 31, 2017, at around 6:30 PM, Kwan Pa held its very first rehearsal.

Coming up with a name for the band itself took weeks.

"We gave ourselves two weeks to come up with a name and we came up with different names, different options and none of them worked," the band revealed.

"We had names like African Gift, African Style, we had lots of 'African, African.' So, we gave ourselves another week, an extra week. And that was when we had the name Kwan Pa,” he said.

The meaning, they explained, is the band's mission in a nutshell. "It simply stems from the fact that we want to go back into our history, into our past and bring up some of the good things we are letting go. So, we are walking on the right path into our past to bring back the good things into the present."

Nearly a decade on, Kwan Pa has become a household name in Ghana and beyond.

Watch the full video below:



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