Mar. 11, 2025 - I remembered posting this on Facebook and was able to retrieve it, even though that was in 2021, and the associated
videos and such - the modern Internet is amazing! So I extracted and saved things, because I don't trust that things that are on the web now will be in the future.
Anyway, this song (read what follows) made a big impression
on me.
I heard Vincent Nguni play this guitar lick in Itadi Bonney's basement in the late 80's. He got the gig with Paul Simon and I recognized this lick in the song "Spirit Voices". Last night and today I discovered the story of the origin of the song, Yaa Amponsah, and a slew of Youtube videos of how to play it, variations, embellishments, etc. Since then, I worked on trying to write out and learn to play the lick. There are many videos on Youtube related to it, some of which are meant to be lessons.
Here's Paul Simon with Vincent from the album Rhythm of the Saints, the song "Spirit Voices" : SpiritVoices.mp3 Here's one of what seems to be thousands of videos of this song with variations -- It is a video by George Spratz, who is apparently a guitarist and teacher of African guitar styles. I really like this version. yaaAmponsah.mp4
R.I.P. Itadi and Vincent.
Interesting that Paul Simon did (sort of) the
right thing in finding someone to pay royalties to for this.
Here is a document about "Ghana and the World Music Boom", which I found at:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/14920511.pdf.
In case that doesn't work: ghanaWorldMusic.pdf
From that paper:
".....Paul Simon and the Creation
of the Ghana Folklore Board: In October 1990 Paul Simon followed up his 1986
South African-oriented “Graceland” album success with another album “The Rhythm
of the Saints” on the WEA Warner Brothers label. For some of the songs he
collaborated with the Ghanaian bass player Kofi Electric and the Cameroonian
guitarist Vincent Nguni. A song called “Spirit Voices” was partly based on the
melody and rhythm of the old Ghanaian highlife song “Yaa Amponsah”, the name of
a beautiful lady dancer of the 1920s.
As for the royalty payments, Paul Simon contacted the Ghana Embassy in New York that advised him to send the US$ 16.000 of royalties collected by then (now the royalties have amounted to US$ 80.000) to the Ghana Copyright Administration, under Ghana’s equivalent of a cultural ministry, the National Commission on Culture (N.C.C.).
Under its then Director, Dr. Mohammed Ben Abdullah, the N.C.C. set up a committee to look at the exact origin of the song “Yaa Amponsah”, which was first recorded by Kwame Asare (Jacob Sam) and the Kumasi Trio in 1928 for the British Zonophone Company (later incorporated into EMI). Indeed, Paul Simon had been advised by Ghanaians in the United States that the “Yaa Amponsah” was Kwame Asare’s composition and therefore Simon had ear-marked the sixteen thousand dollars for Asare via the Copyright Administration. For several reasons the N.C.C. eventually deemed the “Yaa Amponsah” song an anonymous folkloric work...."