From its founding in January 1972, the Know-how Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, mounted activities that had been open to the general public. Some of these functions accompanied the opening of a new job or education programme and some marked an critical anniversary, these types of as the Silver Jubilee of the university or a nationwide celebration. All these gatherings demanded audio, and from the outset it was made a decision that this really should be stay and replicate the regional tradition so the TCC was privileged to occur into common get hold of with Koo Nimo and his Ashanti palmwine ensemble some several years right before he turned a nationwide icon and two many years right before his fame spread internationally. https://la-lipo.uk/reading/
In the 1970s, Koo Nimo was used as a technician in the Pharmacy Division of the Faculty of Science, KNUST, where he was acknowledged as Kwabena Amponsah. He was a male of a lot of names and took delight in furnishing a total clarification to any individual who enquired. At start in October 1934, he was named Kwabena Boa-Amponsem but he was baptized Daniel Amponsah. He took the name Koo Nimo for his skilled musical job but a single of the most memorable tunes from these early days was Kwabena Buo, which he reported was his identify in boyhood. Kwabena suggests born on Tuesday, and Buo may well derive from the Boa in his birth name, as the spelling of Twi words and phrases and names is far from standardized.
Koo Nimo normally sang in his mom-tongue, Twi, and in the comfortable melodious tones that have now turn out to be internationally admired. He accompanied himself on an acoustic guitar but most of his band played indigenous devices in the palmwine (nsafufuo) or highlife tradition. Several of his most common quantities had been in the highlife rhythm and all his companions joined in the signing. Koo Nimo hardly ever unsuccessful to question which figures he ought to perform on each and every event. There ended up two songs that have been constantly requested at TCC-sponsored occasions. The very first was the currently stated memory of his boyhood, Kwabena Buo, and the next had the Twi title ‘wo ma me den?’ roughly, ‘what are you doing to me?’
Koo Nimo is remembered as a soft-spoken modest male who constantly expressed his delight at getting invited to execute at a distinctive perform. Fame could have occur to him rather afterwards in everyday living than is common for preferred musicians in the West. In 1979, at the age of 44, he received national recognition when he was elected President of MUSIGA (the Musicians’ Union of Ghana) and In 1985 Koo Nimo was appointed interim chairman of COSGA, the Copyright Society of Ghana. By the time that the do the job of the TCC was recorded in the movie movie, The Top secret of Prosperity, in 1987, and Koo Nimo offered the history new music during, he was now on his way to intercontinental recognition.
In 1990, eight of Koo Nimo’s tunes were introduced as a compact disk entitled Osabarima (a man’s dance), the to start with work by a Ghanaian artist to be place on CD. From that time on, honors ended up heaped upon him in Ghana and the United states and he served as a professor of ethnomusicology in two American universities. Now in semi-retirement he has returned to his native Kumasi exactly where we to start with read him sing forty several years back. The stunning tones of Kwabena Buo will caress our ears endlessly.
