Wulomei

Wulomei is a Ghanaian music group that was founded in 1973 by Nii Tei Ashitey with the encouragement of the dramatist and musician Saka Acquaye. Acquaye managed the band and wrote some of the music.

Ashitey had previously been a percussionist for the Tempos led by E.T. Mensah, Tubman Stars and Worker's Brigade highlife bands, but decided to create a more "rootsy" sound to, as he once put it, "bring something out for the youth to progress and to forget foreign music and do their own thing".

Style and Instruments

Except for an amplified guitar, played with the West African finger picking style, Wulomei's instruments are indigenous, with atenteben bamboo flutes and a lot of traditional local percussion that includes the giant gombe frame drums, which provide a deep percussive "bass-line".

Songs and music

Wulomei play old Ga and Liberian sea shanties, gome songs, and the kolomashie and kpanlogo recreational songs of Accra and also Akan highlife music.

To portray the band's indigenous orientation, Wulomei's performers wear the white or yellow cloth and frilly hats of the Wulomei or traditional priests and priestesses of the Ga people of Accra.