Nii Ashitey Nsotse

Nii Ashitey Nsotse, a Ghanean musician was born on April 19, 1955 in a village called Avenor, nearby Accra. Since very young he started to come into contact with music due to his family. His father started to teach him traditional african rhythms at the age of ten years. Nii Ashitey decided to be a professional musician and at the age of 18 he joined the National Folkloric Company Arts Councel of Ghana to develop his ideas on different traditional music, which gave him the special training needed to work on international level. At the Arts Councel of Ghana, an Academy for Art and Culture, he completed his drumming and dancing studies and received the title of a "National Drummer" (which includes drumming, building of drums, building of percussion instruments, dancing etc.). He was one of the participants of the National Folkloric Company who represented Ghana in the Commonwealth Games in Canada. Besides he is one of the founders of the Nafac-Festival, currently one of the most famous music festivals in Ghana.

Nii Ashitey entered the group Nokoko, one of the best african music groups 1972 The name Nokoko was changed to Nokokoyé, when the band's music style changed to even more traditional african music. Nokokoyé was one of the first bands that started to use traditional instruments like drums, xylophone, fruits, bells and african chorus singing. The group left Ghana for a tour in Togo, Benin and Nigeria. Then Nii Ashitey left the band to look for international contacts.

He came to Germany in 1983 and started with workshops on drumming and dancing. He joined the group Susu Bilibi for almost two years. Then, in 1985, he felt the desire to have his former african group, Nokokoyé, come to Germany. The group made a tour all over Germany and in other European countries, too.

A first recording of the group's music was "Talking Drums", recorded in 1986. The second album, "Agoo" of 1990/91 is a mixture of traditional music and reggae, it represents the current performance of the band on stage: traditional music and reggae-tunes. The third CD of Nii Ashitey & Nokokoyé, "Natty Dread", is pure reggae, and came out in 1994. Coming back to his african roots, now he offers a new album on pure percussion music together with Kassoum Traoré from Mali. This CD "Bushtaxi from Bamako to Accra" is featuring the dialog in between Ghanean kpanlogo- and Malian jenbé-drums and is published in October 2001. Ashitey Nsotse has been concentrating the last years on teaching african drums as well and has got a very good reputation as teacher: for workshop dates, please look at "on tour". If you would like to invite Ashitey Nsotse for a Workshop for your percussion-group or school, please contact: weberpals@bibiafrica.de or call: 0049-911-553510.