Since 2016
It started as
one night in Osu
Six of us hired a compound off Oxford Street for a Saturday in 2016, put four hundred cedis behind a bar and asked eleven bands to play for whatever we took on the door. Two hundred and forty people came. We made a loss of ninety cedis and every one of the eleven bands asked when the next one was.
Ten editions later Anthem takes over Black Star Square and the beach behind it for three days every November. What has not changed is the reason: there is more music being made in this country than there are rooms to hear it in, and most of the good rooms only book the acts that already sell.
We book the ones that should. Half the bill every year has never played a festival before, the Drum Circle is free inside the gate, and every act is paid inside ten days of coming off stage.
