The band
Nine players and about two hundred songs
Our own house band, resident since 2014. Horns, keys, guitar, drums, traditional percussion and two voices — and a repertoire built for a Ghanaian room.
Live
A band reads a room. A playlist cannot.
Two hours in, when the older guests are thinking about their drivers and the younger ones have not started yet, somebody has to decide what happens next. A DJ can change the song. A band can change the temperature — drop to a shuffle, put the horns down, let the room breathe and then take it back.
That is the whole argument for live music, and it is the only one we make.
Come and hear us
The house band
Nine players, six of them here
The rhythm section and the two voices are the same people every night. The horns rotate through a section of nine, so a room that wants five gets five who have played together.
Kojo Amankwah
Lead vocal · bandleader
Counts the band in, reads the floor, and decides at half past eleven whether the room wants another slow one or wants to be let go.
Adjoa Mensimah
Vocal · keys
Sings the ballads and plays the pads under everything else. Learns a first dance in an afternoon and will politely correct your key.
Kwabena Asare
Guitar
Highlife lines that people who grew up on them recognise in two bars, and the restraint to sit right back when the horns take it.
Nii Armah Quaye
Drums
Eleven years in the seat. Plays a wedding at the volume a wedding wants, which is a rarer skill than any fill he owns.
Selorm Dzokoto
Traditional percussion
Kete, fontomfrom and the atumpan. Walks a family in, hands the room to the band without a seam, and teaches the rest of us the rhythm on the way home.
Kofi Danso
Tenor saxophone
Writes the horn charts, runs the section, and takes the solo everybody films. Also the one who notices when a monitor is wrong.
Repertoire
Four rooms in one evening
Around two hundred songs, arranged for this line-up. Send us five you want and five you would rather never hear again — the second list is the more useful one.
Highlife and palm-wine
Osibisa, Daddy Lumba, Amakye Dede, the ones your parents will stand up for. Played properly, with the guitar out front rather than buried.
Afrobeats and amapiano
The floor from about half past ten. Arranged for live horns rather than sampled, which is why it lands differently.
Gospel and hymns
For the ceremony, the thanksgiving and the moment somebody's mother is walked in. In your key, with a rehearsal recording sent in advance.
Soul, funk and jazz standards
Dinner and the first hour. Quiet enough to talk over, good enough that people stop talking.
Residency
Last Thursday of the month, Chalé Sessions, Osu
Doors at eight, first set at nine. If you are thinking about booking us, tell us and you are on the guest list — hearing a band in a room full of strangers tells you far more than a showreel does.
Book the band
Tell us the date and we will hold it.
Dates between November and February go nine months out. Everything else usually has room at three, and we hold three nights a month back for short notice.
Book today
