Meet the people behind the night
Grew up in a house where the drums came out for every occasion, good and bad. Afua decides what a night sounds like, then hands the room to the band and gets out of the way.
Afua Serwaa Boadu
Founder & artistic director
Twenty-two years on Accra's stages and a book of four hundred songs in his head. Kwabena is the one who reads a floor in the first eight bars and changes the set without anybody noticing.
Kwabena Osei-Tutu
Bandleader
“Every room has a rhythm. Our job is to find it.”
First played
2009
Nights a year
140
Players in the band
Eleven
The road so far
Sixteen years of rooms, stages and nights that ran late
A few of the nights that made us who we are.
2009
The first booking
A funeral durbar in Osu. Four drummers, one borrowed amplifier and a fee that barely covered the taxi home.
2015
The house band
Eleven players, one shared book of songs, and a Friday residency that ran for four years without a gap.
2019
Our own stage
Trucks, trusses and a rig we no longer had to hire — which is the year we stopped apologising for other people's sound.
2026
The house today
A hundred and forty nights a year across Ghana, and every one of them still rehearsed in the room before the doors open.
The running order
Everything a night needs, in the order it needs it.
Guests arrive
6:30 PM
Strings & highlife
A trio in the courtyard while the room fills — quiet enough that nobody has to raise their voice to say hello.
The main set
8:30 PM
The full house band
Eleven players, two vocalists and the horn section people actually book us for. Ninety minutes, no gap, no laptop.
Late floor
11:00 PM
DJ & percussion
Our DJ takes the room through to two, with a drummer playing live over the top of it. It is the part guests remember.
16
Years
On Ghana's stages since 2009
Live music
The house band, a trio or a soloist. Every set rehearsed for your room rather than pulled off a shelf.
Sound & stage
Our own PA, monitors, desk and staging. No hired rig, no engineer meeting the room for the first time at six o'clock.
Lighting
Warm, low and designed for the room the guests are standing in rather than for the photographs afterwards.
DJ & MC
The person who holds a night together and the one who knows how to end it. Both of them ours, both of them briefed.
Ways to book
Two ways to put us in your room
Whichever you choose, we rehearse for your night — not for ours.
The house band
Eleven players and a book of four hundred songs — highlife, Afrobeats, jazz standards and whatever your first dance turns out to be. Priced by the set, with the rehearsal already in it.
See what a set costs
Full production
Sound, lighting, staging and crew, with our band or with yours. One number to ring on the night and one person standing at the back of the room watching the whole thing.
See what we bringJournal
Notes on music, rooms and running a night well
What an eleven-piece actually costs you
Musicians, transport, rehearsal, the extra hour nobody budgets for — written out in cedis so you can see where a quote comes from.
Read the note
Why your venue's ceiling decides your sound
Hard ceilings, glass walls and marble floors are why the same band sounds glorious in one hall and unbearable in the next.
Read the noteLaurel
