The house
An events and live-music company in Accra, run by two people who still play. This is how the work is organised and who does it.
We have played funerals in Osu and product launches at the Kempinski in the same week, and the preparation is identical: learn the room, learn the running order, rehearse the set, and be the least anxious people in the building on the night.
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
How it runs
Four steps, and no surprises in any of them
01
We talk about the room
Not the band — the room. How many people, what the ceiling is made of, where the food comes out and what time the speeches are. Everything else follows from that.
02
One page, in cedis
Players, sound, lighting, transport and crew, itemised. If something is likely to be added later — an extra hour, a generator, a second stage — it is on that page as a number rather than as a footnote.
03
We rehearse your night
Two songs learned free of charge if we have them four weeks out. The set is built for your running order, and the bandleader walks it with your MC before the doors open.
04
One person at the back
Adjoa or Afua is in the room for the whole night, watching the floor rather than the stage. If something has to change, it changes without anybody at the front being asked.
The people
The four you will actually speak to
Laurel is thirty-one musicians and nine crew on a busy Saturday. These are the four whose numbers you get.
Afua Serwaa Boadu
Founder & artistic director
Decides what a night sounds like and then leaves the band to play it. Every quote you get has been read by her first.
Kwabena Osei-Tutu
Bandleader
Twenty-two years on Accra's stages. Reads a floor in eight bars and changes the set without anybody in the room noticing.
Adjoa Mensimah
Head of production
Owns the schedule, the trucks and the tempers. If your venue has a loading restriction, Adjoa already knows what it is.
Nii Armah Tetteh
Front of house
Mixes every one of our nights himself. Walks the room during the first set because a desk cannot hear what a guest hears.
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.
Tell us about the night
The date, the room and roughly how many people. We will come back with what we would put in it and what it costs — in cedis, on one page.
Laurel
