Notes on the music, the money and the machinery
Written between editions by the people who book the acts and build the stages. Longer than a festival blog has any right to be.
The economics of a ₵420 season pass
Every year somebody asks why the season pass costs less than three night passes, and every year the answer is the same: because we would rather have the room full on Sunday than have sold three separate tickets to the same person.
This piece opens the 2025 accounts — what the artists cost, what the site cost, what the traders paid us, and the two line items that nearly sank the whole thing in year six. It is longer than a festival blog post has any right to be, and it is the one people send each other.
Read the whole thing
Journal
Reading between editions
Notes on the music, the money and the machinery. Written by the people who book it and build it.
Why highlife keeps coming back every ten years
The guitar band never actually went away — it just stopped being the thing anyone wrote about. A short history, from E.T. Mensah to the acts on this year's Friday bill.
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How our ticketing actually works, and why it is cheap
No dynamic pricing, no booking fee bolted on at checkout, and a season pass that is deliberately less than three night passes. Here is what that costs us and why we do it anyway.
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The forty people you never see on the bill
Riggers, drivers, medics, the two women who run the traders' yard. A festival is a logistics problem wearing a music festival's clothes.
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Archive
Everything else we have written
Eight pieces back to May. Older than that lives in the newsletter — ask and we will send you the lot.
Tema Youth Brass and the last brass band in the region
Forty teenagers, eleven working instruments and a bandmaster who has kept it going for nineteen years.
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Why outdoor sound in Accra is harder than it looks
Sea breeze, humidity and a noise curfew that starts before the headliner. What we do about all three.
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Palm-wine guitar is not a revival, it never stopped
A conversation with Nii Lartey about eleven years of playing the same courtyard on the same night.
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The traders' yard is the best business on site
Eleven stalls, a flat pitch fee, no commission and a waiting list. Here is why we run it that way.
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What a crowd safety plan actually contains
Density modelling, fire routes, medics and the bit where somebody stands on a box and counts.
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Selector Fiifi's record bag, catalogued
Two hundred and forty records, most of them pressed in Nigeria between 1974 and 1981.
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Two generators, and why we stopped trusting venue power
The night in 2018 that cost us a headliner's second set and taught us to bring our own.
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Half the crew, and it took us six years
How the load-in crew went from two women to nineteen, and what we changed to get there.
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Press
Writing about us?
Photo passes, artist interviews, high-resolution images and the wrap report from every edition since 2018. Press applications close a fortnight before the first night.
press@pulse.com
Asked often
The questions the pieces keep answering
What is Pulse Festival?
Three nights of live Ghanaian music across three stages at Independence Square, Accra, run by Pulse every December since 2014. Twenty-six acts this year, from highlife bands old enough to have played Independence to producers who have never released anything on physical media.
Is it suitable for children?
Under-12s go free with a paying adult and there is a shaded family area beside The Yard until 20:00. After that the Main Stage gets loud and the Late Room is over-18 with ID, no exceptions.
What can I bring in?
Yourself, a phone, a refillable bottle and a folding chair for The Yard. No glass, no professional cameras without a photo pass, no outside drinks. There are eleven food traders and four bars inside.
04—06 December 2026
Three nights. Twenty-six acts. One wristband.
Independence Square, Accra. Season passes are on sale now and the Late Room sells out first, every year, without fail.
