Our history
From a school field
Eighteen years between a borrowed generator in Dansoman and four stages on the square. These are the nights that forced a change.
Eighteen years
One night at a time
Every entry below is a night that made us change how we do it. The good years are the boring ones and they are not on this list.
2008
A school field in Dansoman
Four of us, a hired rig, a borrowed generator and two hundred people. It rained at nine and nobody left, which is the only reason there was a second one.
2011
The year we ran out of fence
Eleven hundred came to a site built for six hundred. We turned people away, refunded everyone at the gate in cash, and spent the next year learning what a capacity plan is.
2014
We stopped hiring the rig
Bought the first line array outright after four years of renting one badly. It paid for itself in eleven months and it is still in the warehouse as a spare.
2019
Black Star Square
The first night on the square, four stages, and the first time the sea wind taught us something about where a main stage should point.
2021
The quiet years, and the crew fund
Two years without a night. We paid a retainer to forty freelancers out of the equipment business rather than let the crew scatter, and every one of them came back.
2026
Four nights a year
December on the square, plus three smaller ones, and a production arm that builds a good many of everybody else's. The rig still serves the band.
Why the name
Tempo is the count before the noise
The first night in Dansoman started with a borrowed kit, one working monitor and somebody counting four into a crowd that had not stopped talking. The count won — it always does. A tempo is the one thing a night cannot argue with, and every show since has started from that word. Everyone had an opinion about whether it was proper. That is roughly how we feel about a festival.
— The four of us, still doing the load-out
Impact
Get a ticketThe numbers speak for themselves
24
+
Acts booked across four stages
9.4
k
Through the gates in 2025
18
yrs
Of Tempo nights in Accra
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