Real World Records has announced the signing of Lamisi — one of Ghana’s most popular artists and an activist for the rights of women and girls — with the release of her new album Let Us Clap — a collaboration with innovative music producer and auteur Wanlov the Kubolor, which marks a radical reinvention of her sound. The first single, titled ‘No Orgasm in Heaven’, is available digitally now. Lamisi’s powerful, soulful voice bridges traditional northern Ghanaian rhythms with contemporary sounds. Based in Accra, she leads the Lamisi Fata Foundation, which empowers girls in her home region’s deeply patriarchal society. Her new new album celebrates women’s clapping traditions from northern Ghana while championing female empowerment and social change.
“The women of Zebilla have been teaching me the clapping rhythms that are the basis of so much of their music and dance,” says Lamisi. “Wanlov and I decided to create a project that would combine this ancient artform with traditional acoustic instrumentation and the synthesised vocals that have been popular across Ghana for decades.”
Let Us Clap’s nine tracks flip the script on notions of ‘traditional’ music, finding gold in the intersection between ancient organic grooves and studio-generated electronics, and aeons-old clapping patterns and heavily vocoded vocals. Throughout, tempos push and pull. Tension builds and releases. Tomorrow is in dialogue with the past.
“This music is fresh,” says Wanlov the Kubolor, the project’s musical director, and a Ghanaian/Romanian artist, activist and filmmaker so well known in Ghana that — particularly in busy, sprawling Accra — he stops traffic. “It’s magic music. It is the world that we are coming from.”