Jankalanga Festival 2025 was a delightful voyage!

IT was a vibrant and colourful musical excursion for both players and audience when the Wazumbians band served another edition of its Jankalanga Festival on March 22 at the +233 Jazz Bar & Grill in Accra.

The Wazumbians band has its own style and it bustled with energy and commendable musicianship as it dug into the sounds and textures of contemporary African music during its two sets of appearances at the programme.

The band’s leader, Francis Chapman Abban-Hagan, known widely as Wazumbi, harbours an idea of cooperation, which entails giving opportunities to fellow musicians to show what they have.

So Jankalanga 2025 also featured the Abajo Traditional Music & Dance Ensemble with a fascinating acrobat; Abbey & The Rubber Band; the Armed Forces Music School Band; Grassroots Band; BessaSimons & the Bessa Band, King Ayisoba and kora player, guitarist and singer, Fanta Cissokho from Senegal, which lent an international flavour to the event.

‘Jankalanga’ is a word Wazumbi conceived in 2018 for a live showcase of the repertoire and style of his band on Facebook. It scored well with a lot of followers during the COVID-19 era. It offered superb exposure for the Wazumbians and its fan base stretched far beyond Ghana. Jankalanga became a fully-fledged outdoor event in 2024.

That was confirmed at the +233 show by Bessa Simons, President of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA). He said just before the band lunged into its first set at the show that he had known the leader from when the group started in 2016 and had always admired his determination to succeed.

“I encouraged him to keep pushing on with the style he evolved and now the Wazumbians are highly rated in many places for their unique sound and presentation. So any musician who wants to do something, please don’t stop. Stay dedicated and you’ll make it,” the MUSIGA boss advised.

The 17-piece Wazumbians included two dancers and a five-man horn section. With a keytar slung across a shoulder and two additional keyboards to also fall on, Wazumbi  ‘commanded’ his band with his signature military-like gestures in his traditional warrior-looking outfit.      

The delights of the band’s selections were many, but for several in the audience, there was particular nostalgia in ‘Kwame Nkrumah,’ a song dedicated to Ghana’s first President. The band expressed its freedom to create by blending contemporary and traditional African sounds. The audience appeared fascinated by the efforts.

The Armed Forces Music School Band was a bundle of joy on stage. It hardly gets the opportunity to perform in the +233 kind of ambience and the young musicians really enjoyed themselves dishing out some African popular music classics.  

Musicians whose songs they performed included Monique Seka from Cote d’Ivoire, Hugh Masekela from South Africa, Mory Kante from Guinea and Rex Omar and Afro Moses from Ghana.  

Fanta Cissokho was backed by the Grassroots Band. It was her second time performing in Ghana. She played at a women’s music festival at the Alliance Francaise, Accra two years ago. She came on stage in an elegant boubou outfit and the audience warmed up to her right away.

She played the kora before switching to guitar, all along delighting everyone with her beautiful voice. She did some uptempo, as well as some slower stuff, and tried to engage the audience in French and her limited English. 

There was a bluesy feel to her voice in a couple of her songs. It would have been lovely to hear her play more of the kora as it is almost never heard in Ghanaian popular music. She, however, opted to just show glimpses of her versatility and make the audience want more of her.  There was talk of her returning at another time for her own full concert with her band.  

The Wazumbians have performed in Togo, Nigeria, Benin and France. They toured the United States in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The band came on for a second set at the Jankalanga Festival. It emphasised its reputation as a propagator of an African progressive brand not afraid to continually broaden its vision and win more fans for compelling music from this part of the world.

King Ayisoba was at the 2024 Janglanga Festival and rounded off the evening this year with his special style. On the whole, it was a congenial evening for those who like to get up to dance and those who like to just sit back and listen to the music play.

Emcee Empress Lomo was fluent and precise, enabling the programme to flow without unnecessary interjections. Wazumbi said he was grateful to all who contributed to making Jankalanga 2025 a success, especially Afromondo Music Management, ASK-TK  Studios, MUSIGA, +233 and all the musicians who featured pro bono on the night.