ATA KAK - Obaa Sima

"Ata Kak Yaw Atta-Owusu was born in 1960 in Kumasi. He moved to Toronto in 1989, where he played in a band called Marijata (not to be confused with the '70s band of the same name). They released three albums, which allowed Yaw the opportunity to refine his skills in music, and eventually encouraged him to strike out on his own. By 1991, he began to record his own songs using the software Notator Atari, a synthesizer, and a secondhand 12-track recorder. In 1994, he released fifty copies of his work on tape (manufactured in Ghana to reduce costs). He sold three.

In 2002, during a trip to Cape Coast, [Awesome Tapes From Africa's] Brian Shimkovitz came upon one of those very cassettes in a city market. Fascinated by this condensed chunk of African hip-house, the discovery led him to dig this rich, hitherto unexplored scene unexplored, which led to the blog and then his label. And it was that tape, one of the only existing copies of the album, which is the basis for the new remastered edition of Obaa Sima." - Noisey/VICE