Secret behind Bernard Amankwah’s latest

I cannot put a count to it, but, believe me, it is not often I find myself caught in limbo after listening to a musician’s album. 

After more than two months of regularly listening to Bernard Amankwah’s latest album,  I’m Redeemed, from both the car radio and on more sophisticated stereophonic equipment at home, I am unable to put a finger on what I can call the favourite track - and I have been in this business of reviewing music for 30-plus years.

I recall a similar confrontation of choice after listening to Osibisa’s Woyayaa and Dance the Body Music, Nana Kwame Ampadu’s Obi Te Yie, Apae Dankwa, Kwaata and Sumina so Nkonto; Bernice Offei’s Hold On and her award-winning Life; Amandzeba’s Kpalongo and his beloved Wogbe Gyeke. To this list, I may add a few others. 

Normally, after two weeks of submerging myself in albums destined to be masterpieces, I am able to do reasonable eliminations to come out with probable favourites. 

Not with the above listed albums. These are the albums from which spirit songs are born. I can put all my 30-plus years as a critic on the line and predict that Bernard Amankwaah’s  I’m Redeemed is destined into this category – no matter how slow the publicity build-up has been so far. 

Listening to I’m Redeemed, I am in a better position to appreciate why many Ghanaians (and a few other West African music connoisseurs in Togo, Benin and Cote d’Ivoire) think Bernard is one of the African-American gospel artists. 

There is something in his vocal timbre, the power-backed rhythms and appealing melodies that give his works a certain foreign colour. But if you ask me, my take is that it is only a confirmation that no music is white or black: the only difference is the location of the studio. 

This is a successful album. I am not surprised by the testimony (shared by a music lover on one of the radio stations) that “when I get away from the world into my prayer retreats, the music I listen to is Bernard Amankwaa’s I’m Redeemed, especially the title track.

Perhaps, it is the voice, but something in this track gives one the inescapable feeling that it was sung at the height of a dry-fast, when the singer was very hungry.

And that is the feeling it produces in the listener, a hunger for God’s presence; a feeling that compels one to throw himself/herself totally into the hands of God.

At the height of this hunger and thirst, you burst out with a shout praising and thanking God that I’m redeemed. What comes to mind is a chained prisoner suddenly finding that his chains have fallen off. Great track.

Just when you thought you had had your favourite, here comes another. Come To Jesus is a fast paced, soul-lifting invitation to all who are weary and heavily laden with the cares of this world. 

This track is so danceable and so well crafted that, but for the mention of the name of Jesus, it would have been a disco favourite, similar to the hit song, I’ll Take You There of the late 70s. Come to Jesus could have been released as a stand-alone single. Listen to the background grinding keyboards.  

In Christian pentecostal/charismatic churches, the next track, Hosanna, rendered in both Ga and Akan, will produce a spontaneous action. People will be on their feet, giving the Lord a wave with handkerchiefs.  

What is this album’s secret? When creative composition cross-fertilizes with superb arrangement and sound engineering, the result is a rich feast of sound. 

Like most of the world’s successful musical masterpieces, this album’s success is traceable to one factor: a cross fertilization of ideas between the creativity of the composer and that of the arranger/sound engineer. Call it a marriage.

I have witnessed similar marriages made in heaven. Ghana’s most eloquent example is the Baya album of Ben Brako. That album still goes direct to the heart because the composer’s abilities in Ben Brako are creatively cross-fertilized by Jon K’s super (almost divinely born) expertise in arrangement and sound engineering. 

I have also seen De Roy Ebo Taylor lift C.K Mann’s melodies and dress them up in such musical arrangements with excellent horns riffs and lilting guitars to produce Party Time With C.K. Mann, Matow Abowa etc

On Benard Amankwah’s latest album, guess who is the brain behind the technical production: Zapp Mallet. I can hear one million people sigh and say, ”No wonder!”