{"id":87672,"date":"2021-09-20T16:17:48","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T14:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=87672"},"modified":"2021-09-20T16:29:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T14:29:34","slug":"onipa-tapes-of-utopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/onipa-tapes-of-utopia\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking tapes with Onipa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Led from the front by serial collaborators Kweku Sackey & Tom Excell – Onipa<\/a> take their name from the Akan word for Human <\/em>and are \u201ca family with music behind it.\u201d <\/em>London based Afro-Futurists who dial a sense of fun into their Pan-African vision of a continental utopia, the band\u2019s well received long player We no be machine <\/em>was released during last year\u2019s long lockdown with it\u2019s follow up Tapes of Utopia<\/em> released September 17th via Boomerang Records.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re referencing a more analogue time when machines didn\u2019t control as many aspects of life and that’s the through-narrative of all of our records,\u201d <\/em>explains Tom who is sat next to Kweku backstage in Oxford while we speak (ironically but necessarily via Zoom). He goes on to describe the new album as a `time capsule\u2019 evoking the days when cassette tapes were the dominant format of music distribution in every West African street market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much like the symbolic Sankofa bird of Akan cosmology that cranes it\u2019s neck back to retrieve an egg symbolising taking the best of the past to build a better future, the band believe in going backwards to go forwards and in this spirit we begin at the beginning with how Kweku and Tom first connected.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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