Immy Owusu has called his music ‘Afrodelik’, as a handy way to name his influences of African music and psych rock. A Surf Coast artist of Ghanaian/Dutch descent, he even named his debut album, ‘Lo-Life!’, which is out this Friday after his lo-fi version of Ghana’s jubilantly layered highlife genre.
Beyond such linguistic shorthand, the singer/guitarist enlists members of Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo and The Senegambian Jazz Band – as well as his percussionist father Kojo Noah Owusu – to create a bright melange of psych, funk, rock and Afrobeat while singing confident lyrics, in both English and the Ghanaian language Twi, about personal empowerment and communal harmony.
‘Lo-Life!’ opens with ‘Flashback’, the first song Owusu ever demoed. After a casual jam at age 17 with Sydney-based Malian guitarist Moussa Diakite, who taught him a Malian guitar scale, Owusu spent the next seven years calibrating that track’s true-to-life balance of disparate influences – including a trip to Ghana in 2016 to study with his grandfather Koo Nimo, a veteran of highlife roots and palm-wine music.
Now based in Geelong, Owusu speaks to NME about his ongoing quest to perfect a sound that’s uniquely his.
NME: Had you done much music before writing your first demo for ‘Flashback’, which opens the album?
“As a teenager, I played in a lot of psych-rock bands on the Surf Coast. I wasn’t really interested in African-inspired music, because I’d grown up with it. It’s a classic thing that you don’t want anything to do with your parents [as a teen]. Then I joined a band at school when I was like 13 that played a lot of rock and metal. Even though my family are all performers or musicians, I really had to discover music for myself.”
What finally clicked about this version of ‘Flashback’?
“It just locked more to the style I was wanting to go for. I think with previous versions of the song, I was trying to force myself to fit into a style that I thought it would be popular. But it just kind of sounded half-baked. I had one of my mentors describe it as not-quite-right rock or not-quite-right African music. So this one just feels a lot more authentic.”
“Even though my family are all performers or musicians, I really had to discover music for myself”
The album ends with you repeating a message of peace and love on ‘Sunsum Dware’ (‘Soul Shower’). Is it important for you to have those empowering elements?
“For sure. I definitely have come into enjoying high-vibrational music and, you know, lifting people up. I think there’s a place for songs about break-ups or crappy situations or whatever. But especially in this time we’re in at the moment, [when] everyone’s feeling a bit low, I just really want to make music that gets people invigorated.”
What’s been the reaction to your live show? Have you been able to see people getting exposed to styles of African music that they maybe hadn’t heard before?
“Early on I played for a lot of more quote-unquote bogan people down in Geelong and on the Surf Coast. You know, a lot of people standing there with a VB in their hand; they love Cold Chisel and AC/DC and I’m playing a djembe or some other African drum, trying to keep them entertained. I really cut my teeth on that crowd and now I’ve dug my heels more into the Melbourne scene, which I find a lot easier.”
Do you play with the Surprise Chef guys live too?
“No, those guys are way too busy. After we finished tracking everything, they jumped on a plane to the US or wherever the day after. But they’ve been super influential for the sonics and the direction I really wanted to go in. Because I was feeling a little bit stagnant and lost with where to take it, especially after [2022’s] ‘Brown Supremacy’. [That song] was really loopy and didn’t feel live. I wanted to create music that was more live and would translate better to a live audience.”
“The creative tap has definitely been dripping”
You play a lot of fingerpicked electric guitar. Are you still trying to explore the guitar and do things in different ways?
“Absolutely. I’ve always loved fingerpicking guitar. I had a Brazilian guitar teacher when I was younger. And then my grandpa in Ghana [Koo Nimo] also does fingerpicking. There are so many people [here] that can really shred guitar and I don’t feel any competition. Fingerpicking is something that no one down here really does.
“I’m originally a drummer and percussionist, and a lot of these African styles are based off instruments like the balafon, which is like the African xylophone, and the kora, which is like a harp. So they’re based off these really percussive sounds, so it’s a bit different. I’m just trying to make it my own things, so absolutely I’m gonna keep exploring the guitar more and more.”
Have you been writing much new stuff, or just focusing on honing this set of songs?
“The creative tap has definitely been dripping. I really want to come back to the ‘Brown Supremacy’ style in a new way and in a new flavour. And there are some great albums coming out: the Zamrock band Witch just released a new album [‘Zango’], and Zamrock is becoming super popular again. And you’ve got people like Sampa the Great talking about it. So I really want to bring more of that sound back, and try to balance out those two worlds a bit more.”
Immy Owusu’s ‘Lo-Life!’ is out July 14 on HopeStreet Recordings.
