OSIBISA

Osibisa is a Ghanaian-English Afro rock band, founded in London in 1969 by four expatriate West

African and three Caribbean musicians. Osibisa were the most successful and longest lived of the
African-heritage bands in London, alongside such contemporaries as Assagai, Chris
McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Demon Fuzz, Black Velvet and Noir, and were largely
responsible for the establishment of world music and Afro rock as a marketable genre. The original
band which featured on the first three studio albums were universally known as The Beautiful Seven.
In Ghana in the 1950s, Teddy Osei (saxophone), Sol Amarfio (drums), Mamon Shareef, and Farhan
Freere (flute) played in a highlife band called The Star Gazers. They left to form The Comets, with
Osei's brother Mac Tontoh on trumpet, and scored a hit in West Africa with their 1958 song "(I feel)
Pata Pata. In 1962, Osei moved to London to study music on a scholarship from the Ghanaian
government. In 1964, he formed Cat's Paw, an early "world music" band that combined highlife,
rock, and soul. In 1969, he persuaded Amarfio and Tontoh to join him in London, and Osibisa was
born.
Joining them in the first incarnation were Grenadian Spartacus R (bass); Trinidadian Robert Bailey
(keyboard); Antiguan Wendell Richardson (lead guitar and lead vocalist); Nigerians Mike Odumosu
and Fred Coker (bass guitar) and Lasisi Amao (percussionist and tenor saxophone). The band spent
much of the 1970s touring the world, playing to large audiences in Japan, Australia, India, and
Africa. During this time Paul Golly (guitar) and Ghanaians Daku Adams "Potato" and Kiki
Gyan were also members of the band. In 1980, Osibisa performed at a special Zimbabwean
independence celebration, and in 1983 were filmed onstage at the Marquee Club in London.
Osibisa had an important series of gigs in India in 1981 culminating in the release of the Unleashed -
Live in India album. The band engaged in a return to India performing at the November Fest 2010 on
28 November 2010, at the Corporation Kalaiarangam in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Changes in the music industry meant declining sales for the band, and a series of label changes
resulted. The band returned to Ghana to set up a recording studio and theatre complex to help
younger highlife musicians.