K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas: The Blue Album / The Black Album (CD)

Soundway Records proudly presents a full reissue of two landmark recordings from one of Ghana’s most beloved highlife innovators, Alhaji K. Frimpong, and his band The Cubano Fiestas. Originally released in 1976 and 1977 and long referred to by collectors as the Blue and Black albums, these records capture Frimpong at the height of his powers - offering expansive, electrified highlife that reflects both deep tradition and fearless musical progression.

The albums will be released individually on standard black vinyl LP for the first time in over 15 years, alongside a CD edition featuring both albums in full.

The Blue Album (1976) is anchored by the iconic track “Kyenkyen Bi Adi M’awu,” a dancefloor staple in Ghana to this day and arguably one of the most recognisable highlife recordings of all time. Powered by staggered percussion, radiant horns and bright guitar lines, the song is a bittersweet meditation on heartbreak and longing. Across the album, Frimpong’s lyrics draw from Akan proverbs and parables, touching on love, betrayal, and resilience with a storyteller’s clarity.

The Black Album (1977) broadens the palette. Opening with the urgent, call-and-response drive of “Hwehwe Mu Na Yi Wo Mpena” and closing with the 15-minute odyssey of “Adam Nana,” the record stretches highlife’s rhythmic and structural possibilities. Its sinuous guitar lines, clavinet vamps, layered vocal phrases and hypnotic percussion evolve with a looseness and freedom that echo the experimental spirit found in 1970s jazz and funk — a Ghanaian counterpart to many of the African-influenced sounds being shaped across the Atlantic.

This is music that stands tall within the global canon of 1970s soul and jazz — rooted in highlife, but reaching far beyond it. It is music that holds its own alongside both the symphonic soul of American contemporaries like The Dramatics, and the afrocentric jazz fusions of Cymande and the Headhunters. The rhythmic engine is highlife; the emotional register is soul; the ambition is unmistakably Frimpong’s.

1. Kyenkyen Bi Adi M’awu
2. Gyae Mensu
3. Yaw Barimah
4. Susu Ne Won Nka
5. Baabi A Obi Awuo
6. Afe Nkyere Ba
7. Obi Nnim
8. Koforidua Nsuo
9. Hwehwe Mu Na Yi Wo Mpena
10. Asaase Yi So
11. Awisa
12. Adam Nana (Medley)