SK Kakraba

SK Kakraba is a Ghanaian musician and performer of the country's traditional music. He makes and performs gyils, a xylophone containing 14 suspended wooden slats stretched over calabash gourds containing resonators. and he has toured worldwide playing the gyil. In 1997, Kakraba moved to Accra and began busking, and soon joined the group Hewale Sounds, who aimed to preserve and familiarise the traditional music of Ghana. It was ranked at number 1 on Fact Magazine'''s list of "the 20 best cassette releases of 2013", with Brad Rose of the publication writing: "This music has serious soul. Everything about these tunes is purely ecstatic." The solo album Yonye was released July 2015 by Sun Ark Records, a label run by experimental musician Sun Araw as a splinter label to Drag City. The album contains six solo, instrumental recordings, spanning Kakraba's "favourite song cycles, funeral dirges, improvised interpretations on traditional songs and original compositions." It departs from Yonye in that it is smoother in sound and is an album of solo recordings as opposed to a group recording. Songs of Paapieye was recorded in a San Francisco studio belonging to Kakraba's close friend Brian Hogan. This differentiated the project from the traditional setting for gyil music, where two gyil players may play together with accompaniment from drums, bells and sometimes singing.

Kakraba currently lives in Highland Park, Los Angeles, having moved to the city in 2012.

DiscographyGandayina: Xylophone Music of Ghana (Pentatonic Press, 2002)SK Kakraba Band (Holy Page, 2013)Kanbile (Solo And Ensemble Xylophone Music Of Ghana) (Pentatonic Press, 2014)Yonye (Sun Ark Records, 2015)Songs of Paapieye'' (Awesome Tapes From Africa, 2015)