The Band Fra! is on a mission to revive Ghana's band culture and sell the nation's authentic Highlife music to the rest of the world and although the journey hasn't been easy, they have managed to penetrate the local industry.
The six-member band who are inspired by Osibisa and other great bands have recalled their humble beginning as a cover band that rebranded into Fra! which translates into English as 'mix'.
Speaking in an interview on Talkertainment with Paula Amma Broni, the leader of the band, George Gogoe, noted that their songs are a mixture of several genres.
"We do Afrofusion, it is dominated strongly by Highlife. It is the bedrock and we fuse it with various genres like jazz, pop, funk, afrobeats, you name it," he told GhanaWeb.
Guitarist, Selorm Dornyoh, also chronicled how the band made up of young men came together to make good music and travel the world, mounting big stages.
"We started out as a cover band and it got to a time we decided to put ourselves out there and brand ourselves as an artiste...we look back at Ghana's history and we realize that most of Ghana's music from the 80s, 70s, and 60s have been born in band culture. We've had a lot of bands coming out from Ghana and making a good name for themselves, the most prominent being Osibisa.
"The core members of the band are six but we have a seventh member who is like an adhoc member. We started out in 2015 but prior to that, we had been playing as friends...later in 2016 we decided to brand ourselves properly and we came up with the name, Fra! which means mix," Selorm Dornyoh explained.
The team is made up of Christian Osele, lead vocals, Joshua "Virgen" Boateng, drums, George Gogoe Ashirifie, bass and backing vocals, Emmanuel Selorm Dornyoh, guitar, Ishmael "Ayala" Kugblenu, percussions and Martin Nyarkotey Adjartey, in charge of the keyboard.
Popular among their songs include: 'You Dey Feel The Vibe', '30 Billion', 'I Go Dey 4 U', 'Odo Yewu', 'Happy Yourself', 'Mmaa' among many others.
Watch the latest episode of Talkertainment below:
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