You knew his music before you knew his name.
You recognized his voice before you ever saw his face.
You loved Daddy Lumba long before you could even hear — really hear — what he was saying. And when you finally understood the lyrics? The love morphed into something bigger. Something just shy of worship (Not worship, though. He’d tell you only God deserves that.)
I still don’t have the words to describe this feeling. Maybe by the time I reach the end of this essay, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Ankwanoma
It was a hot afternoon in 2011.
I was riding in the back of a Circle trotro headed for Kasoa, my red and orange shirt was damp with sweat and my body was heavy from school. My commute ritual remained the same as always: shove the Apple earpiece in to block out the noise from the world, tuck the wire inside my shirt so no eager elbow yanks it out and press play on the iPod.
That day’s soundtrack? Lumba classics.
Ten minutes in, Ankwanoma starts. I don’t know the exact line. I don’t know the exact moment. All I know is, my face started to get wet, and I didn’t even notice until I wiped it and felt the salt.
And then it hit me:
I was crying. I was crying because for the first time in my life, I realized Daddy Lumba was going to die someday. That no one, not even him, escapes the human condition. Not even if they hold philosophy like a Mjolnir. Not even if they weave it into music that could hypnotize sirens. No one escapes the side effects of being human — good, bad, ugly. And no one understood those side effects better than Daddy Lumba.
Aben Wo Aha
My earliest memories of Lumba’s music, like most of my generation’s, are from house parties. Aunties and uncles gyrating over each other. Jollof rice and shared Fanta. Whispered quarrels between lovers, half-heard over the ghetto blasters.
As a child, I knew him as the man behind the songs my parents loved but didn’t want me to listen to. As a teen, I knew him as the guy who made that music video — the one my mother would kill me for watching ten times in a row. I knew him as the soundtrack to every taxi ride, every bar, every party. His songs were so omnipresent they named cars after them. I knew him for the Jerry curls, the punk, the braids, the shouts-out mid-song.
But I didn’t hear him — not really — until I was old enough to carry responsibility.
Somewhere between SSS and university, when my mother sat me down for the “you’re a man now” talk, Lumba’s words shifted. Suddenly they weren’t just melodies. They were instructions. Warnings. Revelations.
Meredwene Me Ho started to make sense once I learned what it feels like to grow up poor, rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do just to survive — when you’re the Akyekyedeɛ forced to play with Asoroboa. Me Nya Mpo held me steady the first time I fell madly in love and Me Do W’asem cut me deep when I couldn’t provide for that woman and watched her fill the gaps with someone else’s abundance. I’d read Aleister Crowley and his “Do What Thou Wilt,” but Yentie Obiara gave me an understanding even Crowley couldn’t come close to. When workplace drama crept in — or when people who swore they’d love me till death stopped picking my calls — Ye Ne Wo Sere Kwa whispered the truth: it’s just human nature.
Me Nsei Da.
Enye Nyame Den.
Mpempem Do Me.
Songs that make me feel unstoppable.
When I talk to God in my lowest hours, Ma Enye Wo Nkoara Adom and Job Ye Dinn are there too, holding space for my prayers.
And Makra Mo — my God, Makra Mo!
I’ve always said I want that song to play whenever I exit a building, and I mean it. It’s the closest I’ve come to accepting my own mortality.
When you finally understand Lumba — really understand him — his words start guiding your life. Your decisions. And then you look back at everyone who reduced his genius to sex and innuendo, including yourself (forgive me, Daddy for I was young), and you feel nothing but disgust. If you don’t understand Twi — or only half-understand it — you could think that’s all there is. And sometimes, sure, it was intentional. But to reduce Daddy Lumba’s music to just love songs and sexual innuendos? That’s a disservice. Not to him — to yourself.
Yes, Lumba wrote about sex. But only because sex is human. Because even though we pretend otherwise, statistics say we’re all swimming in it. But Lumba was more than that. He was a philosopher and griot. Master musician and poet. A genius in full bloom.
Mpempem Do Me
One of the best things that’s ever happened to me is this:
Being alive, right here, right now, breathing the same air as Lumba’s music with all of you. Maybe that’s luck. Maybe that’s grace. Either way, I count it.
Lumba made music the way music is supposed to be made – for human utility.
Songs to cry to. Songs to laugh to. Songs to dance until your knees give out.
Songs to sit in silence and let the weight of the world settle. Songs for when you’re making love. Songs for when you’re fasting and bargaining with God.
Songs for the birth of our children. Songs for the burial of our parents.
I’ve read Plato. Nietzsche. Gary Zukav. I’ve waded through Rumi’s poetry, Buddha’s teachings, Ecclesiastes’ riddles. I get them. I respect them. But none of them cuts me open the way Lumba’s music does. Maybe it’s for the same reason moaning in Twi feels strange. Because when you hear truth in your first language, it lands differently. The meaning sticks. The depth is obvious. The weight? Heavy as a life you’ve actually lived.
You might think you don’t know ten Lumba songs. Maybe you don’t know them by name. But I promise, they’re there. Buried in your subconscious, waiting for the right chord to tap you on the shoulder, waiting for you to realize how close they’ve always been. And when you finally hear them again? The memories hit like a Kaneshie flood on a day when you really need to get to work.
Makra Mo
I’ve dreaded this day since Ankwanoma made me cry in the back of that trotro. I always thought it would wreck me – bring me to my knees, split my world in two. But now that it’s here:
I don’t know how to feel.
So I’m doing what I’ve always done when the feelings won’t name themselves:
I’m diving back into the Lumba catalog. Because somewhere in there – I’m 99.9% sure – is a song I know by heart but forgot I knew. A song that’ll either tell me exactly how I feel, or show me how I’m supposed to.
Sleep well, Charles Kwadwo Fosu.
Thank you for your service.
You used every ounce of the gift you were given, and I know – I know – God is as proud of you as we are. And this may be weird, but I’ll say it: I’m jealous of God. Jealous of the ancestors. Jealous of the heavens. Because if Daddy links up with Bodo and makes another Bla Bla Bla up there? That party’s never ending.
This may be the only thing I write or the first of many. I don’t know.
I’m still trying to figure out how to feel.
Written By Ko-jo Cue.
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