Alostmen: Kologo review – Ghanaian trad meets trance Neil Spencer
Like much of Africa, Ghana is in the midst of a youth boom, which means that more than half its population is under 25. This is one reason for the country’s bustling music scene, which at one extreme is as glossy and corporate as the west can be. As their name suggests, Alostmen are from the grittier end of things. “We were lost in the street, the forgotten people,” explains Stevo Atambire, the quartet’s charismatic leader and master of the kologo, the two-stringed lute particular to the Frafra people of Ghana’s north. Atambire plays the kologo differently, as a power instrument, and sports a mean, homemade oil-can version.