The President, John Dramani Mahama, has charged the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, to hold a ceremony to honour legendary highlife musician Agya Koo Nimo.
Mahama made this admonition during the launch of the Blackstar Experience on Thursday, May 1, 2025 in front of the Freedom and Justice Monument at the Blackstar Square in Accra.
While appreciating the Legon Palmwine Band for their performance on the night, he also paid tribute to Agya Koo Nimo, one of the early proponents of palmwine music.
“We watched the palmwine music and I asked if the King of Palmwine music was still alive – Agya Koo Nimo, and I hear he is alive. This is a man we must honour before he passes. Because that was a genre of music that has become a part of our musical archive and our folklore. For people like this, we should not wait till they die and we go and cry at their funerals,” he said.
The President, therefore, proposed that a ceremony be held to celebrate the music legend.
“So wherever Agya Koo Nimo is, Dzifa, you and your team [should] organise some ceremony, let’s honour him. I know he has been honoured in the past. Let’s honour him again vefore God calls him,” he said.
Agya Koo Nimo has received numerous awards and recognitions in the past.
In 2007, he received the Order of the Volta Award from President John Agyekum Kufuor, acknowledging his outstanding contributions to Ghanaian music heritage.
He has also received honours including the Asanteman Award from the Asantehene, the Konkoma Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, Entertainment Achievement Awards, among a litany of others.
Palmwine music
It is a type of music created by the local working-class people who would go to palm-wine bars to drink and listen to music. Portable instruments and local string and percussion merged to create this style. It was out of this genre that the traditional two-finger plucking of a guitar came when musicians played it similarly to how they played the local lute or harp. This style was typically played in a syncopated 4/4 metre. In some instances it is also performed to 6/8 rhythms.
In Ghana, some of the early proponents of palmwine music were Jacob Sam and the Kumasi Trio, Kwesi Pepera, Appianing, Kwame, Mireku, Osei Bonsu, Kwesi Menu, Kamkan and Appiah Adjekum. In the 1950s, Agya Koo Nimo gained prominence with this style of music even though he had been introduced to western music while growing up.
About Agya Koo Nimo
Born on October 3, 1934, Agya Koo Nimo was named Kwabena Boa-Amponsem. His father was a trumpeter and his mother was a singer in the local Methodist church where he was christened, ‘Daniel’. His official name is Daniel Amponsah (Ph.D).
He attended Adisadel College at Cape Coast from 1947-1952, inspired by his relationship with Otumfoͻ Opoku Ware II, who was an old student. He took a technician’s course at the Medical Research Institute, Korle Bu, for one year and worked at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital for five years from 1955 to 1960 as a technician.
Despite not working directly in the music related industry, his interest in music was intact. When he began performing, he took the professional name Koo Nimo.
The Addadam Agofomma ensemble is one of the traditional musical groups that upholds palm wine music and the original Ghanaian highlife music. The ensemble was formed by Agya Koo Nimo. Some of the major instruments for palm wine music include, apentemma, the dondo, the frikyiwa (metallic castanet), the prempensua (rhumba box), nnawuta (consisting of two iron bells that provide the key rhythmic pattern) and the ntͻwa (hollow gourd rattle with beads or seeds woven around it on a net) or dawuro (banana-shaped bell). He fuses storytelling with guitar and vocals, including spoken word poetry in his compositions.
In 1979, in recognition of his services to Ghanaian music as performer, teacher and administrator, Agya Koo Nimo was elected President of the Musicians’ Union of Ghana (MUSIGA). In 1985, he was appointed interim chairman of the Copyright Society of Ghana (COSGA). He is an honorary life member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, along with such distinguished names as Professor J. H. K. Nketia of blessed memory and Professor John Collins.
His eight-track album, titled ‘Osabarima’ was released as a compact disc (CD) in 1990, making it the first work by a Ghanaian artist to be put on CD. In recognition of his dedication to music and his country, Agya Koo Nimo received the prestigious Asanteman award from the Asantehene in February, 1991. In the following month of the same year, he received the Flagstar Award from ECRAG (Entertainment Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana). The year 1991 ended with an honourable invitation to serve on the National Folklore Board of Trustees.
Dr. Andrew L. Kaye, an ethnomusicologist who has published on topics in African music, the history of stringed instruments, and film music presented his dissertation entitled “Koo Nimo and his circle: A Ghanaian Musician in Ethnomusicological Perspective” and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree for his work at Columbia University, New York in January, 1992. In 1998, the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S.A employed Agya Koo Nimo as a Professor of Ethnomusicology for two years. From there he joined the University of Michigan.
Some of his popular compositions include, ‘Ͻdͻnson’ (Let love prevail), ‘Akuafo Monno Mfuo’ (Farmers cultivate the land), ‘Abrokyire Abrabo’ (Life overseas), ‘Mewu Na Agoro Agu’ (My death would spell the doom for my group), ‘Ohia Ne Yareɛ Yɛ Ya’ (How painful it is to be poor and sickly) and ‘Adampa/Wo Wu a Na Wadane Saman’ (The dead becomes a ghost). He returned to Ghana in 2006 after his international exploits, and resides in Kumasi till date.
He is a leading folk musician of palm wine music or highlife music from Ghana who is internationally revered and appreciated not only for his music, but his love and respect for tradition and indigenous culture.
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