Music and car culture share a deep history in Ghana, where both have long been a site of aspiration, labour, and everyday encounter. In Ghana on the Go (Reference Hart2016), Jennifer Hart examines how drivers in colonial and postcolonial Ghana used motor vehicles to leverage economic opportunity and status, while also tracing driving culture’s entanglement with popular music. Hart reads Nana Ampadu’s 1983 highlife songs about commercial driving as a popular commentary on the profession’s difficulty and risk. Yet both drivers and musicians have also carried moral stigma. For example, in Steven Feld’s documentary, The Story of Por Por: M.V. Labadi, Nii Quarshie Gene recalls how drivers were once labelled “womanizers,” echoing how musicians, too, were often cast as unserious for refusing “real jobs” (Collins Reference Collins2018). Even so, these reputations have never been fixed; both occupations have continually negotiated respectability and social value in public life.
Horn to Horn captures this link between automobiles and music through a sonic dialogue that transcends boundaries, but honours shared histories across the Black Atlantic. Emerging from Steven Feld’s “five musical years in Ghana” (a series of books, films, and recordings), the album draws on more than two decades of friendship with the La Drivers Union Por Por ensemble and an even longer relationship with the Texas Horns in Austin. As the liner notes state, “friendships from those years resound to the present.” “Por por” refers to both the squeeze-bulb honk-horn and the musical practice developed within the La Drivers Union, where vehicle signals become instruments for funeral performance in Ga culture, and where the ceremony combines speech, music, and dance. Feld’s film, A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie, documents this celebratory labour of consolation. The Texas Horns, a three-piece blues, soul, and roots horn section, features Mark Kazanoff, John Mills, and Al Gomez. The trio brings experience in global touring, high-profile collaborations, and a Grammy nomination. The 12 songs on this award-winning album last a little over 50 minutes, which flows quickly and leaves listeners eager for more; track lengths range from under three minutes to a little over five minutes.
“Mibi Anue,” an energetic track blending entertainment with instruction, opens the album with emphatic bell patterns built on the 3–2 Ghanaian “highlife timeline” (Agawu Reference Agawu2003:76). The squeeze-bulb sounds are introduced for the first time, creating a rhythmic call-and-response pattern with the bells. Kpanlogo drums then emerge and merge with the gome (square-frame drum), while the Texas Horns add motifs along with guitar work. Vocally, “Anue” calls receive “Boo mitue” responses (a parent advising their daughter), then shift into celebratory “wonye wala” (“we are having fun”) exchanges over V–I brass progressions. The festive lyrics about eating, drinking, and celebration may remind some listeners of Burna Boy’s “Last Last,” a familiar tune for Afrobeats audiences. But just when the song seems settled, it pivots dramatically into something akin to Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, with a funky undertone. This section highlights the percussion and bulb horns before the male vocalist delivers a rap style reminiscent of highlife legend Gyedu Blay Ambolley. The song then briefly circles back to its initial pattern before ending abruptly, leaving listeners craving more.
With a danceable quality like most songs on the album, “Sunshine in Africa”—the second track—celebrates the African continent with warmth from its first note. Beginning with a deceptively laid-back feel, it gradually builds intensity, showcasing jama rhythms and playful horns that capture West African vibrancy. The jama dance form, popular among Ga youth, perfectly complements themes of homecoming and hospitality, giving the track its upbeat, rhythmic character. Drawing from Ga traditions, “Sunshine in Africa” represents jama’s cultural role as a community unifier across contexts—from football matches to funerals. With pan-African lyrics and an accessible sound, it remains one of the album’s most immediately approachable tracks. “Tswao Omanyeaba” echoes the lively rhythms of “Sunshine in Africa.” Based on a traditional Ga ritual saying meaning “good tidings,” the song embodies greetings and hopes for prosperity. The music surges forward with infectious energy before a sudden break, leaving a lingering sense of suspension before fading out.
“Aabgemi,” the penultimate track, weaves jubilant dance rhythms with threads of melancholy. It bursts open with a punchy, metallic cry from the dawuro bell and brass, then builds as the por por horns cascade into the mix alongside the trombone’s deep bass line, creating winding grooves. The singer’s voice rises with emotion, lamenting a “house enemy”—a betrayer lurking within their inner circle—while calling upon ancestral spirits for protection and justice. These lyrics, delivered in Akan, stand in striking contrast to the album’s predominantly Ga language. The song’s meditation on treachery and social bonds carries forward the time-honoured tradition of philosophical storytelling embedded in Ghanaian highlife music, while deploying classic highlife sonic architecture: spiralling call-and-response exchanges and an intimate move between voice and brass that feels both conversational and transcendent.
Other tracks, like “Amliyeli,” tackle similar pressing social themes. This song serves as a cautionary tale against the corrosive selfishness that obstructs collective nation-building. “Amliyeli” unfolds in a flowing 6/8-time signature anchored by the traditional Adowa bell pattern, punctuated by the distinctive honking of por por horns, and graced by a hauntingly beautiful atenteben flute interlude that suspends time in contemplative stillness. The rhythmic backbone pulses with life, driven by an electrifying dialogue between the Kpanlogo drum’s crisp, staccato strikes and the gome’s thunderous, earth-shaking bass, all weaving together a rich polyrhythmic tapestry. A cascading brass call-and-response ushers in the vocals, which shimmer with the characteristic Wuolmei style: luxuriant harmonic layers enveloping the interplay between lead vocalist and choral responses.
The album captures an interface between materiality and sound that illuminates the link between vehicles and music on Accra’s streets. Consider “Suomo,” which opens with a captivating sound design: a vintage 1950s Ghanaian lorry engine struggling to turn over before roaring to life. This mechanical prelude sets the stage for the entrance of honking horns, bridging the mechanical and the musical. Kaz’s masterful arrangement features a call-and-response between horns and vocals, complemented by Steven Feld’s trombone work. A mesmerizing female lead vocal conveys both power and vulnerability, exploring the emotional cost of love through a dilemma: choosing between loyalty to a wife or a sister. The percussion ingeniously mirrors the vocal rhythm, bringing the piece full circle with a percussive echo of the human voice.
Yet the next track, “2018,” is purely instrumental, featuring a musical dialogue between horns and piano. It starts with a classic New Orleans street rhythm, anchored by crisp brass, snare, and hi-hat patterns. The mid-tempo groove sets the stage for jubilant breakdowns featuring stellar performances from both horn ensembles. The piano later takes centre stage, delivering soulful blues riffs that weave between the brass arrangements in a masterful call-and-response pattern.
The sixth track, “M.V. Labadi,” begins with a dawuro strike, then shakers, which sonically transport listeners across multiple buses. The lyrics use innuendos from vehicle inscriptions to offer pointed critique, creating both entertainment and social commentary. The track’s jazzy vibe merges seamlessly with tenor sax and atenteben flute solos, weaving together traditional and contemporary instruments into a rich cross-cultural soundscape. Conveyed with sparse instrumentation (bells, drum toms, Afrikander pipe, and occasional bass), Nii Yemo Nunu, with a thick Ga accent, recites several lorry inscriptions in English. He pays homage to his father’s driving career, underscoring the cultural weight of these vehicle captions. As Ato Quayson writes in Oxford Street (Reference Quayson2014:32), Accra’s “ubiquitous and colourful” automobile inscriptions create a dense “discourse ecology”––where writings, images, and soundscapes circulate across local and transnational registers. Their improvisational, citational style blurs orality and literacy, turning vehicles into public prompts for interpretation and ethical reflection (ibid). What strikes me most is how this album transforms the poetry of Accra’s streets into a transnational musical conversation.
Indeed, “M.V. Labadi” reveals car inscriptions as an interpretive invitation. The song’s video concludes with close-up shots of slogan-bearing vehicles, evoking nostalgia for home—a theme echoed in “Driver, Take Me.” This track opens with soulful harmonica, creating a Memphis groove, while melancholic bass and expressive guitar establish a contemplative mood. The organ adds hymn-like textures as raw vocals express universal longing. Contrasting this is the celebratory “Shidaa” (praise), the album’s longest track. It begins with the odondo talking drum against horns shifting from F major to E minor, creating a meditative yet dynamic soundscape. Trumpet riffs intertwine with groovy bass, while the alto saxophone delivers a bluesy solo, blending jazz with African foundations. Without lyrics, “Shidaa” allows the instruments to communicate gratitude and celebration across cultures.
As someone who lived in Africa before moving to North America, I hear Horn to Horn differently. From my stereo in the US, the squeeze-bulb klaxon sounds transport me instantly to Accra’s streets. These distinctive horns—not from cars, but from Fan Milk ice cream vendors pushing their carts—would be instantly recognizable to any Accra resident. The acoustemology of the por por horns, in a gastromusicological context, evokes mouthwatering memories. Throughout the album, however, the squeeze-bulb klaxon sounds create dissonance that escapes harmonic and rhythmic boundaries. They appear consistently but unpredictably, establishing their own musical logic that evades “tonality as a colonizing force” (Agawu Reference Agawu2003).
Call and response—between instruments and vocals—is the album’s primary feature, reflecting the geographical back-and-forth of its creation: from Accra to Austin and back. Thus, Horn to Horn embodies what John Collins (Reference Collins1987; Reference Collins1989) theorizes as a trans-Atlantic “Feedback Cycle”: musical ideas and practices that travel from Africa to the Americas, are transformed there, and return to Africa. Or what Halifu Osumare (Reference Osumare2012) terms an “Arc of mutual inspiration”: a long historical loop of rhythmic and performative influence between Africa and its diaspora, in which musical styles are continually reinvented “abroad” and reformulated “back home.” The black-and-white video for “M.V. Labadi” captures this relationship through intercut scenes: the Texas Horns and Steven Feld performing from a vintage vehicle in America, alongside the La Por Por ensemble in Ghana.
A minor production note: the gome and trombone bass lines sometimes compete in the lower frequencies, obscuring their distinctive contributions. The music video to “Mibi Anue” still usefully and visually stages the album’s intercultural grammar: alternating between Accra and Austin, placing the Por Por ensemble at the newly renovated Kwame Nkrumah mausoleum while the Texas Horns dance in a vintage convertible. The closing drone shot over the Atlantic Ocean offers a compact metaphor for the record’s circulating routes.
Overall, the album uses irony to create engaging sonic contradictions that challenge expectations while connecting cultures. For instance, the intro to “Kpanlogo Medley” opens with a guitar melody that seems to oppose the title, “Kpanlogo”—a neo-traditional music/dance form that rose to prominence in 1960s Accra. This contrast sounds like what Feld calls “cosmopolitanism’s cruelest contradiction”: the policing of “authentic” African culture in ways that celebrate transnational connection while simultaneously excluding cosmopolitan African artists as insufficiently “traditional” (Feld Reference Feld2012:241). In other words, the track refuses the demand that Ghanaian music must sound recognizably “traditional” in order to count as real participation in Black Atlantic musical modernity. “Kpanlogo Medley” articulates Ghanaian-ness through cosmopolitan soundings—blending Ghanaian grooves with Cuban son clave via dense polyrhythms and distorted guitar timbres to produce a jazz-inflected tapestry across traditions.
Similarly, the closing track “Akwaaba” (welcome) works ironically as a farewell. It opens with a summoning solo antelope horn, shifts into interlocking Por Por and Texas Horn patterns over bass-drum foundations, and ends with car honks and shouts, “yaay!”—a closing gesture that seals both the track and the album. This ending suggests that “welcome” is not a fixed destination but an ongoing, performed relation. In Feld’s telling, the irony travels with him. In Atlanta (U.S.), he meets a Black “chief” at the airport who urges African Americans to “come back home to Ghana,” while also insisting on “authentic” Ghanaian music groups. Thirteen hours later, arriving in Accra at Kotoka International Airport, Feld is welcomed by Vice and the Por Por ensemble with, “Prof, you are welcome!” (Feld Reference Feld2012:150–157). With the greeting sounded through Por Por honks, the album is indeed a welcome: the beginning—and continuation—of an intimate conversation.
Listeners drawn to global jazz and musical cosmopolitanism will hear Horn to Horn as more than a “fusion” project. It traces how brass idioms, groove logics, and sonic infrastructures travel and return across the Black diaspora. The record will resonate with scholars of jazz, ethnomusicology, Black studies, and sound studies. Beyond the academy, fans of street and funeral brass, roots horn sections, and danceable polyrhythm will enjoy this album for both its sheer rhythmic propulsion and its audible mapping of Black diasporic circulation and return.
