Ata Kak

Born in Kumasi in 1960, Yaw Atta-Owusu, known as Ata Kak, built a life between Ghana, Germany and Canada that is directly reflected in his music. After leaving Ghana in 1985 he settled first in Dortmund and later moved to Toronto in the late 1980s. Ata Kak spent time in a reggae band before joining the highlife group Marijata as a musician and songwriter. In Toronto he forged a singular aesthetic on his own, where Ghanaian highlife intersects with hip-house, rap, funk, reggae and uptempo dance pop, often delivered in a chanted Twi phrasing. In 1994 he recorded the album Obaa Sima, initially circulated privately on cassette in Ghana. Long obscure, he resurfaced when Brian Shimkovitz discovered the cassette in the early 2000s, shared it via Awesome Tapes from Africa in 2006 and supported its official reissue in 2015. This rediscovery returned Ata Kak to the stage from 2016, backed by musicians, and brought renewed attention to a body of work born outside conventional circuits — at the crossroads of the Ghanaian diaspora, West African dance music and the hybrid rap forms of the 1990s.