“Zormiwasa! Zormiwasa!” said Amino Gogongo “You come my house!”

The origin story of how Elliott Orr came to the name ‘Zormiwasa’.

It was 1997 and I was in Ghana, West Africa, studying the rhythms of the Ga and Ewe people, rhythms such as Kpanlogo, Fume Fume, Atsiagbekor and Gahu. It had been another exciting yet exhausting week, studying daily with Yao Anaglo of Folkloric Salamanta, in the sweltering heat at the Accra Arts Centre. A weekend retreat to Kokrobite, the coastal fishing village and emerging tourist destination, was a welcome reprieve. 

Besides gorging on nutritious fish dishes, fresh green coconuts and far too much of their famous local peanut brittle (oh and there may also have been a few bottles of Palm Wine heartily devoured) we, Gopi McLeod (my partner at the time) and I, had the great pleasure of attending the regular Sunday concert at the Academy of African Music and Arts (AAMA), led by legendary Ghanaian musician Mustapha Tetty Addy.

The best local drum and dance ensembles would take their turn to dazzle the crowd, gathered in the open air amphitheatre with a backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean. Cultural traditional dance performances, often quite sizzlingly sexy and certainly energetic beyond measure, would be accompanied by incredible music, including flutes, balafons, shakers, bells, song and an array of drums from the different ethnic groups – kpanlogo from the local Gha, the atsimevu, kidi, kagang and sogboh of the Ewe, the atumpani and fontomfrom of the Ashanti, and of course the wonderful talking drum, the ‘gogongo’ of the Hausa.

The gogongo – what an incredible sound! The musical expression made possible through the intonation, the rise and fall in pitch, of the gogongo, fully blew my mind. Imagine a wooden hourglass shaped drum, an antelope or goat skin on each end and leather rope connecting the skins to each other. It is then played with a strap over the left shoulder with one hooked stick in the right hand while the left hand plays the skin, all the while the left arm squeezing the leather ropes and accordingly adjusting the pitch. This style of drum is called a ‘talking drum’ and it’s easy to understand why; the range of vocalisation is extraordinary. 

The final performance of the day was by the Royal Obonu Drummers, led by the son of Mustapha Tetty Addy, who played one of these gogongo drums. Song, bells, flutes, a brekete (bass drum) and two gogongos. With these mobile instruments they descended upon the stage from up above and behind the audience, playing a grand, slow, hypnotic groove that, as far as I was concerned, could have gone on forever. It literally took them 10 minutes to take the stage. I was mesmerised! And that was when I first heard Amino Gogongo, who was playing lead on the gogongo. 

So taken was I by this guy on the talking drum, that I ventured backstage after the show and politely entered the dressing room. I expressed my interest in learning from him. The son of Mustapha Tetty Addy (whose name escapes me) respectfully sent me up to the AAMA office. I spoke to the receptionist there who gave me the details and the cost. Having paid for lessons in Ghana for a few weeks I realised that I would, in fact, be paying mostly for the Academy itself with a good healthy white man’s tax included (!) and only a small portion would end up with the artist himself, Amino. Not adverse to paying good money for art, though on a shoe-string budget as a musician myself, I left the office to consider the conviction of my motivation. 

As I was walking back down to meet up with my partner I passed a huge tree and from within the foliage of that tree heard a quiet but very clear “pssst!”, a sound that is used frequently in Ghana to draw somebody’s attention. Peeking around from behind the trunk was none other than Amino Gogongo. 

“You come my house, Zormiwasa, you come my house” he said in a thick accent with broken English. “I teach you, you come my house, Zormiwasa”. Thrilled by the cloak and dagger style in which Amino was offering his teachings I immediately responded with a whole body “Yes”. 

“You come my house, Zormiwasa”. 

“Ok, what’s your address? When should I come?”

His directions:

Back in Accra, Tuesday afternoon, catch a share-taxi to Zongo. Get off at the Gaskia Cinema and ask anybody for Amino Gogongo. That was it! No google map pin or detailed directions. We are talking a bustling, densely populated city, with possible danger for a skinny white guy target like me, but I was ready for adventure.

Tuesday came, I worked out which share-taxi to catch to go to Zongo, asked the driver to drop me at the Gaskia Cinema where I was confronted by a sea of African faces, a bustling crowd of people, in the heat and the dust. To the first person I said “Excuse me, can you help me please, I’m looking for Amino Gogongo?”.

 “Come with me,” the young man said.

Follow him I did, for a couple of minutes, arriving at a little candy/cigarette/news stall. The first guy spoke in Hausa – I’m guessing – and then the next guy said “follow me”. It was a 5 minute walk through back streets and crowds of people to get to Amino’s ‘house’, and the brutal reality of poverty in Africa hit me hard. We crossed a fairly major road and over a deep open sewer with a flat concrete bridge only 4 feet wide. With no side rails this was not somewhere you’d like to trip. It was ‘shanty town’, the buildings were all besser brick with galvanised iron rooves. Basically no trees to be seen or in which to seek shade. Thankfully it wasn’t raining so instead of mud it was just super hot and dusty. 

We knocked on a door and in old jeans and a white singlet I was greeted by Amino Gogongo. 

Of the Hausa tribe, who had arrived nomadically in Ghana from Niger many decades prior, Amino was the son of the most famous gogongo player in Accra. And now, in 1997, Amino had earned the mantle and become the most respected gogongo player in Accra. This guy had so much energy, a total live-wire. He took ‘Attention Dialled into a Higher Dimension’ (or ADHD) to a whole new level. I called him Amino Acid because being with him felt like being on acid. 

I visited him there a good half a dozen times. He would roll up a big joint and we’d get outrageously baked. I had one crazy moment in which while we were playing, trancing out on the rhythm and the THC in my brain, I literally had a clear vision that we were in a castle and that just on the other side of the wall in the castle kitchen were a group of women, all giggling about this funny white guy learning their music. It felt so real, like I had been transported into the past, and made me acutely aware that there is a history of great wealth, a royal history, not just in terms of culture, but actual physical wealth, in Ghana. The gold that has come out of Ghana is immense. The poverty in Africa in the current era is new, a result of over-industrialisation, colonisation and no doubt a generous dose of corruption thrown in. 

Amino asked a lesson price a quarter of that which was demanded at AAMA. I paid him double what he asked. I wish I could have afforded more. We played and played and played and played until my fingers were blistered. He taught me basic rhythms but mostly we just played; ‘monkey see monkey do’. 

One rhythmic phrase I remember was: 

“What you say? Pardon? What you say? Pardon? Kon ko ron pina nan Kon ko ron pina nan. What you say? Pardon?”

I was so very lucky to connect with Amino. He took my partner and I to his home town of Koforidua, hours in-land from Accra on the coast, to play for a big festival. As a muslim he went there to see his family and celebrate the end of Ramadan, the day of Lebaran. What an epic cultural community event! There was a huge parade through town. Kings rode on horseback while other royals walked, flanked by their people, large colourful fabric umbrellas creating much needed shade from the sun, everybody dressed to the hilt!

Multiple ensembles of drummers moved about, mostly on talking drums, switching between the various kingships and clans, a key feature of the day, playing as they walked. They were all dressed in elegant muslim robes, except of course for Amino! In typical Amino Acid style he wore thongs, jeans and a red singlet and was a frenzy of crazy rhythms that had everybody shrieking with delight. It was so exciting and a great honour to be playing gogongo that day, alongside Amino and his support drummers, one of which I had become. 

Eventually I asked Amino, having heard him say it so many times, “what does ‘Zormiwasa’ mean?”

“Come play music!” he responded. Light bulb moment – A ha! Come play music!

Upon returning to Australia and fully establishing myself as a full time djembe player and teacher I frequently invited my students to perform with me at The Zoo, in Fortitude Valley, at my gig, the Big Bang Percussion Frenzy. We needed a name. So I named my student ensemble performance group ‘Zormiwasa’.

Now, in 2024, 27 years later, a few thousand people have performed on African drums under the banner ‘Zormiwasa’, all over Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast and now Northern NSW. We may be a student group but some of my students have been with me for a couple of decades (I love you!) and they are actually damn good djembe players. The smiles and rhythms are insanely infectious. We always create such a strong impression and the community vibes are huge. My students and I carry the name Zormiwasa with pride.