Since its founding in January 1972, the Technology Consulting Center (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, has organized events open to the public. Some of these functions accompanied the opening of a new project or training program and some marked an important anniversary, such as the Silver Jubilee of the university or a national celebration. All these events required music, and from the beginning it was decided that it would be live and reflect the local culture; so the TCC had the privilege of coming into regular contact with Koo Nimo and his Ashanti palm wine ensemble some years before he became a national icon and two decades before his fame spread internationally.
In the 1970s, Koo Nimo worked as a technician in the Pharmacy Department of the Faculty of Sciences, KNUST, where he was known as Kwabena Amponsah. He was a man of many names, and he delighted in giving a full explanation to anyone who asked. When he was born in October 1934, he was named Kwabena Boa-Amponsem but was baptized as Daniel Amponsah. He took the name Koo Nimo for his professional music career, but one of the most memorable songs from those early days was Kwabena Buo, which he said was his name as a child. Kwabena means born on Tuesday, and Buo may be derived from the Boa in his birth name, as the spelling of Twi words and names is far from standardized.
Koo Nimo always sang in his native language, Twi, and in the soft, melodious tones that are now admired internationally. He accompanied himself on an acoustic guitar, but most of his band played indigenous instruments in the palmwine (nsafufuo) or highlife tradition. Many of his most popular songs were in the highlife rhythm and all his teammates joined the signing. Koo Nimo never stopped asking what numbers he should perform each time. There were two songs that were always requested at TCC sponsored events. The first was the aforementioned childhood memory, Kwabena Buo, and the second had the Twi title ‘wo ma me den?’ roughly, ‘what are you doing to me?’
Koo Nimo is remembered as a modest, soft-spoken man who always expressed his joy at being invited to perform at a special function. Fame may have come later in life than is common for popular musicians in the West. In 1979, at the age of 44, he gained national recognition when he was elected president of MUSIGA (the Musicians Union of Ghana) and in 1985 Koo Nimo was named interim president of COSGA, the Copyright Society of Ghana. By the time TCC’s work was recorded on video film, The Wealth’s Secret, in 1987, and Koo Nimo provided the background music, it was already on its way to international recognition.
In 1990, eight of Koo Nimo’s songs were released on a compact disc titled Osabarima (A Man’s Dance), the first work by a Ghanaian artist to be put on CD. From that point on, he received honors in Ghana and the United States and served as a professor of ethnomusicology at two American universities. Now semi-retired, he has returned to his native Kumasi, where we first heard him sing forty years ago. The beautiful shades of Kwabena Buo will caress our ears forever.