Azonto

What it is

It started as a dance. Around 2011 in Accra a set of hand and hip movements called azonto spread through Ghanaian schools and then through YouTube, and the producers followed rather than led, building tracks that gave the dance the accents it needed. The rhythm underneath is kpanlogo, a Ga recreational drumming style from the coastal neighbourhoods of the city, with its bell pattern transferred more or less intact to a sampled agogo. That bell is the reason an azonto track is identifiable in a bar and a half. The kick is busy, the claps are ordinary, but the bell crosses the beat in a seven stroke figure, and that figure is what a listener actually recognises.

What it sounds like

Bright and sprung. A sampled bell or agogo with a lot of high mid, congas underneath it, a kick with a snappy attack, and claps that sound like a stock machine rather than hands. Melodies are plucked, short, and usually in a major key, which sets azonto apart from most of what surrounds it in this family. Vocals switch between Twi, Ga and English within a line. Production is unfussy and often bright to the point of being harsh, which suits the way these records were mostly heard, on phone speakers and in shared taxis rather than on a club system.

Key elements

• The kpanlogo bellSeven strokes a bar: beat 1, the and of 1, the e of 2, the a of 2, the and of 3, beat 4 and the a of 4. It never lines up with the claps.
• A busy kickSix hits in bar one covering the beats and pushing off two of them. Unusually for this family the kick is a rhythm part rather than a floor.
• Ordinary claps2 and 4, dry, machine-sounding, with an extra sixteenth at the end of bar one and two more in bar two. They are the anchor that makes the bell readable as a cross rhythm.
• Congas in the gapsHand drums on the a of 1, the e of 3, the a of 3 and the e of 4 in bar one, taking only sixteenths where neither the bell nor the kick is playing.
• Major key plucksA short, bright riff in a major key, usually one bar long. It is closer to highlife than to anything else in this file.

How to get them

• Program the bell firstWrite the seven bell strokes and loop them alone until they stop sounding like a mistake. Everything else in the arrangement is placed relative to that figure.
• Bell soundA single agogo or cowbell sample, high-passed around 700Hz, no reverb, panned about fifteen percent off centre. Vary the velocity between 62 and 86 rather than using one value.
• KickShort with an audible click at 3kHz. It has to be heard as a separate rhythm against the bell, so length works against you here more than in most of this family.
• CongasTwo pitches, slap and open, placed only in the sixteenths where neither the bell nor the kick is playing. That constraint is easier to check than to hear.
• Swing0.53, barely off straight. The kpanlogo bell already lands unevenly against the grid and swinging it any harder makes it read as a triplet figure instead.
• Bright plucksA short, plucked major key riff with the release cut down so it never overlaps itself. Highlife guitar tone rather than anything from a dance record.

Reference points

Sarkodie, Fuse ODG, EL, Guru, Gasmilla, Wizkid's Ghanaian collaborations, and the Ga kpanlogo drummers the bell comes from. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.