Also onboard is Kofi Anang with a long instrumental piece mixing giri xylophone and environment sounds in Ko (Forest), a salute to the pastoral environment of his childhood in a small village in Ghana. Obo Addy adds his trademark multilayer drum and vocal workouts to the disc, first all by his multitrack lonesome on Amedzro, derived from a recreational song of the Ga people, and later on an Afro-beat workout backed by a percolating seven-piece band. Each of the artists on Safarini gets two or three chances to show his/her stuff on a solid CD whose first half is slightly stronger than the second. The addition of horns on the back end isn't quite the plus it might have been, but it is still topnotch stuff from the land of Twin Peaks. While bands back in the home country straddle the latest pop bandwagons in hopes of breakthrough success, it's the expatriates who freeze time by playing the musical styles they remember as a way of maintaining cultural links.