page_title: Songs of Paapieye
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: Songs of Paapieye / Composition
caption_attribution_description: English: a Ghnaian Gyil
context_page_description: Songs of Paapieye is the fourth album by Ghanaian musician SK Kakraba, released in October 2015 by Awesome Tapes From Africa, becoming the first album of original material released by the typically reissue-centred label. The album showcases Kakraba's mastery of the gyil, a type of wooden, 14-slatted xylophone originating from Kakraba's native Ghana that features a distinctive, buzzy rattle with a slow decaying sound caused by spiders egg sac silk walls pulled across the gourds' holes, known in Kakraba's Lobi language as pappieye, which gives the album its name. It is smoother in sound than his previous album Yonye and is fast-paced, showcasing complex, intricate rhythms, drones and dialogue between lower, buzzing basslines and higher, syncopated notes. Many tracks feature several modes and move between different sections.
  Kakraba recorded the album by himself without overdubs or accompaniment from other musicians, and used only the gyil. The tracks are song cycles, mostly drawing from Ghanaian traditional music, although there is original material on the album. Among the tracks, there are three funeral pieces.
context_section_description: Songs Of Paapieye contains six solo, instrumental recordings, and features Kakraba's "favourite song cycles, funeral dirges, improvised interpretations on traditional songs and original compositions." Haydon Spenceley of Drowned in Sound called the album "a series of six song cycles." Besides being an album of solo recordings as opposed to a group recording, Songs of Paapieye also departs from Yonye in that it is smoother in sound. The tracks nonetheless sound like ensembles, via the "animated dialogue" between the deep buzzing, looping basslines and the syncopated higher, clearer notes. The album includes three funeral songs, each with a rapid, stop-start nature, although these tracks are not dissimilar, however, to "Sopka," which Kakraba claims is "happy hour music" played to "please your soul." Jon Pareles of The New York Times felt that the majority of the album, including funeral pieces, displays a propulsive but unpredictable style of dance music. The album has been described as "a big wash of complex rhythms," though the music does frequently exude melody. 
  The tracks approximate contrapuntal work in that they keep a rhythmic pace, boasting a shifting bassline, and then "work around the 'lead' line." Sections of phrases become emphasised with "parallel attacks", such as octaves but typically other intervals, and the pieces' pattern is highlighted with improvisatory waves. The pieces, which typically feature a couple of modes each, are complex and fast, and the paapieye rattles compound the rhythmic complexity and avoid creating phase relationships. Aquarium Drunkard noted that although harmonic elements of the album's pulsing drones are shared with the works of minimalist composers Terry Riley and Steve Reich, Kakraba's feel is "jazzier, earthier, and more folk focused."
  The album opens with the short track "Lubile Prai," which was inspired by birdsong, and boasts stop-start shifts in tempo, working to build up anticipation for the succeeding tracks. The final third of the track features propelling cascades of melody. Kakraba says the nine-minute "Banyere Yo" is about a drunken blind man. The piece opens with a frantic yet intricate rallentando and diminuendo section that showcases the musician's virtuosity, with sounds akin to the paradiddle exercises (16th-note roll) of a drummer, before leading into a section based on a highly rhythmic riff, where extra elements are added and subtracted every time the riff cycles. The final section of the song features a shift in tempo. A two-note pattern resembling a siren emerges in the middle register at one point, surrounded by offbeat accent lines. "Dairfu" is similarly frenetic, yet features a permeating mournful tone and timbre, with offset bursts of cascading notes between bass-note patterns.
  By contrast, "Darikpon Variations" features a riff which, according to Spenceley, bears harmonic and melodic similarity to the "straight-ahead grooves" of rock guitarist Jimmy Page. The groove is built upon and variations soon appear, with the pulsing lower end allowing room for the higher melodic echelons of the gyil to dominate. The track is also a funeral piece and features several sections with a loping bass-note in 6/8. "Sopka" is a shorter piece which places more attention on the gyil's lower tones, while "Guun" is "a funeral song to dance to, a final send-off for the recently departed," and displays the full potential of the gyil, with, as is characteristic of the album, tempo shifts and flowing melody. It features Kakraba's polyrhythms anchored by a singular loping bassline which alternates with "more exposed, almost scat-like improvisations." The track's "fluidity and flexibility of gesture" have been compared to jazz, despite the gyil far predating the genre, and as such, the track has been described as a bridge between the musical elements of gyil music and jazz.
caption: The Ghanaian gyil is the only instrument on Songs of Paapieye.
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