Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post showcases the 1971 Ghanaian song "Woyaya" by Osibisa.
Information about Osibisa, the Ghanaian music group that recorded that song and information about that song itself is included in this post along with the lyrics for that song and one YouTube video of Osibisa performing that song.
This post also includes information about Ghanaian singer Wiyaala and her video of "Woyaya".
The content of this post is presented for cultural, inspirational, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks Sol Amarfio, the composer of the song "Woyaya" and a member of Osibisa. Thanks to all the members of Osibisa and thanks to Wiyaala and all those who are featured in her video of Osibisa's song "Woyaya". Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.
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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/09/osibisa-woyaya-information-videos-lyrics.html for a 2019 pancocojams post that presents information about Osibisa and showcases additional examples of their song "Woyaya".
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INFORMATION ABOUT OSIBISA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osibisa
"Osibisa are a British Afrobeat band, founded in London in 1969 by four expatriate African and three Caribbean musicians.[1] Their music is a fusion of African, Caribbean, jazz, funk, rock, Latin, and R&B and highlife.
Osibisa were the most successful and longest lived of the African-heritage bands in London, alongside such contemporaries as Assagai, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, Demon Fuzz, and Noir, and were largely responsible for the establishment of world music as a marketable genre.
[...]
The name Osibisa was described in lyrics, album notes and interviews as meaning "criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness" but it actually comes from "osibisaba" the Fante word for highlife.[4][5]"...
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SONG "WOYAYA"
From https://wordsofwisdom.uucg.org/january-1-woyaya-we-are-going/
...Written by Ghanaian drummer Sol Amarifio, Woyaya is the title song of a 1971 album by Oisibisa, a musical group of Ghanaian and Caribbean musicians. It was frequently heard in work camps throughout central West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s... “Woyaya,” like many other African scat syllables, can have many meanings. According to the song’s composer, it means “We are going.”...
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LYRICS- WOYAYA
(composed by Sol Amarifio)
We are going,
Heaven knows where we are going,
But we know within.
And we will get there,
Heaven knows how we will get there,
But we know we will.
It will be hard, we know,
And the road will be muddy and rough,
But we’ll get there,
Heaven knows how we will get there,
But we know we will.
Woyaya, woyaya, woyaya, woyaya.
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SHOWCASE YOUTUBE EXAMPLES
Example #1: OSIBISA - Woyaya (live in Greece 1995)
Stefanos Panagiotakis, Published on Aug 18, 2014
This classic hit comes from their 2nd album WOYAYA of 1971.Here the band perfoms it live at their concert in Salonica ,Greece,February 1995 (#9 song in the play list of this evening).
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Example #2: Wiyaala - Woyaya (We Are Going) - Osibisa's Inspirational Hit Song
Wiyaala, Jan 31, 2020
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In this video, Wiyaala begins her version of "Woyaya" with the lyrics:
We are going,
Heaven knows where we are going,
But we know we will
Get there."...
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She also adds the lyrics "boom boom te boom boom".
Here's an excerpt from https://worldlisteningpost.com/2019/12/26/wiyaala-sissala-goddess/ Wiyaala: Sissala Goddess
Posted on December 26, 2019 by atigay
..."The Ghanaian singer-songwriter Noella Wiyaala opens her second album with Village Sex (video 1), intertwining music and attitude: Her outlook balances respect for some traditions (like pre-marital abstinence) with modern ideals (women comfortable with sexuality); her style blends West African folk, Afropop and arena rock. On Sissala Goddess, Wiyaala unveils a rustic 16-track panorama viewed through a personal-cultural lens, touching not only on love and marriage but also confidence and faith, betrayal and violence, humor and heritage—with a commanding voice shifting to soothing or prayerful at the right moments.
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The artist’s surname means “the doer” in Sissala, spoken in and around Funsi, the village in Ghana’s Upper West Region where she grew up. Singing mostly in Sissala and English, she lives up to her name—as a teen Wiyaala improvised one of her first costumes from her mother’s tablecloth and as one of her country’s most renowned entertainers she still makes her own performance attire and jewelry based on village designs. Her stage persona is inseparable from her activism as a UNICEF ambassador, opposing female genital mutilation and child marriage and promoting women’s rights. She also prizes village values like community, dispute resolution and deference to elders. Urban or rural, east or west, no realm has a monopoly on wisdom or folly. But Wiyaala offers proof that mixing tradition and provocation is good for music and for civilization—even a civilization the size of a village. (Djimba World Records)"...
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