Ghanian, New Haven Musicians Rep Their Roots On A&I Stage

Halfway through his set on the New Haven Green as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas on Wednesday night, Ghanian-born musician and dancer Okaidja taught the small but stalwart audience assembled to see him a typical Ghanian greeting. Ago? he explained, was a way of asking if anyone was home when approaching a house. Amen, he continued, was the response from the person inside the house, indicating they were home. He explained then that he would sometimes use it to check in with the audience, to make sure they were still connected. It wasn’t necessary; though rain and unseasonable cold kept away many, those that showed up on the Green had come to listen.

The evening of music began, rain still drizzling, with New Haven’s own K. Dub, a.k.a. Kevin Walton, Jr., who took the stage with his brother K. Dot (Kaleb Walton) and a hard-driving band of guitar, bass, keys, and drums to deliver a set of rocking, original hip hop.

Along the way, listeners got a sample of K. Dub’s own journey, from his home in New Haven — he’s the son of Karen DuBois-Walton and Kevin Walton — to Wintergreen and Notre Dame to Howard University. ​“As soon as I stepped foot on campus, I knew I was going there,” he said. When he began to have complicated feelings about it, he channeled it into music, eventually writing the album Higher Learning, which he released in 2017. He followed that up with Elm City Trees in 2018. He and his brother have been steadily making music since, founding Elm City Records in 2021 As K. Dub said to introduce his brother, ​“He’s a rapper, a producer, and an actor. What else you do?”

“I’ll do anything,” K. Dot replied.

K. Dub had come to the A&I stage to represent himself and his music, but also New Haven more broadly, and it helped him connect easily with the audience, which gave him mighty applause after each song and danced the electric slide to an old-school-sounding number.

“New Haven, make some noise for yourselves,” K. Dub said at the end of a few songs. Each time, the audience more than obliged.

The pairing of hip hop and Ghanian music was an inspired one; what joined the two artists together was that both were representing where they were from. From the stage, Okaidja took the cold, damp weather in stride. Though born and raised in Ghana, he explained, ​“I’m from Portland, Oregon,” where the weather was often like that. ​“This is not strange for me at all. We proudly brought the weather with us.” Having graciously won over the audience with humor, he and two backup musicians proceeded to hold them with a ride through Ghanian music and culture marked by fleet drumming and guitar playing and Okaidja’s keening singing. Early in his set he introduced the audienxe to the style of music known as highlife, explaining that it was originally thought to be intended for Accra’s jet-setters. ​“But we don’t think so,” he added. ​“We think it’s music for everyone.”

Okaidja explained further that Ghana has almost 50 languages spoken in it, and each one has its own cultural and musical traditions attached to it. He hoped to introduce the audience to a bit of everything — including a few expressions. Among the most colorful, which doubled as a song title, was a phrase that translated to ​“don’t hold my leg,” meaning ​“don’t discourage me” — as when, for example, one is trying to climb a coconut tree, an explanation that helped the phrase snap into focus.

So Okaidja held the audience until the end of the evening. When he and his bandmates switching to drumming and dancing, they received vivacious cheering and clapping from the audience. A parade of cyclists crossed the Green, slowing to hear the music better. Two people shared a cigarette. Okaidja’s voice kept bouncing off the walls of the building until it started getting dark.