Music of Togo

The music of Togo has produced a number of internationally known popular entertainers including Bella Bellow, Akofah Akussah, Afia Mala, Itadi Bonney, Wellborn, King Mensah and Jimi Hope.

The Togolese national anthem is Salut à toi, pays de nos aïeux (Land of our forefathers), written by Alex Casimir-Dosseh.

Togo's southern plain is its most populous area, where the capital, Lomé, is situated on the Gulf of Guinea but, like its neighbours, Ghana and Benin, its territory extends hundreds of kilometres northward, passing through a central hill region into the northern savanna that borders Burkina Faso.

Fon, another related language, as well as Aja, are also spoken in the south: the Ewe had entered Togo from the east, and Akan people from the west, several centuries before Europeans arrived.

[5] Peter Solo The man of Vodoo Game Music from Togo The idea of integrating these haunting lines, sung in honor of the Divinities, to an energetic 1970s Afro-funk was an obvious extension in Peter's mind of the analogy he found between this voodoo tradition and trance inducers such as Blues, Funk, as well as the Rhythm'n Blues of James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Picket.Peter heard this new sound coming through him and named it Vodoo Game.

[5] She began a career singing love-oriented ballads in 1969, when she worked with Togolese-French producer Gérard Akueson and soon appeared on French national radio and then the prestigious Olympia Music Hall.

[5] In Bellow's wake came a wave of female singers, including Mabah, Afia Mala, Fifi Rafiatou and Ita Jourias.