GH2013

Get Through Your Hump Day With FRA’s Brain-Itcher, ‘Happy Yourself’

It’s finally Wednesday!

Many Ghanaians will be heading to the polls; your Woman Crush Wednesday has reneged on doing argon oil review she’s been promising to do; you still haven’t lost any of the weight from stuffing your face during Thanksgiving and now your ONE good pair of holiday trousers is hugging your testicles like a long-lost cousin and you’re sitting on the toilet regretting your decision to scoop up that spicy veggie casserole roll-up that Erica from accounting brought to the office potluck. You should’ve just let Erica sulk – but no! You had to play faithful sidekick to her damsel in workplace in distress.

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Image source: Pintrest and my worst nightmare

Now look atcha. You have flames shooting out your backside and there’s a team meeting at 8:30 am.

On top of that, there are now officially only 16 more shopping days left until Christmas! *gasp!*

How are you going to cope with all the madness? Well, since Pharrell didn’t see fit to drop another Happy bomb on us and Taylor couldn’t shake off more time away infusing snake venom into her pot of Bad Blood, it is to Africa – Ghana, more specifically – we must turn to for the feel good song of the year. And it couldn’t come at a better time. You know as well I as do that 2016 clearly marked the beginning of the End Times. Fortunately, FRA released this fabulous ditty to help us dance our way out of this acid-fueled carnival that is the Chinese year of the Monkey. How apropos.

Hey. Hey! Look at me. I'm your president now.

Hey. Hey! Look at me. I’m your president elect now.

Before you click the link and listen to the song, I want to go ahead and say, you’re welcome.

 

Who is FRA? They are five Ghanaian guys that formed a band in 2015. They started out doing covers in 2015, performing live in venues all around the capital. There is a sad truth about live Ghanaian bands that few people are brave enough to speak – and that is it’s unlistenable. As in, it’s so loud and disjointed that you can barely hear the music for the sake of the noise. Nevertheless, we Ghanaians jam dutifully with the racket makers, because we’re a loving and encouraging group of people. Our reward for that long-suffering has been the development of groups like the Compozers and FRA, who feature the inimitable Kyekyeku on guitar in Happy Yourself.
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The phrase ‘happy yourself’ is the common (wo)man’s parlance for the esoteric call to find joy within yourself. Essentially, it is the entire volume of The Secret summed up in two words in pidgin English. It makes the instructions accessible to the rest of us. Not everyone wants to listen to a lecture about methods to find sources of happiness, but I can’t think of one person who doesn’t like music. Everyone likes some form of music! And with this offering, FRA guides us through the process in three simple steps:

  1. Do the woogi mami
  2. Shuffle leg o padi
  3. Joromi

Make you happy yourself , ‘cause you owe nobody your life!

You see how good you’re feeling right now? That’s because this is that song from your childhood. This is Osibisa, Cool and the Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire and raucous summer holiday picnics with your cousins packaged in plantain leaf. There’s no way you can’t like this song. That would make you abnormal. This song will have you jammin’ like…

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For me, Happy Yourself is the Febreeze we needed to mask the stench of the most stank year of recent memory. Nina Simone said it is the artist’s duty to reflect the times, but I say it is also their duty to help us get through them. For this, FRA has my thanks.

‘Happy Yourself’ is available on iTunes.