Panji Anoff: At the thinnest edge of the cultural wedge

The Ghanaian Renaissance began in the Harmattan of ’92. It was a fervent period of cultural, artistic, political and economic rebirth that promoted the beginning of the rediscovery of panAfrican sensibilities, philosophy and understanding. Among the agents who became catalysts for the change was Panji Anoff. Panji was connected in various ways to others who, together, sowed the seeds for the music, cinema, electronic mass media, and pop culture generally that we take for granted today. Fast-forward to 2014, there is such a tangible vibe as the GH swag, azonto, Gallywood, and the Fourth Republic. The following is just a sliver of a moment in time from the perspective of Anoff himself in his own words. This piece was first published in the Weekend Sun August 15.

Last Saturday, I arranged to pass by his Dzorwulu residence for a brief chat. As usual, I am greeted by Pidgen Music stable mates walking big dogs by the main gate, Panji’s brother sculptor Nana’s prized mixed media sculptures at the foot of the omnipresent spiral staircase, a worn punching bag dolefully hanging in the morning air, one of several large bikes parked carelessly among lumber chopped for the artist’s studio, and a compound strewn with various works in progress.

The spiral staircase takes me to a loft above, and ushers me into the familiar authentic living room of familiar, authentic Panji Anoff, a man I have known the better part of a quarter century. The loft is a cozy brick and wood number, comfortably complimented by worn leather chairs, hand-crafted accessories, a mural of Pan African opinion leaders on one wall, and original works of art competing for the other spaces.

Joe Black is fixing coffee, Sugar Kwame is tweaking beats with Yaa Pono in the studio that has never quite gotten around to being finished, and before I relax, in walks the man, followed closely by his PA Sesi.

Panji is greying, and at this moment he is walking with a small, temporary limp, a reminder of a bike accident he suffered not too long ago. I remember the days when I first met him.

When the curfew was lifted, the year was 1992. Ghanaians were just getting fed up with the intense and violent pain and struggle associated with the senseless changes of the preceding decade. It was in the throes of all that craziness and unsoundness that the mean dusk-to-dawn curfew that had effectively succeeded in killing our youth culture was lifted. Alas, live music was already dead; drama and the performing arts were seriously maimed; literature was all but burnt out; the visual arts were practically non-existent. Any such thing close to being referred to as a Ghanaian sensibility was safely tucked away somewhere deep in the country’s whispered past.

Out of the ashes of this forgotten past arose a phoenix bubbling with enough energy to set the artic ablaze: Panji-Marc Owooh Anoff arrived from England, and his Pidgen Music notion sparked the renaissance that would later give roots to Azonto, Ghallywood, youth television, and the GH swag.

I know this, because I was there with him when it all started at the dawn of this dispensation. It wasn’t a scripted agenda, or a deliberate program for change, or even a bulleted manifesto; or anything that regimented for that matter. It all happened, organically, as if orchestrated by unseen hands.

4 degrees of separation

Panji Anoff is a free spirit with a smile that could infect blind babies. He exhibits neither snobbery nor pretension by design, so his presence tends to attract people of all sorts. The fact that his fiber oozes selflessness and a compulsion to share endears him to those he meets who then wanna stick around. He may be earnestly opinionated – sometimes bordering on the awkward realms of conspiracy theorists – but he is open-minded enough to allow diametrically opposite minds to flourish in his element. Above all, his unequivocal humility and respect for everything living makes him just so bloody adorable.

In 1929, Hungarian Frigyes Karinthy espoused in his short story called Chains that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. He called this theory the ‘six degrees of separation’

Only in the case involving Panji and the Ghanaian renaissance there were four degrees between him and those who were sowing the seeds for today’s music, cinema, electronic mass media, and pop culture generally. I will revisit that presently.

Race and identity

Panji was born in England to a most accepting father who was a paediatrician and tropical medicine specialist from Aburi, and an even more understanding mother from South Germany, Helibornne, home of Knorr, Audi. By the time he was three, the family moved from Europe to Ghana where his role as an uncommon denominator would begin. Moving, geography and race have been preparing him for the cultural road ahead.

“Race would have been more an issue for my mother because I remember she was always making Ghanaians know that her children were Ghanaian. She herself was embraced immediately by my father’s family, even though my father didn’t have it that easy. He was a doctor and he helped my mother’s brother, my dad’s brother-in-law, become a medical officer too, but my mum’s family, except my grandma, took much longer to embrace and accept and love him.

“My maternal grandma was different though. Growing up, we spend every summer from 1974 with my grandparents in Germany. And they would also come visit us in Ghana on a regular basis. And I understood that early that people viewed different people differently. Even before I left England, I was only three, but I was aware of racism, because some parents didn’t want their children to be friends with us.”

Epiphany

Back in Ghana, young Panji was enrolled at the Burma Camp Services Primary School because his father was a medical officer at 37 Military Hospital. In 1984, he entered Ghana International School under full scholarship. From 1986 to 1990, he studied Mechanical Engineering at UCL (University College London). His mentors though knew he was destined more for the cultural lab than the engineering workroom

“When I was at university, my engineering lecturer thought I was better suited for and should go into the English language program. I thought he was crazy.”

But he was not. Panji had an epiphany in 1989, NW Kingsbury, London around 11 am.

“I just had this feeling, and I discussed the ideas of going into music and stuff with a few people and they all said I was crazy. I was at home, spent about 30 minutes on the phone, and before I knew it, I had got myself three meals for two in restaurants, back passes for two shows that coming weekend, and two tickets for a matinee. I knew I had to do this music thing.” And there has not been any turning back since.

Uncommon denominator

Panji returned from London around the same time the curfew was lifted in Ghana. Accra was uneasy, its nightlife just struggling to get a lick at the sprinkling of life just released. It was in the mix that Panji came, with PLZ (Reggie Rockstone, Freddie Funkstone, and Jr. Annor) on the one hand, and Talking Drums (Abeiku, Kwaku T and Cymbol) on the other. Talal Fatal, Abraham Ohene Gyan, Kwasi Forson, and I were just about to set television on fire with Smash-TV; Mike Cook and his partner were stirring up Vibe FM; and, (the late) Bob J (Johnson) and Kofi Zokko Nartey were actually doing a movie on celluloid.

And in the midst of all these was Panji, four degrees of separation from the nerve centres of these new happenings. Panji was with PLZ before the term ‘hip life’ or the use of vernacular for spitting was broached. As manager and producer of Talking Drums, he supervised the using for the first time of Ghanaian and African samples from tracks by Osibisa, CK Mann, Hugh Masekela, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Dzadzeloi, and many more.

Panji was our consultant when we were mixing the ingredients together that would become Smash-TV. Panji was producer for Bob J and Zokko’s Back Home Again movie. And he sure was the main cog around which Vibe FM revolved in its early days. Between Panji and the Ghanaian Renaissance, there were four degrees involving him and those who were sowing the seeds for today’s music, cinema, electronic mass media, and pop culture generally.

Not bad for a chap who only came back to Ghana to film an observational documentary of Panafest commissioned for Stevie Wonder dubbed Panafest through the eyes of Stevie Wonder.

“I met him in his Wonderland Studios in LA, California, like 1992 and we agreed that I document Panafest for him. And that is why I came to Ghana at that time.” The peculiar role he had to play also helped him shape what he was to dedicate himself to for the rest of his life – Pidgen Music.

Pidgen Music

“It was then called Devil and Stone Productions, and Abeiku (Talking Drums) thems thought that was too much when we did a US tour, so we changed it to Sakora Muzik, and then we ended up as Pidgen Music.”

Panji says he settled on Pidgen Music because “pidgin is easier for everyone to understand; it’s universally identified with no matter where you go. What we were doing is the thinnest edge of the cultural wedge, and we needed to bring all like minds on board. So Pidgen is embracing all.”

Today, the stable mates include Wanlov the Kubolor, M3nsa, King Ayisoba, Yaa Pono and many more. Pidgen has recorded some ground-breaking cuts with legendary artistes including the piece Ko Le Nakai, a collab between the Pidgen Riddim Kollecktiv and African jazz luminary Nii Noi Nortey’s African Sound Project.

I must also disclose here that Kofi Ghanaba’s last recording (which I commissioned in the late 1990s) featured Panji and Pidgen Music alongside a cream of some of Ghana’s best sound engineers and producers.

Today Pidgen has become an institution, an academy with many alums in the mass media, performing, acting, or just being the cultural icons that they are. These included the late Fennec.

Apprenticeship as education

I asked Panji what it is that makes him maintain his focus:

“I have always tried to apprentice myself to real visionaries. After all, they are the only one who can teach you what you really want to know. So, like in [19]97/98, I was an apprentice at Charles Easmon’s African and Caribbean Music Circuit (Busspace, Ladbroke Grove, Nottinghill). That was very important in my studies. From [19]97/98, I was a roadie and at the same time I was making a documentary on Carnival ’98 for ACMC.”

It is impossible to tie down the Pidgen sound. Essentially, there is nothing like that. But there are certain characteristics that run through anything that Panji’s hands have touched: sheer audacity. Whether it is Wanlov’s melancholy returning-to-Ghana track Smallest Time or Yaa Pono reassuring his bride that all will be well in (the [then] forthcoming) pop flavoured Tare Tare, stable mates have the confidence to push envelopes and overturn tables.

Azonto

I wondered what Panji’s late father, the good doctor, thought of all this.

“My dad was supportive of everything I did, but one day he said: Panji, I really like your music, but your music doesn’t move me.’ So I was thinking, ‘what moves everybody?’ And then I thought ‘SEX!’ So I wrote T*t* Mechanic, and he couldn’t stop moving on it.” T*t* Mechanic, believed to be the precursor of Azonto, featured Kwaku T (Talking Drums) and enjoyed massive airplay on Ghana’s fledging independent FM stations and newly liberated clubs in the mid-1990s, but alas was never released, just as so many of Panji’s own recordings.

I asked The Mechanic if he believes that T*t* Mechanic is the earliest incarnation of Azonto?

“What is azonto after all? I think it’s an attitude. It’s when we shift our focus from outside and concentrate on the inside, using our own rhythms. Like jama. And it’s got nothing to do with the lyrics. Jay Q’s music is jama. That’s all Azonto.

“The future of our music is incredible. Hip hop, you know, is reactionary music, even as underground music. Funk etc. all been that way. But highlife and hip life have always been mainstream popular music. We wanted a Ghanaian alternative to hip hop and stuff so we did hip life. But all of a sudden, peer pressure was ruling. And Azonto etc. is the result.”

Privilege

I wanted to know from Panji, whose talents and CV include writing for Brit sit com Desmonds if privilege has ever been the other side of racial awareness for him.

“Privilege – even though when I’m in Ghana, I’m seen as ‘white’, in Europe I’m seen as ‘black’. That kinda gives you the understanding that the whole racism thing is nonsense. Being of mixed heritage gives me much more insight, a unique opportunity to experience my father’s culture from my mother’s perspective without the prejudice, or experience my mother’s culture without the colonial mentality. You know, you have to discover for yourself what is good for you.”

What’s good for Panji has obviously changed along the way. Most people will remember him as the lad with one thousand and one different hairdos and the man who turned his beard in a living art form. These days, what is good for Panji is something of a more domestic nature, such as keeping in step with Ghaddafia, his precocious daughter who is all of two and some change. She got her name from the late PanAfricanist who was assassinated by NATO forces: she was born the day the Libyan Leader was murdered.

Uncensored.

Being reckless: In 1999, chanced on Adofo and City Boys. I was so enchanted by his music that I followed him and his band for 10 days from Elubo to Takoradi.

Regrets: The only regret I have is not apprenticing to Dan Lartey. I would have love to understand him better and document “domestication” properly on video, and break it down for everyone to understand. Because, indeed, that is the solution to our problems.

Education: I don’t believe in formal education because we tend to teach the children how to learn instead of how to think. Apprenticeship is the best way of learning. The only thing a teacher can teach you is how to teach. If you want to know how to play piano, the best person to teach you is a piano player. A teacher cannot teach me how to be an engineer or an artist, but an engineer or an artist.

Our educational system does not seem to understand the wider context. It ends up distracting us from focusing on God and teaching us how to worship human beings – which is convenient for pastors, I suppose. The educational system does not leave religion for parent to show. It’s become a compulsory part of education.

Orthodox medicine: It is not better to try to poison the illness rather than heal the body.

Religion: It interferes with our true relationship with God by introducing the notion of human worship into man’s consciousness.

Democracy: An even greater illusion than money; democracy is to freedom what money is to value.

Gratifying moments: There are too many to name. Some of them might seem inconsequential to somebody, but to me, they are really important. My freshest and most recent is two weeks ago at Roskilde in Denmark with King Ayisoba. The tent where he was performing was packed. They queued for up to 20 minutes to enter. He played at 4 in the afternoon, but by the time he got on stage, the tent was jam packed.

Since this interview was first published, Panji has added a miracle of a son – Ahmadi – to his long list of productions. With big sister Ghaddafia, the fresh prince is keeping daddy reflective. I spoke with Panji last week; he’s taking a break in Trasacco Valley, Accra, recuperating from another bike accident. He’s looking forward to bouncing back on his birthday, which falls on Wednesday February 24 this year. [FACT: A lifetime ago, Panji would respond “Stop The War!” to the nickname ‘Teddy Sacramento’. Why? You gotta ask him!] 

Contact Panji Anoff at Twitter @panjianoff; LinkedIn; Facebook