Ananse band leader, Kwame Wood, hails from Ghana, West Africa, where he has been playing drums and singing since he was a wee 12 year old. In West African, Rass Kwame toured with several internationally known musicians including Mark Tontoh, from Osibisa; Liberian songstress Miatta Fahnbulleh; Highlife fusion pioneer George Darko; and jazz artist Stanley Turpentine. In 1990, he came to North America on tour with CK Mann, the Highlife King of Ghana. After heating up the dance floors in New York and Washington, DC, Kwame settled in Minneapolis and formed the Ananse band. In 1996 Kwame recorded his debut CD ANCESTORS. ANCESTORS pays homage not only to the relevance of history and the way it affects the present, but epitomizes that life is an activity, not a receptivity; a doing of things spontaneous to the social instict of humans. Through his lustrous, sultry and oft charming voice, Kwame Wood's ANCESTORS crisscrosses from ragtime to avante-garde with a message that is lyrically uplifting, profound and above all spiritually intense. Evoking a spiritual consciousness, Ananse's music not only praises The Most High, but calls for global justice in the Pan Africanist sense. The band features Charles Fonta, a Cameroonian master of a variety of African and Caribbean rhythms and techniques on bass; Lonnie Farrow, local R&B guitarist with feel for the African on the axe; Benjamin Kimmel, a Minneapolis reggae staple since childhood, on keyboards; Francis Kofi, Artistic Director of the Hayor Bibimma Dance Theatre and former Fullbright Scholar, on percussion; and the Bibimamas - Sisters Maria, Sara, Dominique, and Felicia - singing backup and performing traditional African dance. Ananse performs original Rass Kwame tunes and carefully selected covers, rocking the house with a roots reggae flavored with the rhythms of Ghana, interspersed with funky traditional Highlife songs. The music is hot!