{"id":1265290,"date":"2022-12-14T23:28:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T23:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/14\/founding-member-of-osibisa-band-sol-amarfio-passes-on\/"},"modified":"2022-12-14T23:28:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-14T23:28:26","slug":"founding-member-of-osibisa-band-sol-amarfio-passes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/12\/14\/founding-member-of-osibisa-band-sol-amarfio-passes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Founding member of Osibisa band, Sol Amarfio, passes on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/osibisa-sol-amarfio-1024x561.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-text\">\n<p>Sol Amarfio, a founding member of the Osibisa band and world-class drummer has died.<\/p>\n<p>He was 84. He is reported to have died on Tuesday, December 13.<\/p>\n<p>The acting President of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) confirmed his death to\u00a0<em><strong>Graphic <\/strong><\/em>\u00a0on Wednesday, December 14.<\/p>\n<p>Nicknamed The Rhythm Man in his teenage years, the self-taught Amarfio travelled the world with Osibisa. His immaculate sense of rhythm was the driving force behind the band\u2019s infectious music.<\/p>\n<p>Also a composer, Amarfio is praised for his\u00a0<em>Woyaya<\/em>\u00a0song and he closely collaborated with other members of Osibisa to create some of the band\u2019s most endearing tracks.<\/p>\n<p>Born at Asere in Accra in 1938, Amarfio was part of the Rhythm Aces, Star Gazers and Comets bands in Ghana before going to England in 1961 via Liberia, Spain and France.<\/p>\n<p>There, he teamed up with other London-based Ghanaian musicians such as George Lee and Willie Cheetham for gigs across Europe and North Africa before Osibisa was formed in 1969.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, the management of +233 held a concert to celebrate him when he turned 80 years.<\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"qAaDMnicLgs\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sol Amarfio @80 with Bessa Simons intro\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qAaDMnicLgs?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u201cI do what comes naturally to me behind the drums. I don\u2019t force out anything. I grew up with a lot of music and dance around me and the swing of those things sipped into me. Life is exciting when you travel and earn money while doing what you truly love,\u201d Amarfio told Graphic  in an interview in 2018.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DISCLAIMER: <\/strong>The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sol Amarfio, a founding member of the Osibisa band and world-class drummer has died. He was 84. He is reported to have died on Tuesday, December 13. The acting President of the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) confirmed his death to\u00a0Graphic \u00a0on Wednesday, December 14. Nicknamed The Rhythm Man in his teenage years, the self-taught [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1265291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[29808,3860,18092,454,29810,11373,6837],"class_list":["post-1265290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-amarfio","tag-band","tag-founding","tag-member","tag-osibisa","tag-passes","tag-sol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}