Anyankofo means friends in Fante, and the Danish seven-piece Total Hip Replacement have been collecting them in Ghana since a mini-tour there in 2013. In the winter of 2021 they formed a nine-piece band in Accra with Ghanaian highlife, reggae and gospel musicians and gave it that name, which also titles the album the group recorded at Kwame Yeboah‘s Kwashibu studio, released in 2022. A later trip to Ghana took them to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital and one of highlife’s strongholds, and a week of jamming there with players from Frafra gospel singer Florence Adooni‘s band and with Nsoroma of Accra highlife band Santrofi produced “The Search”. It is the latest single ahead of the album Ehum, and the band say it holds on to the improvised feel of the jams.

The song is about hunting for purpose in a society that keeps speeding up, where the pressure to get ahead alone costs people their connection to each other. Singer and trombonist Victor West Hosbond fronts the band’s horn section, the signature of their sound, and on this single it rides a highlife rhythm. The band describe the mood they chased as “the hopeful spot between melancholy and euphoria“. They filmed the video over a couple of days at an old farmhouse in France during this summer’s tour, with Nell Le Corre behind the camera.

Ehum, which the band translate as storm, comes out on 27 November with Ivorian reggae singer Tiken Jah Fakoly among the guests. A West African run through Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana opens the tour, then Danish dates follow from February into April, among them ALICE in Copenhagen on 26 February and Aarhus on 27 March.

Stream “The Search” HERE and pre-order Ehum through THIS LINK