Kojo Baffoe, Author at KOJO BAFFOE

For the love of music

Sep 16, 2022 | Random, Sound

This is the first draft of an essay published in Listen To Your Footsteps. I did make some edits for the final version. I have loved music for as long as I can remember. My father had a record (vinyl) collection that he regularly added to on his travels around the world. I now own that collection and there are few things that give me as much joy as listening to the soundtrack of my childhood. It was a rule that every Sunday morning, I wash the cars. As revenge, I would pull the speakers from the hifi as close to the door as I could and blast my selected artist or genre so I could hear it...

Music writing is not easy

Aug 2, 2022 | Commentary, Sound

I wrote this for a print magazine but it was rejected and I wrote something else for them so figured why not share it here. Writing a column is a funny old thing. In the days when print was the be-all and end-all, being asked to write a column was akin to being given the holy grail. Or at least a map of sorts, a la Da Vinci code. Print space was and continues to be at a premium. And, while I have been fortunate enough to scribble many a column over the years, being asked to write this one has had me at sixes and sevens. The ‘column-writing muscle’ hasn’t been exercised in a minute. After an...

Media, content, streaming and the like

Jul 26, 2022 | Commentary

Recently, I had an interesting back and forth with a friend who is media owner, debating the merits of the different revenue models available to us, including subscriptions, paywalls and the like. In my mind, the main challenge with all of this is that the data and information we have on these is primarily from the US, which is a very different market. I still contend that an American media consumer is more included to pay for content that an African consumer, regardless of the country, including South Africa. This is partly due to priority and means. I reckon, on the list of things many of...

Why I watch the Tour de France every year

Jul 18, 2022 | Commentary, Random

Recently I tweeted something about the Tour de France, having just finished watching highlights of the day’s stage and a friend responded, with “Still with the #TourdeFrance. Requesting the original thread about how you fell in love with it.” In my early days on Twitter, I did a series of tweets – before threads were threads – on why I watch the Tour de France every year. It is the only cycling race I follow religiously. When I was writing my book Listen To Your Footsteps, I wrote a short essay on the same topic, but it didn’t make the final edit; it didn’t feel like it fit. But, in response...

What would happen if your website disappeared?

Jul 8, 2022 | Commentary

I started my website in 2009 and, albeit erratically, have shared writing and thoughts on a wide range of topics on it since then. There was my ‘tech journo’ phase when I was plugged into that world and wrote posts on launches, new gadgets, innovations, etc. In fact, one of my first posts was on Nokia, when it was still dominating the market. There’s been my extended music phase where I have written about artists, albums and everything in between, including attempting to create regular features like Digital Crates, where I share musicians and albums I ‘discover’ and Life Soundtrack, where I...

Book Extract: Trying to remember

Mar 18, 2022 | Commentary

This is the fourth in a series of extracts from my book Listen To Your Footsteps, a collection of reflections and essays on fatherhood, identity, loss, creativity, etc. Memory is a funny old thing. You tell a story so many times, you start to question how much of it actually happened. With each telling of the experience, you smooth out the edges, the things that didn’t quite fit in, to the point where you can tell it at the drop of a hat. When I started performing poetry, I had to learn the craft of standing on a stage in front of people, would, generally, get increasingly...