The Austin 100: Bisa Kdei

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 17, 2020 at 4:00 AM CDT

Hometown: Accra, Ghana

Genre: Pop

Why We're Excited: Bisa Kdei's spirited and playful highlife music has made him a star in his native Ghana — and marked him for crossover success as West African music gets its hooks into worldwide audiences. On 2018's luminous Highlife Konnect, Kdei collaborates closely with musicians from other African nations, in the hopes of expanding not only his commercial reach, but also his own musical boundaries.

Listen to Bisa Kdei's "Asew"

Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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