Azongo Nyaaba (also known as Captain Yaba) was from the Fra Fra ethnic group and was born in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the late 1960s. In 1972, when he was still a small child, he began playing the local two-stringed lute or banjo known as the 'koliko'. He came to Accra, the capital of Ghana, in the mid 1980s as a member of a northern cultural group invited by Mac Tonto of Osibisa fame, and took on the stage name Captain Yaba.