Music, Dance and Performing Arts

Music, Dance and Performing Arts – Abstracts

Addo, Akosua Obuo. (1995). Ghanaian children's music cultures: A video ethnography of selected singing
games. (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia, Canada).

Abstract: This dissertation is a video ethnography of the enculturation and learning patterns among children on three school playgrounds in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. It includes (a) a discussion of colonialism on the redefinition of Ghanaian cultural identity in relation to play culture and the school curriculum (b) performance-based case studies of six singing games, which comprise a description of sound and structural features and an explanation of cultural forms evident in singing games and (c) a discussion on the role multimedia technologies (video, audio, and computer technologies) played in configuring my explanations and the explanations of all participants: children, teachers, and community members. Goldman-Segall's 'configurational validity' is the conceptual basis of this ethnography of Ghanaian children's music cultures. Configurational validity is a collaborative theory for analyzing video documents that expands on the premise that research is enriched by multiple points of view. Performance stylistic features of singing games emerge that reflected the marriage of two music cultures, indigenous Ghanaian and European. These include: speech tones, onomatopoeia, repetition and elaboration of recurring melodic cliches, portamentos or cadential drops, syncopations, triplets, melisma, polyrhythms, vocables, anacrusis, strophic, circle, lines, and partner formations. During play, the children were cultural interlocutors and recipients of adult cultural interlocution as they learned about accepted and shared social behavioural patterns, recreated their culture, and demonstrated the changing Ghanaian culture. The culture forms that emerged include community solidarity, inclusion, ways of exploring and expressing emotions, coordination, cooperation, gender relations, and linguistic code switching. For children in Ghana, knowledge is uninhibited shared constructions; knowledge grows when every one is involved; and knowledge is like 'midwifery.' I recommended a teaching style that encouraged the expression of children's wide ranging knowledge by (a) offering opportunities for cooperative learning through group work, (b) encouraging continuous assessment, (c) establishing stronger ties with the adult community, and (d) recognizing that the ability of children to hear, interpret, and compensate for dialectic differences in closely related languages can be used to enrich the language arts curriculum and also (e) recognizing that the cultural studies curriculum can be enriched by the ability of children to re-create hybrid performing arts cultures.

Ampene, Kwasi, (1999). The creative process in nnwonkorc: A female song tradition of the Akan
of Ghana (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh).

Abstract: In Akan musical traditions, techniques and processes of music composition are not verbalized or systematized into a body of creative procedures despite the overwhelming evidence that oral compositions exist prior to performance. This phenomenon, present in other cultures of Africa, has given rise to the notion that Africans apparently compose through “blind” intuition and therefore lack theories of music. Additionally, their songs without a written text are simply said to be a manifestation of an activity that lies outside the domain of formal compositions. However, it is reasonable to assume that music cannot exist without some kind of theory underlying its production and significance. What then is the underlying compositional theory in nnwonkoro that makes it intelligible to Akan listeners? Should music without written text or notation be considered composition? Are there specific terms in the Akan language, which describe the creative process? Is the creative process an individual effort or a communal enterprise? These are some of the questions I plan to discuss in this dissertation. The study is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the historical development of nnwonkoro from its origins as an exclusively female, night time activity to its transformation in modern times. In the second section I identify and describe the constituent parts which comprise a performance in order to illuminate the compositional conventions of nnwonkoro. Additionally, I investigate how nnwonkoro performer-composers transform their verbal texts into songs. The discussion focuses on the intricate processes of mental composition where composers keep the standard time span, circumscribed by the bell pattern, in mind in order to guide and shape the length of verbal phrases within a musical phrase to achieve symmetry. Attention is given to how Akan musicians adapt images drawn from their natural surroundings and everyday lives to evoke metaphors for their music. The last section of the work outlines the sources of creativity and the role of context in the creative process. An eighth-day funerary celebration provides the data for this section. The analysis aligns the creative process with the Akan view on death. A major component of this study examines the contentious issues behind the “Great Divide” debate concerning composition and improvisation. In this respect, the topics of variability, composition during performance, and the notion of “fixed” and “authentic” versions of songs are examined.* *Dissertation includes a music CD.

Anyidoho, Kofi. (1983). Oral poetics and traditions of verbal art in Africa. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of
Texas at Austin).

Abstract: This study is in part a survey and in part an in-depth examination of selected traditions of verbal art in Africa. It attempts to combine critical analysis with evaluation of ethnographic research within the general context of oral poetics. The material easily lends itself to comparative perspectives, bringing together aspects of oral poetics originally developed and tested in a variety of cultural and linguistic environments. Even for the particular tradition at the center of this study, the Ewe tradition, the comparative approach is emphasized throughout as it deals with the interplay of poetry and music, poetry and social structure, poetry and linguistic science, verbal art and religion, verbal art and traditional moral philosophy. There are four parts to the dissertation. Part One surveys the general theory of oral literature, examines how it has been applied, and suggests how it may or may not be applied to selected traditions of African verbal art. Part Two moves away from the level of general claims to the more concrete level of a living cultural environment. Among the Ewe of West Africa, we find a representative cultural context for the creation and performance of various genres of verbal art. In Part Three we move one step further in the direction of concreteness and specificity. This is the level of close analysis and evaluation of the verbal text and its texture and context, its implications and significations. There is a close-up on the relationship between musical patterns and verbal structures in the texture of the Ewe song. The section concludes with a multifocal analysis of a particular song by the Haikotu Dance Club of Wheta. Part Four provides a sampling of transcriptions, translations, with explanatory notes and comments, of a selection of Ewe oral poems I collected during my years of fieldwork in Ghana. One of the major theoretical premises of this study is that oral literature, by its very nature, is participatory. It brings together artist, art, and audience into one unified expression of creative energy. Another central premise is that for an oral poetics, art is not the finished product of human imagination but the very process of imagination and creativity.

Anyidoho, Love Akosua. (1993). Gender and language use: The case of two Akan verbal art forms.

(Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).

Abstract: Based on data collected in natural contexts of performance among the Akan of Ghana, the dissertation describes and analyzes two verbal art forms that occur in the culture: nnwonkoro, a female song tradition, and apae, a male praise appellation poetry. The main intent of the analysis is to search for insights into the relationship between the Akan's construction of femininity and masculinity and the artistic verbal forms that fall in the female and male domains. Consequently, the work commences with an examination of several gendered artistic verbal genres and activities found in the society. The discussion shows that female and male verbal art forms are systematically allocated on the basis of the Akan's construction of gender identity and that nnwonkoro and apae are no exceptions. The second part of the work pays close attention to performance contexts and their social significance as it examines the precursors of modern performances of nnwonkoro and apae and the factors that have motivated textual, contextual, thematic and functional innovations as well as changes in participatory eligibility. Social, political, economic, educational and religious changes in the culture are identified as some of the contributory factors. In relation to these modifications, it is observed that the term 'female/male verbal genre/activity' can only have spatio-temporal relevance since criteria for participation may change over time and space. The last section of the work focuses on what makes nnwonkoro and apae artistic forms valued by the Akan. Though it is observed that parallelism is an organizing principle of both genres, ellipsis and naming are identified as the main poetic devices employed in the composition of texts.

Badu, Zelma C. M. (1992). Atsiagbekor: Documentation of an Ewe dance form (Ghana). (Master’s thesis, York
University, Canada).

Abstract: The objective of this thesis is to provide a video documentation of Atsiagbekor performed in two different cultural settings. Atsiagbekor is one of the oldest traditional dance forms of the Ewe ethnic group in West Africa. It is a highly stylized war dance with specific music, based on Ewe oral history and traditional movement. This thesis concentrates on Atsiagbekor as it is performed by the Southern Ewes living along the southeastern coast of Ghana. The two different cultural settings on the videotape are those of the traditional dance as performed in the village of Dzogadze, where it was performed as a victory dance and as a dance of mourning for fallen warriors; and on the campus of the University of Ghana, by Ghana's national performing company, The Ghana Dance Ensemble, whose version of Atsiagbekor was adapted from that of the village of Anyako. The videotape, which represents the major component of this thesis, is supported by a written document which discusses the history, form, and structure of the Atsiagbekor dance. The concluding section of the written document is a comparative analysis of the above mentioned performances.

Collins, John. (1994). The Ghanaian concert party: African popular entertainment at the cross
roads. (Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo).

Abstract: This thesis is a comparative social history of acculturated sub-Saharan African popular entertainment. It is divided into two sections. Part one concerns two linked syncretic Ghanaian popular performing artforms, the concert party (comic opera) and highlife music, the information primarily being obtained from the author's work in Ghana since 1969 as a practicing musician, music journalist, record engineer/producer and archivest. Focusing largely on one particular group (the Jaguar Jokers or J.J.'s concert party), Part One looks at the actual performance of the group, the band's daily life and organisation, reflections on the concert party profession by members and the changes the J.J.'s and similar ensembles have undergone over the years. Ghanaian popular entertainment stands at an intersection or 'cross-roads' of multiple socio-cultural, historical and aesthetic realms and the author has grouped these into twelve themes that provide the basis for Part Two of the thesis. They are explored with the aid of documented evidence and comparative information from the acculturated popular performing arts of other areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The first theme addressed is the continuity between the traditional and modern performing arts, both traditional retentions in contemporary genres and the way the modern ones have become retrospectively indigenised. The impact of western contact since the colonial times on local performing arts in terms of syncretic compatability or incompatability is then discussed. The enormous influence on Africa of black diasporic popular performance from the New World is then treated in some detail in terms of a 'black cultural feedback' phenomenon. Next comes an examination of African popular entertainment's relevance to urbanisation and class stratification, followed by a study of its mediating role in generational and gender matters. The final chapter deals with the anti-hegemonic nature of African popular performance in terms of both its role in the anti-colonial struggle and in present day social protest.

Dzansi-McPalm, Mary Priscilla (2004). Children's playground music as cultural expressions in Ghanaian
schools. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Abstract: This research discusses some Ghanaian cultural values and music pedagogy that are embedded in children's playground repertoire. After 4 months of fieldwork I analyzed a body of children's playground repertoire in terms of cultural values, artistry and imagination, and contemporary and religious influences. I focus on how children and adults acquire music knowledge in the indigenous context and what it offers to formal music education. Music education in the Ghanaian communities is largely participatory so children perform their clapping, singing, and dancing games by watching and doing. The indigenous music context, including children's playground music, provides some practical answers to curriculum reforms embarked upon in Ghana to lessen the disparity between playground music pedagogy and classroom pedagogy in Ghana. Finally, I offer recommendations to Ghanaian music educators for incorporating indigenous music and pedagogy.

Gyimah, Cynthia (1985). The Hɔmɔwɔ Festival of the Ga Mashi People of Accra. (Musical Theses, York University, Canada).

Abstract: This study describes and discusses the 1984 Ga Mashi Hɔmɔwɔ festival, an annual celebration of the Ga-Adangme of Accra, Ghana. Data for the study were gathered in fieldwork conducted among the Ga Mashi between June and September, 1984. The study focuses on music, dance and theatre in the Hɔmɔwɔ festival rather than on religious aspects, which, nonetheless, are also important. Hɔmɔwɔ (literally, "hooting at hunger") is a harvest festival that comprises a number of ceremonies throughout the Ga Mashi religious year. The present study identifies and discusses procession, ritual, and durbar as the main elements of the Hɔmɔwɔ festival. Also considered are the various ensembles that provide music and dance, and sometimes theatre, during the festival. Changes in the festival are analysed, and ways in which government sponsored institutions and contemporary Ga artists have preserved (rather artificially) the festival or aspects of it are surveyed. As a conclusion, the meaning and function of the festival are discussed in two ways: from the perspective of the Ga Mashi people themselves and within the broader framework of Frank Manning's account of the meaning and function of festivals (1983).

Kaye, Andrew Laurence (1992). "Koo Nimo and His Circle: A Ghanaian Musician in
Ethnomusicological Perspective." (Doctoral degree dissertation, Columbia University, New York).

Abstract: A social biography and ethnomusicological assessment of Daniel Kwabena Amponsah, known as Koo Nimo, a contemporary Ghanaian musician, ensemble leader, educator, and union activist. Topics discussed include the ethnomusicological structure into which Koo Nimo enters, family, ethnoeconomic background, full-time career as a technician and part-time work as a musician, the development of his musical style and reputation within the context of Ghana's musical and socieconomic development, and his work as musicians' union president and musical activist. His music and social circle are analyzed closely.

Kubitsky, Idit. (1998). Ewe children's music from Ghana, West Africa, in the classroom. (Master’s thesis, San
Jose State University).

Abstract: This thesis deals with children's music of the Ewe people of southeastern Ghana and how it can be taught in Western cultures. It examines the need for and the realization of, multicultural approach to music education. It also discusses similarities between the Orff Schulwerk and traditional West African approaches to music education. Part two of the work includes background information about the Ewe people and children's music, which is documented in audio and video recordings and transcribed in Western notation. The research includes children's songs and drumming and dance pieces that were compiled during two periods of field work in the village of Kopeyia, Ghana. The final section suggests and demonstrates some possible methods of teaching Ewe music using the Orff Schulwerk approach to students in grades one through six.

Rumbolz, Robert Charles (2000). A vessel for many things': Brass bands in Ghana. (Doctoral dissertation,
Wesleyan University).

Abstract: European colonial military and missionary bands introduced brass instruments to the Republic of Ghana (then the Gold Coast) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation provides an account of the history of brass bands in Ghana as well as ethnography of brass bands studied from August 1993 to August 1994. The story of brass bands in Ghana reveals the complex and often chaotic nature of social relations and expressive culture in periods of dynamic cultural change. Such as, the utilization of brass band in the projection and maintenance of political, military, and economic power; the bands role in strategies of Christian conversion against the tenacity of traditional expressive codes; and the ability of individual musicians to both create within and manipulate new expressive codes to their own ends. Dividing my time equally between the urban centers of Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast with occasional visits to the Volta Region (especially to the towns of Aflao and Ho), I attempted to gain the broadest possible knowledge of band activity in Ghana rather than focus on one region, band or style. The National Archives generously provided access to the official British records of the Gold Coast Colony, which I scanned for indications of band activity. I worked with twenty-four bands in six administrative regions (Greater Accra, Central, Eastern, Volta, Asante, and Brong-Ahafo) to shed light on the role of sponsorship, repertoire, social formations, and the various meanings brass band music generates for its multigenerational, multiethnic audience. I draw heavily upon interviews with musicians, church elders, bandleaders, civil servants, patrons, as well as from a survey administered to members of the Presbyterian Brass Band Guild. I argue that the brass band's ability to transmit a broad range of symbolic codes for a diverse array of social actors contributes to its sustained vitality. This is largely in juxtaposition to earlier scholarship, which recognized the brass band only as an important (but only partially realized) antecedent to more “syncretic” popular music styles such as Ghanaian Highlife.

Saighoe, Francis A. Kobina (1988). "The Music Behavior in Dagaba Immigrants in Tarkwa, Ghana: A Study of Situational Change." (Doctoral degree dissertation, Columbia University, New York).

Abstract: Examines the utility of "situational change" as a tool for explaining the extent to which rural music may be transformed when its performers migrate and adjust to an urban environment. The focus is on Dagaba music as it is performed in Tarkwa, a gold-mining town in Ghana. There is no correlation between the considerable changes in the social situation and changes in the music behavior of the Dagaba in Tarkwa. The study examines those factors that have enabled Dagaba in Tarkwa to maintain their rural musical traditions with minimal changes despite the changes in their social situation.

Seavoy, Mary Hermaine (1982). The Sisaala xylophone tradition. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of
California, Los Angeles).

Abstract: This study presents a comprehensive examination of one instrument, the Sisaala jengsi, the musical tradition of which it is part (g kung), and the musical culture surrounding its use, covering in detail repertoire, tonal system, performers, contextual use, and jengsi morphology (shown to be related to the broader Western Sudanic xylophone complex). It focuses on the modes of integration between the musical culture and Sisaala religious, social, economic, and ceremonial life. The work is based on two years' research among the Sisaala in northwest Ghana. Data were obtained through interview and observation, learning to play the jengsi, gathering photographic and sound recording documents, and attending 28 funerals. The study describes, analyzes, and interprets the findings. The study is divided into two parts. Part One, The Social Context, summarizes the ethnographic background, presents an overview of music in Sisaala culture (of which g kung is the dominant segment), describes in detail burial and funeral rites, and discusses the jeng-g ke ('xylophone-musicians') in terms of training, grades, valuation, funeral roles, spiritual orientation, funeral customs, and relations with Islam. Part Two, Sounds, Structures, and Modes of Expression, is more technical. The author's observations of the construction of a jengsi are recounted; the spiritual dimension of the craft is explored and customs associated with taking delivery of a new jengsi are narrated. The complex problem of jengsi tunings, which are essentially flexible, is discussed; empirical observations are offered to evaluate measurements. Five modes of ritual wailing are analyzed in terms of structural principles of g kung that account for their stylization and structuring. For each mode the wailer's conception of his emotional-musical act is suggested to consist of a Dominant Motif that is repeated over a larger Conceptual Performance Model, the structuring of which provides a channel for distress reaction and, at the same time, a musical avenue for controlling emotion. The xylophone repertoire, which accompanies the principal dance, praise, and wailing events of the funeral, is examined in terms of basic tonal and durational principles, and the stock of patterns and procedures that xylophonists draw on in performance. A bitonal base is demonstrated to form both the tonal and structural foundation of g kung. Its many genres are distinguished by length of formal structures and by multilinear relations that change with contextual use. The Appendices include texts of a xylophone shrine sacrifice, shrine customs performed at xylophonists' funerals, recipe for preparation of xylophone key bindings, ritual excavation of roots used in musicians' medicine, and a full scenario of events at the burial and funeral rites for an old woman.

Woodson, Craig Devere (1983). Oral poetics and traditions of verbal art in Africa, The atumpan drum in
Asante: A study of their art and technology. (Volumes I and II) (Ghana). (Doctoral dissertation, University of
California, Los Angeles).

Abstract: The atumpan, a pair of single-headed, goblet-shaped membranophones with a sound modifier, are the major talking drums of the Asante in Ghana. The instrument is studied in terms of its details of construction, parts and variations, social context and distribution, historical development, and finally selected examples of the speech mode of its music, each with the emphasis on art and technology. The need for this type of research is founded not only in the lack of available literature but also the fact that the continuity or traditional drumming and drum carving in Asante is presently threatened. The approach in this study focuses on etic documentation of the instrument and emic concepts of the craftsmen and drummers. Chapter II presents the instrument, giving sufficient terminology for the reproduction of a specific drum and its accessories. A minimum criteria of the atumpan shows how the drums are distinctive in Africa. Chapter III looks at the distribution of these drums in and around Ghana, their social context in Asante, and their role as art object in traditional and modern-day Ghanaian society. In Chapter IV, the historical development of the atumpan's technology since the neolithic in Ghana is proposed, drawing on the recent strides made in archaeology, ethnology, African history, and geography. Finally in Chapter V, the music is considered with particular reference to norms of tuning, musical acoustics, positions and preferences, and lastly musical analysis of selected pieces from the speech mode of drumming. To accurately notate the music's free rhythm, a real-time system was devised based on microprocessor technology. This revealed new information regarding sticking, rhythm, and loudness in atumpan music. Volume Two contains the Appendix, Glossary and Bibliography. The Appendix includes interviews, questionnaire, construction details, measurements and tests, selected drums at Manhyia Palace, oral history, summary chart of the atumpan's historical development, tuning, drumstick measuremens, and musical transcriptions. A sound cassette tape of musical examples accompanies the dissertation.