Participating in the Wesleyan performance course West African Music and Culture has allowed me to gain perspectives on the dynamic and diverse traditions of West African music through the study of song, rhythm, history, and language. Specifically, this course has grappled with fundamental themes such as the representation of West African music, its role in society, and the influence of colonialism and globalization on African musical traditions. I additionally had the opportunity to learn various West African instruments including drums, bells, and gourd rattles through the repertoire of Bima, Gahu, Kpanlongo, and Tokoe.
Below are excerpts from the reading responses I completed throughout the course that offer insight into the diverse perspectives I gained from taking West African Music and Culture:
Patience Kwakwa’s chapter “Dance in Communal Life” contrasts the greater body of literature on African that consists of descriptions of specific dances, their subsequent contexts, and captioned photographs of dance. Kwakwa’s writing aims to offer deeper insights into the complexities of African dances in relation to musical practice. This chapter presents the following core idea: traditional African dances do not occur in isolation, rather they have a specific function within an event or a complex of events organized for a specific occasion. The value of dance in these contexts often goes beyond entertainment – dancers perform for sociocultural, historical, political, and religious purposes. Therefore, Kwakwa explains that the traditional African dances are distinct from the artistic and contemporary dances of Africa and the classical ballet and modern dance characteristic of institutions in America and Europe. Specifically, they serve as a ritual means for “honoring, welcoming, and ushering individuals and for incorporating them into the community at large as new members—as adults, chiefs, or married couples”. Aesthetically, African dance is considered to be an integrated art form, entangling movement, music, mime, costume, makeup, official insignia, and ritual. One segment of this chapter that I found to be particularly interesting is Kwakwa’s presentation of dance as a “socially sanctioned medium” for conduct that would be considered unacceptable under normal circumstances. For example, performance of the saransara, a northern Nigerian dance feast of the Maguzawa of Kaduna State, allows people to express dissatisfaction with their chief by including their sentiments in the lyrics of the dance music.
Gahu music and dance emerged from cultural practices related to marriage, birth, and puberty rites of the Nigerian Yoruba in the early 19th century. This tradition became prominent in Ghana throughout the 1950s. Its original context has expanded to encapsulate a recreational dance-drumming practice for the demonstration of wealth and social standing, often occurring at festivals, political events, and funerals. Performed in four main phases, Gahu’s sequencing and order varies depending on its context. The musical form culminates in phase four, or uutsotso, the main drumming phase. This segment can last for several hours as dancers vigorously perform in a circular anticlockwise direction. Gahu songs present a variety of themes relating to historical topics, philosophical ideas, and human issues. They are composed of simple binary and ternary forms and often employ melodic polyphony. Gahu percussion instruments include atoke, gakogui, axatse, kagan, kidi, agbobli, gboba, and atsimevu. The accompanying dance tradition is sophisticated, stylistic, and offers opportunity for individual expression and improvisation. Its skilled movements are specifically choreographed so that no audience member can join without prior rehearsal with the group. After reading this chapter, I was curious to learn more about the thematic content of gahu music. Is it composed by contemporary musicians, or are traditional works circulated and reworked? How has its thematic meaning shifted over time within different social contexts?
According to Bebey’s 1962 text, there are distinct notions of musicianship in various West African communities. He explains that the reader would be mistaken to assume that all African citizens are musicians in ‘the full sense of the word’. Bebey contrasts popular assumptions of the time by presenting African music as a variety of traditions that cover an expansive range of expressions, from spoken language to all manner of natural sounds. Furthermore, Bebey categorizes these expansive forms of musicianship into four distinct classifications. The first captures numerous African societies in which the right to play certain instruments or to participate in traditional ceremonies is seen as an exclusive role. Within these contexts, rules govern the choice of instruments to be used on specific occasions and the musicians who are permitted to play them. The second category describes the practices of other societies in which music is not the privilege of a caste of specialists, rather it is a creative force that animate the life of the entire community. Bebey’s third classification is the semi-professional group. In these societies musicians earn their livelihood from their music for only part of the year and rely on additional work for the remainder of the time. The fourth category presents the concept of the West African ‘griot’. Bebey’s conception of this term presents a ‘griot’ as a professional musician, virtuoso talent, a troubadour that can recall events that are no longer within living memory. He is an archive of his people’s traditions. He is also a contradiction, belonging to one of the lowest castes in social hierarchy, yet integral to his community’s social and political life. I was additionally interested in the following excerpt: ‘People tend to become musicians not so much from personal vocation as from a need to fulfill a social obligation’. This contrasts Western perceptions of musicianship and prompts me to wonder, how might musical cultures in the United States differ if they were embedded with specific social obligation?
