Author: Gina Donovan

Every Fante town such as Anomabu has several, usually seven, asafo or warrior organizations that, although no longer functioning as military units, take part in all the major community celebrations, have their own ritual calendar and ceremonial obligations, and serve a number of important social and political functions (e.g., the head officer of each company sits on the town’s traditional council as a representative of his organization’s concerns).

Every Fante inherits membership in one of these companies through his or her father, although males tend to be more active in these organizations than do females. In Anomabu, which supports seven asafo companies, at least one of them (Kyirem Company No. 6) has an active female auxiliary or adzewa organization. While many citizens of Anomabu are actively engaged with their associated martial organization, some choose not to explore this inherited relationship. Any member of these

martial organizations can participate in their group’s music making if they so wish, and the majority of members do perform as singers. The most talented members of the group take on the musically more demanding roles of drummers and cantors. These groups each have their own songs and styles of drumming.

Two visually distinctive facets of Fante asafo organizations are their shrines and their appliquéd flags. Each asafo company has a meeting place–a post–in town that has as its centerpiece a shrine. While some of these asafo shrines in Anomabu are quite modest–one company (No. 5) has a small tree serving as its shrine–others have erected large and symbolically rich cement structures such

as the one pictured on this page (this is the shrine for the Kyirem Company No. 6 of Anomabu).  The shrines for the Anomabu asafo companies nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 are displayed on this page.

Asafo flags (sing., frankaa) are important icons of a company’s identity. A flag is commissioned by a member of a company when he is promoted to the rank of captain. He relates to a craftsman a proverb or a dream, which is then interpreted by the flag maker into a scene that is appliquéd onto a solid-colored

background. The scene is replicated in mirror image on the backside of the flag. Images of three flags belonging to Asafo Co. No. 6 are seen on this page. Although a new flag becomes the property of the man’s company, it serves as an enduring symbol of his personal status within the organization. It, along with other company

flags, is displayed around the company’s post on ceremonial occasions. Each company will also have specially trained flag dancers, called frankakitsanyi, who will perform at the head of the company when it is part of a procession or other public event. Part of the presentation of a flag to important guests present at an event includes an explanation of the flag’s meaning by the asafo company’s linguist.

Collectively, the music, shrine, and flags of an asafo company are art forms in the service of a martial organization. They dramatically project to the public the collective pride a company’s members feel in their organization.

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Video Selections:

A procession through the streets of Anomabu is seen in this clip. Accompanying the chief at the end of the procession is an aben player. Movement between the two pitches that are possible to produce on the horn is accomplished by covering and opening a small thumbhole at the pointed end of the instrument.

Performance Forces:

aben	two-pitch side-blown lip-reed horn made from an elephant tusk; speech surrogate instrument

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Fante, like all Akan languages, is tonal. The same phoneme delivered at different pitch levels will convey a different meaning. Spoken Fante also has a certain implied rhythm to it, the result of having long and short vowels as building blocks of words. Utterances in Fante, therefore, have somewhat of a musical quality to them. All Akan peoples have come to use select sound producing instruments to function as speech surrogates, instruments on which the rhythmic and tonal parameters of well known spoken phrases can be reproduced well enough for the knowledgeable listener to recognize the text. Such speech surrogate instruments are primarily associated with chiefs, and the texts produced on these instruments are usually praises and proverbs.

Two-pitch ivory side-blown horns called aben have long been associated with Akan chiefs. They function as speech surrogate instruments the sound of which can be clearly heard at some distance. Any chief in any procession is sure to have his aben specialist close by broadcasting praise texts. Aben can be quite plain in appearance or they can be ornamented with surface designs. Some aben, such as the one pictured on this page, have a built-on bell-like structure made from human mandibles that were taken from a vanquished foe on the battlefield long ago.

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Video Selection:

The video clip included here shows Reginald Mensah, one of the most active and knowledgeable drummers in Anomabu, at the chief’s palace drumming praises and other texts as part of the chief’s funeral rites. The drums are facing toward the palace where the chief’s body lays in state. I was unable to procure a spoken version of the texts that were drummed in this clip.

Performance Forces:

atumpan

a pair of large single-headed, goblet-shaped tubular drums struck with a pair of L-shaped beaters by a single drummer; speech-surrogate instrument

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Fante, like all Akan languages, is tonal. The same phoneme delivered at different pitch levels will convey a different meaning. Spoken Fante also has a certain implied rhythm to it, the result of having long and short vowels as building blocks of words. Utterances in Fante, therefore, have somewhat of a musical quality to them. All Akan peoples have come to use select sound producing instruments to function as speech surrogates, instruments on which the rhythmic and tonal parameters of well known spoken phrases can be reproduced well enough for the knowledgeable listener to recognize the text. Such speech surrogate instruments are primarily associated with chiefs, and the texts produced on these instruments are usually praises and proverbs.

The atumpan drum (actually a pair of like drums) is perhaps the most well known of Akan/Fante “talking” instruments. The pair of drums is played by a single drummer gifted in the retention of appropriate texts and in the transformation of these texts into drumming. The two drums that comprise the atumpan are similar in size but tuned slightly apart from one another. This pitch difference and a small vocabulary of single and double strokes are sufficient to convey the necessary relative pitches and the inflections of the Fante language.

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Audio Selection:

Two musicological observations should contribute to your appreciation of this music as you listen to this audio clip. First, there are really two parallel ensembles heard here, one is vocal and organized in the typical call-response pattern of soloist-chorus, the other is instrumental (the horns) and is organized similarly with the solo horn doing the calling and the rest of the horns responding as a chorus. Both groupings are heard over a polyrhythmic grounding provided by two drums (ekukura and opentsin) and a metal percussion plaque (gongon). Second, the material performed by the vocal and horn groupings is basically identical, the melodies they sing and play being shaped by the tonal patterns of the text being performed. This is most clearly perceivable when the melodies of the choral responses are compared with those of the horn responses. In the vocal responses, only two pitches are used–the sung pattern of high and low pitches being determined by the spoken tonal pattern of the text (Fante, the language, is tonal). When the horns render the same text, they do so by being divided into two groups of three horns each. The “chord” produced by one of these groups sounds higher than the “chord” of the other. Thus the tonal pattern of the text can be rendered by having the two groups of horns hocket their respective high and low clusters.

Texts/Translations from Songs Heard in the Audio Sample:

woara wo nua, woara abofra nye wo . . .
abofra do nsu adze a wowyi no mna hen
okum e wo nua
[the performers are calling for help for a drowning boy or girl
“woara wo nua” means “he/she is your own brother/sister”]

Video Selection: 

The video clip opens focused on the cantor, who leads two iterations of the same call-response phrase. Following this, the cantor and chorus switch to their horns and perform three iterations of another piece. Three horn players contributing to the lower-pitch cluster are visible.
<fade out>
The next segment includes good shots of the drummers and the timeline player; dancers executing appropriate movements to this variety of music are also briefly seen.
<fade out>
The final episode of this clip simply presents an overview of the participants in this pre-arranged recording session.

Performance Forces:

gongon	metal percussion plaque struck with a metal rod; time-keeping instrument
ekukwa	single-head goblet-shaped tubular drum struck with two L-shaped stick beaters; lead rhythmic instrument
opentsin	single-headed tubular drum, goblet-shaped, struck with both hands; rhythmic support instrument
11 aben	ten one-pitch or one two-pitch side-blown lip-reed horns manufactured from tied together slats of wood; hocket instruments
cantor	male (also performs the two-pitch aben)
chorus	male, approximately twelve (many of whom also play single-pitch aben)

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A traditional Akan ensemble associated with chieftaincy is the mmensoun (seven horns; mmen=horns [singular=aben], soun=seven). In some Akan areas, these side-blown horns are made of elephant tusks graduated in size, in other areas, such as the coastal Fante area where this recording was made, they are constructed from wood, string, and a native paint. Each horn in such a set, except for the smallest and highest pitched one, is capable of producing a single pitch–the longer the horn, the lower its pitch. The smallest horn has a thumbhole at its apex allowing the player to produce two pitches.

The group represented here is from the village of Asafra, one of the villages in the Anomabu Traditional Area. Asafra is located northwest of Anomabu, a few miles inland from the ocean. (map) It is the only village in the Anomabu Traditional Area with an active mmensoun group. Asafra’s group had been in existence for over twenty years at the time the documentation presented here was made in 1993. The official name of the group is the Asafra Catholic Christian

Youth Organization Mmensoun Group, and its membership numbers fifteen males under the direction of Mr. T. K. Aidoo and Mr. J. K. Amakya. I was unable to attain an explanation as to why a Catholic Church youth group should specialize in a musical form associated with traditional chieftancy.

The Asafra mmensoun group receives several invitations each year to participate in events such as festival durbars, enstoolments and funerals. I assume that, in most cases, they are invited by chiefs who themselves are participating in these events. They have even played for Ghana Broadcasting Services (the government radio and television stations) broadcasts and for state functions in Accra. They have a repertoire of about twenty-five songs to draw upon for their engagements. Most of the songs appear to be proverb based.

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Audio Selection: 

In the piece captured on the audio clip you will hear that the timeline is a simple steady beat played on the bamboo clappers. For the most part the three drum parts each stick with their short repeated pattern, but every once in awhile one of them throws in a brief variation that alters the composite rhythm. Part way through the excerpt the singers come in in a call-response pattern.

Video Selection:

In the first segment of the video clip we see and hear a staged procession (this footage was shot at an arranged recording session). Nana Baisie and his linguist are seen preceding the singers and drummers. In the second segment of the clip we hear another piece with a different timeline pattern and drum motifs. Nana Baisie’s linguist dances for a period.

Performance Forces:

several abaa	a pair of bamboo concussion sticks; time-keeping instrument
kyenkese	single-head tubular drum, goblet-shaped, struck with two stick beaters;
egyeguado	single-head tubular drum, goblet-shaped, struck with two stick beaters;
ansaba	single-headed tubular drum, footed, struck with two straight sticks; support drum
chorus	mixed

There was one other small goblet-shaped drum the name of which I was unsuccessful in obtaining. It was not played when the ansaba was in use, and vice versa. It would therefore appear that there are just three drum parts for apirede pieces.

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I have very little information about the apirede ensemble tradition of the Fante. The ensemble documented here is the only apirede set that I saw during my time in Ghana. I do know it is found elsewhere in the Akan-speaking area of Ghana, for Nketia mentions it as a royal ensemble in his study titled Drumming in Akan Communities of Ghana (1963).

The apirede drums documented here belong to Nana Baisie IV, chief of Amoanda. Amoanda is a small village in the Anomabu Traditional Area located a few miles inland from Anomabu. (map) The drums in this set are a good deal more diminutive in size than those of the fontomfrom drums owned by the same chief. Only three of the four drums that appeared to comprise this set were used at any one time. None of these sounded to my ear to be functioning in the capacity of lead drum; all three parts seemed to be of equal importance as they tightly interlocked with one another. It is also noteworthy that the timeline instrument was not a metal bell but bamboo clappers (abaa). I was told that this ensemble was a practical substitute for the fontomfrom drums–it was more portable and musicians from the village knew how to play it. There are praise songs that go along with apirede drumming. These songs are known by community members who can then follow their chief to events and participate along with him in possessions.

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Audio Selection:

The audio clip captures a short performance of a relatively austere “opening” piece. The support drums simply keep a fast steady pulse while the player of the large fromkasi provides periodic short rhythmic outbursts. Occasionally the atumpan player adds a two-tone rhythmic utterance or cuts across the support beat in an interesting way. The gongon simply keeps its short timeline pattern sounding throughout.

Video Selection:

Most of the video clip is dedicated to the same performance of this opening piece. For a moment, an individual is focused on as he moves in a way appropriate to the music. The clip ends with an excerpt from another, far more lively piece and the spontaneous movement it elicits.

Performance Forces:

gongon	large, single, clapperless metal bell struck with a stick; time-keeping instrument
atumpan	a pair of large single-headed, goblet-shaped tubular drums struck with a pair of beaters by a single drummer; lead drum
eguankoba	single-headed tubular drum, barrel-shaped, struck with two stick beaters; supporting rhythm instrument
ansaba	single-headed tubular drum, footed, struck with two straight sticks; supporting rhythm instrument
fromkasi	large barrel-shaped, single-headed tubular drum, struck with two L-shaped stick beaters or occasionally with one stick beater and one open hand; rhythmic instrument

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