Author: Gina Donovan

Modern-day Ghanaian society, with its parliamentary government, judiciary, and military, still allows for the existence of traditional chiefs among its many ethnic groups. In fact, most small scale claims involving land issues or domestic disputes are mediated by village, district, or regional chiefs. One prerogative of chieftaincy is the right to own certain kinds of music ensembles and have them accompany your appearance during festival processions, durbars, funerals of other chiefs, and your own funeral. One such royal ensemble is the fontomfrom. Whether played in a stationary position or beaten during a procession, the sound of this purely instrumental ensemble informs everyone within earshot that an important individual is present.

The fontomfrom ensemble documented here belongs 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) Although Nana Baisie’s predecessors might have had musicians in the immediate area of Amoanda they could call on to perform their fontomfrom drums, the current chief must engage drummers with no direct connection to his realm when he

participates in large events. For this recording session, Mr. Francis Eku of Mankessim (which is not a part of the Anomabu traditional Area) was called in to perform and bring with him the necessary musicians–and this is what Nana Baisie would have to do if he wanted his fontomfrom drums played behind him in a procession of chiefs. Mr. Eku is perhaps typical of present-day royal drummers in that he did not come from a family with this specialty. Rather, any interested child as young as six or seven can receive instruction from an experienced fontomfrom player or group, and once he becomes proficient he can freelance. While musicians such as Mr. Eku learn how to perform royal music, at the same time they might not have learned some of the more esoteric knowledge associated with the skill that a specialist would pass on only to another family member. For example, Mr. Eku knows that all the pieces he plays with his group have names, but he does not know those names.

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Anomabu is the seat of one of the eighteen Fante traditional states or oman. A paramount chief heads this state and has beneath him a number of lesser chiefs most of whom preside over the villages that comprise the state (the state of the paramount chief of Anomabu is called the Anomabu Traditional Area; in the past it has also been referred to as the Anomabu Paramount Stool [the “stool” in Akan cultures is similar to the “throne” in European autocracies and is used here as a synonym for “realm” or “domain”]). Only individuals in such positions of authority have the right to own certain sets of instruments and have them accompany their participation in public ceremonies and processions. Such instruments and ensembles become visual and sonic icons of their owner’s important social position.

Among the Fante, as well as with other Akan peoples of southern Ghana, one runs across a wide range of musical instruments associated with the social position of chieftancy. Types of instruments and ensembles reserved for use by Fante chiefs are: 1) speech surrogate instruments–such as individual side-blown horns and talking drums–on which are rendered praise poetry in honor of a chief; 2) a few instrumental ensemble types dominated by drums; and 3) side-blown horn ensembles.

As is the case with the asafokyen (the master drum of an asafo company, to be discussed below), it is often impossible to discern the cultural significance of chieftancy-associated instruments by their exterior appearance alone. Although some of these instruments might display a degree of artistic execution in their surface detail, the majority of them are rather plain in appearance. Their connection with chieftancy is a socially learned one that is conveyed and reinforced in villages, towns and cities during yearly community celebrations and during rites directly associated with chiefs. These instruments–some of them performed individually, others as components of ensembles–become part of the cacophonous soundscape of public social displays that reinforce in a viseral way the elevated position of chiefs in the Fante social order.

Along with these sound-generating emblems of social position are displayed other objects that serve to visually reinforce the position of chief. These include large and brightly colored umbrellas, gold-encrusted carved wooden finials mounted on staffs and carried by a chief’s linguist, thrones and/or carved wooded stools carried on the heads of attendants, and heirloom weapons.

All of these visual and sonic symbols of power are effectively orchestrated on ceremonial occasions to project in no uncertain terms the legitimacy and importance of their owners.

The musicians who perform these types of music come from specific clans or villages that are traditionally obligated to provide performers for chiefs. However, such musicians are by no means professional since most of them make their livelihood as farmers or fishermen and are only occasionally called upon to serve their chief.

 

 

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Audio Selection:

The music making captured in this clip was part of a weekly meeting of the Awerekyekyer organization of Anomabu, recorded in a classroom of the town’s Catholic secondary school. The cantor, Miss Florence Dawson, is a member of the Cape Coast branch of Awerekyekyer, but travels to Anomabu to help train the group musically. The cantor has much freedom in spontaneously selecting lines of text all of which work with the repeated choral response. And yes, the final section of the second song has as its choral response “alleluia.”

Texts/Translations for the Songs Heard on the Audio Example:

Yesu ye medze
Christ is mine
Senee metse biara meyi me nyame aye
[a song expressing consistency of faith in God on the part of the singer]

Performance Forces:

afirikyiwa	metal castanet consisting of a wide ring worn on the thumb and a somewhat globular-shaped bell hanging from the second finger of the same hand; time-keeping instrument
dondo	double-headed pressure drum with hourglass-shaped body, struck with a single hook-shaped stick, only one head is struck; a rhythmic instrument
conga	pair of single-headed tubular hand drums with a conical bodies mounted on a stand, local adaptation of the Latin American conga; a rhythmic instrument
cantor	female
chorus	mixed, approximately forty-five females and five males

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Awerekyekyer is an ecumenical Christian organization founded in the coastal Ghanaian city of Tema in the early 1980s.

While I was in Ghana, a branch of this organization–the ninth–was inaugurated in Anomabu. Membership in the Anomabu branch numbered approximately 150 in 1993, its founding year. One of the main functions of the Awerekyekyer organization is to provide live music for Christian wakes and funerals.

At the group’s weekly meetings, a good share of the time is spent running through their musical repertoire.

Music is learned by rote and organized in a call-response pattern with light drumming (on dondo and conga) and a bell providing a popular dance beat (highlife) pattern.

 

 

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Audio Selections:

The audio clip contains a complete performance of an “anthem” titled Hyeren, performed a cappella except for an organ prelude (played by Mr. Ocran on a portable synthesizer). The members of the Ebenezer Methodist Church singing band do not read music, so their musically literate “band mistress,” Miss Elizabeth Anderson, must teach them by rote all the parts of all the pieces that comprise the group’s repertoire. I was unable to uncover the name of the anthem’s composer and his background, but it is quite obvious from a stylistic standpoint that he has background in western church music.

Texts/Translations for the Songs Heard on the Audio Example:

[Hyeren]
Let your light [shine], for you are a Christian.

Video Selections:

The video excerpt shows the offertory section of a service in the Ebenezer Methodist Church of Anomabu. This service as in celebration of the congregation’s one-hundredth anniversary. The Singing Band’s performance encourages non-performing members of the congregation to come forward and make their donation. Controlled spontaneity is evident in the way both performers and parishioners are free to move to the lilting beat of the music. Unlike in the audio example of this group, the music captured in the video includes instrumental accompaniment (off screen). The electronic synthesizer is heard throughout along with congas, dondo, clips, sistrum and bass drum. I was unable to find out the title of the song or procure its text, but musically it is based on what is called the “highlife” beat, 4/4 meter with clips sounding on the offbeat following the second, third and fourth beats.

Performance Forces:

synthesizer	portable keyboard electrophone; used as harmonic instrument
chorus	mixed–seventeen sopranos, fifteen altos, five tenors, four basses

(most of the group’s repertoire also includes:)

clips	wooden concussion sticks, modeled after Latin American claves; time-keeping instrument
sistrum	sliding rattle made of several metal concussion discs loosely attached to a wire stretched between the tips of a y-shaped frame; used as rhythmic instrument
conga	pair of single-headed tubular hand drums with a conical bodies mounted on a stand, local adaptation of the Latin American conga; used as rhythmic instrument
bass drum	double-head cylindrical drum with large diameter, struck with a stick beater, imported from Europe or modeled after European bass drum; used as rhythmic instrument

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I would estimate that approximately 50% of the residents of Anomabu would identify their primary religious orientation as Christian. The oldest surviving Christian congregation in Anomabu is the Ebenezer Methodist Church, founded by Wesleyan missionaries who arrived in the 1830s. There is also a large Catholic congregation, as well as several Pentecostal churches. Both the Methodist and Catholic churches operate private primary and junior secondary schools in town, so both institutions are well established in the community. All churches and affiliated schools are run entirely by Ghanaians–there were no resident missionaries of European descent living in Anomabu at the time of my visits.

The structure of the service in these mainstream sects of Christianity is quite close to what we are familiar with in America. It should come as no surprise that the music used in these services is structurally and aesthetically influenced by western models, although texts for the service proper and the hymns are in Fante. The western character of the music heard in these churches helps to clearly differentiate these religious communities from indigenous ones. Drums are either absent or few in number, and when present are modeled after western bass drums or Latin American congas, not indigenous Fante drums (although the hourglass dondo drum is frequently used). Singing is often in two or more parts, and a western-influenced vocal quality is preferred. Hymns are composed by Ghanaians trained in Western music theory and composition, and who write melodies and chord progressions that are not unfamiliar to the Western ear.

Ebenezer Methodist Church, built in 1892, supports two choral groups, the musically literate “Choir,” who sing out of hymnals, and the musically illiterate “Singing Band,” which specializes in singing non-liturgical inspirational spirituals and anthems. Members of the former group most likely learned their music reading skills while attending church-run secondary schools. Singing Band members, on the whole, probably did not get that far in their schooling and thus must learn their music by rote. During the two services I attended at Ebenezer Methodist Church, I would estimate that over half the people in attendance were members of one or the other of the two choral groups.

In the context of such Christian church services, music serves two clear functions: 1) it promotes communal engagement in the participants’ weekly reaffirmation of belief in the church’s dogma; and 2) it sets off, in no uncertain stylistic terms, this institution from traditional Fante religious institutions and practices such as akom. From interactions I had with members of Anomabu’s Christian community, I sensed in them a strong self-image of social and spiritual superiority over their animistic neighbors. In public displays of group identity, such as funerals, Christians seem to prefer distancing themselves from traditional practices. They do this symbolically by electing to play cassette recordings of commercially produced inspirational popular music over PA systems rather than hiring a traditional musical group, which in their eyes is automatically associated with less enlightened segments of the community.

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Audio Selection: 

This audio clip is a seven-minute long, self-contained segment of a two-hour-long commissioned event. Like all of the segments I heard at tigare events, it begins with a rhapsodic introduction featuring call-response singing and unmetered drumming. Once the time-keeping afirikyiwa enters, a clear temporal framework is established and remains present through to the end of the segment. The pitch-inflected dondo drum switches between support, lead, and speech modes during the performance.

Texts/Translations for the Songs Heard on the Audio Example:

Osee yaa yee. Aye a mma wonnsu.
Eee. Obarima Kwaa Takyi yennhu no nsuro gya.
Yenam asaase [yennsuro hwee.]
Nobody should fear anybody.
Our backbone, Kwaa Takyi, is a strong man.
[We don’t fear anything.]

[Nyame dzi m’asem ma me.]
Moroko a meba e Nyame dzi m’asem ma me.
[God should come to my aid.]
In all my endeavors, God should come to my aid.

[Yennsuro ogya], yoo yee.
Mennsuro ogya.
[We don’t fear fire], yoo yee.
I don’t fear fire.

[Yeabo ngua o.]
[We have gathered together.]

Video Selection:

The video clip begins with a brief survey of the tigari performing forces–the women singers, one of them playing the afirikyiwa and another serving as the cantor, are seen first, then we see the male drummers and rattle player.
<fade out>
A long segment of dance by the tigari priestess is seen. She is dressed in the sort of smock one associates with Ghanaians from several northern tribes, a subtle reminder that the source of this religious specialist’s knowledge is from outside the immediate area. Although much of the dance is stationary, the priestess does at times move further afield within a circular space etched on the ground. There are moments where you may be able to sense how the drumming responds to changes in the dancer’s movement vocabulary. Since the music and dances heard and seen in the course of a ceremony are not set pieces and choreographed dances, every participant is watching, listening to, and responding to one another constantly.

Performance Forces:

afirikyiwa	metal castanet consisting of a wide ring worn on the thumb and a somewhat globular-shaped bell hanging from the second finger of the same hand; time-keeping instrument
maracas	a pair of gourd rattles with internal seeds, played by a single performer; rhythmic instrument
ampaa	single-headed tubular drum, goblet-shaped, struck with both hands; support drum
ampaa, large	single-headed drum, goblet-shaped body, struck with two short sticks or sometimes with open palms; support drum
ansaba	single-headed tubular drum, footed, struck with two straight sticks; support drum
dondo	double-headed pressure drum with hourglass-shaped body, struck with a single hook-shaped stick, only one head is struck; rhythmic instrument used to accentuate dance movement
cantor	female
chorus	female, approximately twenty-five

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The religious practice known as tigare first arrived in the coastal area of Ghana around the 1920s. This West African cult is believed to have originated in the Islamized and semi-arid Sudanic region and gradually spread to the south into the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and parts of Nigeria.

The tigare cult has at the center of its ideology a single supernatural force or deity named Tigare. Tigare is perceived by its followers as being particularly effective against evil magic, called juju, which is viewed as being put upon individuals not by forces of the spirit world but by other people, usually members of a victim’s own abusua (matriclan). Tigare priests and priestesses are viewed by their followers as being clever in uncovering the source and neutralizing the adverse effects of a juju spell that has befallen an individual. Whereas the akomfo serve the community at large and anyone who comes to seek their assistance in resolving problems, one actually becomes a member of a tigare priest’s shrine by taking an oath to Tigare. Thus the tigare priest is not involved in performing ceremonies for the general well being of the community, but to serving the individual needs of his or her followers. However, there are public ceremonies enacted by tigari priests (Anomabu had three such priests in the early 1990s) and their followers at regular intervals. At these ceremonies the priests and priestesses dance to the driving rhythms of drumming and to the singing of their followers.

The music heard at these ceremonies features a mixture of Fante and Northern Ghanaian instruments, including pressure drums and rattles that are of northern origin. The music is more rhythmically intense and less episodic than the music for akom. Although the music is certainly not composed, it is a good deal less spontaneous than in akom. The dance, like for akom, is performed only by the trained priest or priestess. However, the costume worn is quite different and again, like the music, displays clear influences from the North where men wear flaring smocks.

The public tigare ceremonies are more a display of music and dance centered on the projection of cult identity and solidarity than actual communication with the supernatural. Priests do not become possessed. Most likely the singing, drumming and dancing is for the entertainment both of Tigare and of the general population. Most of the actual work of the tigare priesthood seems to go on at their shrines and out of the public’s eye.

One researcher who has studied this cult speculates that the popularity of the tigare cult has been stimulated by the increased uncertainty in the lives of many Africans. This uncertainty has been brought about by changes resulting from the process of acculturation. The foreign economic, religious, and educational systems that have been introduced to Ghana are in many ways incompatible with indigenous cultural institutions and ways. This has lead to personal and social disorganization that is often explained in terms of being the result of evil magic being cast upon individuals. Tigare constitutes a hope for many in that this force is believed to have the power to uncover the sources of an individual’s misfortune.

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Audio Selection:

In the extended audio example for this page you might focus on two general levels of performance organization and interaction. First, you can attempt to sense how the gravelly-voiced priestess, voicing the wishes of the obosom possessing her, feeds a line of text to the singers and instrumentalists who in turn commence performing the requested piece. The flexibility required of the accompanying ensemble to respond to these spontaneously generated requests is impressive–none of this can be rehearsed ahead of time. This spontaneity and the relatively short outbursts of song and drumming that result contribute to the episodic quality of akom ceremonies. Secondly, you can challenge yourself to focus sequentially on the various textural components of Fante music–a time line played on the bells, multiple interlocking support drum patterns, a more varied and complex lead drum part, and the call-response organization of much of the singing. Furthermore, since this episode involves a number of distinct songs with different tunes and accompaniment, you might try to perceive how one element of the musical texture–the bell part might be the easiest to follow–varies or stays constant between episodes.

Texts/Translations for the Songs Heard on the Audio Example:

Abora yewo mu o ayee.
Abora (the name of a traditional Fante area), we are here.

Hen ara yese a obeya ho.
Yewo mu o eyee.
When we say it, it will surely happen.
We are here.

Nde m’ammba a okyena m’eba.
Sese Bireku Adoko.
If he doesn’t come today, I will come tomorrow.
Sese Bireku Adoko.

‘Wanwaano no mpra m’eba
‘Wanwaano nyimpa nnyi ho.
‘Wanwaano, I will come
‘Wanwaano, there is nobody.

Nyimpa ato nsu m’wonyi no mma no.
W’oko Mankoadze ma onyimpa ato ‘su m’.
A human being has drowned, bring his body back.
They went to Mankoadze and someone drowned.

Menye wo wo asem a bisa Obosu.
Keda na dwen.
If I have trouble with you, ask Obosu.
Sleep and think about it.

Akyersoa, ose obowo wo tweer
Akyersoa mowo nsoe.
The thorn says it will harm you.
If you harm me, I will give you a knock.

Pramafo wonnka me ba
M’afa m’Egya ne yer.
The men (of the family) should intervene for me
I have taken my father’s wife.

M’akroma pegya kora yi.
My hawk should lift the calabash.

Video Selections:

The first video clip captures some of the action during a ceremony that took place at an intersection in the town of Anomabu. The location was selected because of its proximity to a rather unassuming shrine for a particular obosom. Being celebrated was the impending end to the apprenticeship of three initiates–two females and one male. The clip opens with a view of the accompanying instrumentalists followed by one of the initiates demarcating the circular dance space with white powder. Next we see a shot of a basin containing sculpted representations of local obosom wrapped in textiles and positioned in front of the senior priests, followed by a pan to the dance space where we see the first initiate dancing.
<fade out>
An akom priest, who was trained in Anomabu but currently practices elsewhere, dances. <fade out>
A male initiate dances.
<fade out>
A segment of dancing by the chief priestess of Anomabu concludes this clip.

In the second video clip, Valerie Vetter and Kwesi Sagoe interview an akom initiate prior to a commissioned event. In addition to verbal information, you can see how the initiate’s hair is prepared for the ceremony.

In the third video excerpt we see an abridged documentation of a priestess as she attains a state of possession. She starts and ends this process wrapped in white cloth, white being the color associated with the spirit realm. Her energetic movements sometime involve extended periods of spinning that likely contributes to the attainment of the trance state. In the middle of this clip the videographer focuses on the accompanying male chorus that is situated behind the drummers.

Performance Forces:

two adawur	single iron bell, clapperless, struck with a wooden stick; time-keeping instrument
asafokyen	single-headed tubular drum, elongated barrell-shaped body, struck with one stick beater and one open hand or occasionally two stick beaters; master drum
ansaba	single-headed tubular drum, footed, struck with two straight sticks; support drum
ampaa	single-headed tubular drum, goblet-shaped, struck with both hands, support drum
male singers	dozen or more

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