Author: Gina Donovan

Akom, which means “possession,” is the Fante religious institution that serves to mediate between the obosom, or nature gods, and the community as a whole. Obosom are believed to have been created by the supreme god Nyame, who, although not worshipped directly, is thought to have created the world and mankind and is felt to be omnipresent and omnipotent. Fante animists recognize numerous obosom that are believed to watch over the activities of humans and to punish those who act contrary to customs of society. The obosom are conceived of as living in objects in the environment –such as trees, stones, wells, or streams–and these objects in turn serve as their shrines. Although the obosom are viewed as having broad ranging powers, any one of these spirits has his or her own area of competence and jurisdiction, e.g., fertility, warfare, agriculture, or general protection to the community.

A priesthood exists in Fante communities to serve as the intermediaries between humans and the obosom. This priesthood consists of individuals, both male and female (although in Anomabo women are in the majority), who have been possessed by a deity and thus called into its service–they are called akomfo, “the possessed ones.” Their calling is followed by a three- to five-year apprenticeship with a senior priestess during which they learn about the character of their deity, about herbal medicines, and how to dance for akom ceremonies.

The akomfo do not live together or have a central sanctuary. They enact their public ceremonies throughout the town at or near obosom shrines on propitious days. During a visit one day to the house of a senior akomfo in Anomabu, I was shown fetishes of some of the local obosom.

In order to facilitate communication between the mundane and spirit realms at these ceremonies, the akomfo basically dance themselves into a state of possession. When this state is achieved, they are led away to be interrogated by a specialist knowledgeable in the language of the gods. It is through this process that the thoughts and concerns of the local deities, which might be thought of as basically synonymous with the traditional Fante value system, are made known to the community at large. The ceremonies of the akomfo are public and constitute a form of religious spectacle that is as dramatically compelling to the common Fante as it is spiritually efficacious.

These ceremonies are animated by a distinctive and vibrant form of Fante music that accompanies intricate dancing executed only by the trained priestesses. This is contrary to most other situations in which music is heard in Anomabu, where the norm is that anyone moved to dance is free to do so.

The akom ensemble includes a male chorus singing fragments of songs that the deity requests through the akomfo he or she is possessing. These songs are set to rhythmically dense and intense drumming that works within a time framework marked off by a pair of large handheld bells.

Since there is no other form of Fante music structured or sounding like the music for akom, as soon as a ceremony begins this loud and bold style of drumming immediately attracts a large and curious crowd of spectators. In addition to functioning as a sonic advertisement for the cult event, the music simultaneously facilitates or triggers the attainment of a possession state by trained specialists.

Although specific rhythms and their corresponding dance movements are unique to the akom tradition, the way in which they and the songs performed by the male chorus are combined during a ceremony is quite spontaneous and unpredictable. For the Fante animist, the end result of this organic interaction between musicians and akomfo is communication with the nature deities who are believed to shape, sometimes rather capriciously, the general welfare of the community.

There are numerous akomfo in Anomabu, and hardly a week went by without me running into them performing their ceremony to a large and engaged crowd of onlookers. I would also see them at the large, yearly community celebration of thanksgiving (the Okyir Festival) and on other occasions of significance involving processions through the town. They would not be performing their dance in these contexts, but would be positioned at or near the head of these colorful and mobile displays of the prominent individuals and organizations of the community.

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In reflecting about my stay in Ghana, in general, and Anomabu, in particular, the strongest impression to come to mind is how unpredictable and tough day-to-day existence is for the majority of Ghanaians I met. The price of petrol regularly increases–sometimes precipitously–and everything else follows in its wake, including staple foods, transportation, and school tuitions. Many people have no steady employment, and even those that do seldom see the degree of increase in the cost of living reflected in their salaries. In Anomabu, due to offshore international net fishing, the catch by local fishermen is not as good as in times past, and this understandably contributes to a stagnated local economy and a gradual slide closer and closer to a subsistence existence for the majority of people. Although ideas abound for enterprises and the desire to work is there, both start-up capital and consumers with disposable income are scarce.

Such adverse conditions encourage a variety of responses, not least among them being the tendency to look to the supernatural for explanations, assistance, and consolation. For many residents of Anomabu, ancestral spirits, nature deities, the supreme god Nyame, or Tigare are more likely to intercede and assist them in coping with the vicissitudes of contemporary life than is the Ghanaian government with its legal system and economic development programs. With this statement I do not intend to suggest that individuals are attracted to one religious tradition or another solely as a coping mechanism. Each religious tradition provides a dogma that helps explicate the mysteries of life, and this in itself can be compelling enough to attract adherents. At the same time, religious institutions in general almost always attempt to deal at least in part with the here-and-now by assisting its members with their problems of the moment. The nature of this assistance and to what sorts of problems it can be applied will vary, sometimes markedly, between religious institutions.

The four institutions touched upon in this section represent but a fraction of the spiritual orientations and institutions open to the residents of Anomabu. And although one might assume that any one individual orients him- or herself to one or another of these options, in reality it seems that at least some Fante subscribe to more than one of them simultaneously. Probably the least flexible social subgroup in this regard is the one comprised of highly educated Christians, who find little need to consult indigenous religious specialists. Yet even they, as far as I can tell, will, like most Fante, be compelled to maintain ritual ties with their ancestors through their abusua or matriclan. However, some Anomabu residents suggested to me that some Christians do, under certain circumstances, have recourse to seek out the aid of traditional religious specialists. I found it interesting that one of the drummers I knew in Anomabu, Reginald Mensah, who labels himself as a Methodist, was educated in church-supported schools, and wears a gold crucifix necklace, was also the lead drummer in both the akom and tigare ceremonies that are documented below. I don’t want to suggest that this is typical of Christians in Anomabu, only that it is possible for any given individual to subscribe to or participate in multiple spiritual traditions simultaneously.

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Anomabu residents who are so inclined may perform music for enjoyment or in the spirit of contributing to a variety of community social and spiritual institutions. I have articulated four spheres of musicking that serve to highlight what appear to me to be socially significant relationships between the music genres/groups I encountered in Anomabu and key community institutions that are central to Fante lifeways. A person can take part in music making (either as performer or spectator) in Anomabu within the community’s: 1) religious sphere, which includes groups and music making associated with a range of spiritual institutions found in Anomabu; 2) martial sphere, which is structured around the institution of warrior organizations; 3) chieftaincy sphere, in which certain sorts of musical instruments, ensembles and practices have become emblematic of the elevated social position of chief; and 4) recreational sphere, the organizations of which play a prominent role in the lifecycle events–in particular funerals–of its members and in community-wide celebrations. The institutions at the cores of the first three spheres–the religious, martial and chieftancy spheres–exist to service various spiritual, civic, and social needs of the community at large and its individual citizens. They are not musical organizations per se, but institutions each of which involves in its normal operation music making of a distinctive sort. The groups belonging to the recreational sphere are, indeed, musical organizations at their core, but ones that in addition to providing musical participatory outlets for their memberships also play a significant social role in the community at large.

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For many of the audio examples associated with the ensemble entries found in the “Spheres of Music Making” section of this site, transcriptions and translations (with some explication) of song text fragments are provided. Many of these texts will make little if any sense to someone from outside the Anomabu community. Within single performances a number of tunes might be presented that are not textually linked to one another–one song might deal with traditional morals as expressed through proverbs, a second commenting on a recent or past event of local significance, and another poking fun at someone present at the event in which the performance is embedded. A typical performance by a group will consist of several short songs strung together, each song repeated several times according to the whim of the group cantor/lead singer. While church hymns of western origin or inspiration seem to be used in any sort of ensemble associated with a Christian institution (singing bands, brass bands, the Awerekyekyer organization), I suspect that other tunes/texts can be performed by a variety of groups, each one adapting a song to the stylistic peculiarities of its genre.

One aspect of enduring interest in the study of many African musics is the effect of tonal and rhythmic qualities of speech on various aspects of musical performance. One practice the Fante and other Akan peoples are famous for is their talking drum tradition in which the tonal and rhythmic character of well known texts can be approximated to such a degree that a knowledgeable listener can recognize the text in the drumming. Texts or text fragments can be delivered on a pair of differently tuned drums (such as the atumpan), on a single variable-pitch pressure drum, on a two-pitch horn (aben), or on two or more single-pitch horns performing in hocket (as in the mmensoun ensemble discussed below).

The speech rhythm and tonal contour of texts also contributes to the shaping of the sung melodies that carry the texts. To a speaker of an Akan language, a sung text that clearly reflects the high and low tones and the long and short syllables of the spoken text will always be more comprehensible than one that does not. Therefore it is unavoidable that certain qualities of spoken language should contribute to the melodic styles heard among the Fante and various other Akan peoples.

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The music of each type of Fante ensemble is unique, but some generalizations about the structuring of sound can be made that hold true for most of them. All ensembles use time-keeping instruments, usually idiophones, that provide a temporal framework to which other parts are oriented. All such time-keeping instruments have a timbre that is clearly distinct from the tone quality of drums. The metallic sound of bells or percussion plates or bars being most common.

Every ensemble will include one or more drums on which short, repeated supporting rhythmic patterns are performed. If more than one drum is found serving this function in an ensemble, each will have a distinct tone quality and relative pitch.

At the core of each ensemble there will be a lead drum part that interacts with the supporting rhythmic pattern/s to produce a variety of resulting composite rhythms.

Finally, in most Fante ensembles there will be human voices present performing texted melodies in a call-and-response, soloist-chorus pattern. The group or chorus responses to the soloist’s calls often involve a touch of harmony.

The musical texture of most Fante ensembles has a continuous and dense polyrhythmic and polymetric instrumental foundation with a layer of vocally-produced melody, all coordinated around a short, iterative, regulatory bell pattern. Several genres of Fante music that grow out of European-influenced church and popular traditions–e.g., church choirs, brass bands, and highlife-based genres–retain many of the above discussed elements (bell pattern, supporting rhythmic patterns, call-response melodies) but with a clearly more metrical (in a western musical sense) feel void of the polymetric complexities of the more deeply indigenous genres of music.

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In addition to the human voice, the instrumentarium used in Fante ensembles is dominated by membranophones and idiophones–only a few aerophones (many of them of European origin) are used, and I know of no indigenous Fante chordophones. There is not a single traditional Fante instrument other than the voice that is designed or used to produce melody, although some churches make use of electric organs and portable synthesizer keyboards.

A variety of idiophones (used primarily for time keeping) exists, including struck metal bells and plaques in a wide variety of forms, concussion sticks, handclapping, and struck gourd rattles with external beads. Maraca-like rattles with internal seeds are found in a few ensembles. An intriguing surrogate drum is found in one ensemble–a wooden crate sounded by striking select areas with the fist and open palm.

The many types of membranophones used by the Fante can be seen as variations on four basic drum designs. First there are single headed drums with some variant of barrel, goblet or conical shaped bodies that are open at the bottom end of their shells. On most drums of this type (with the exception of the conical-shaped ones) the head is stretched over a hoop that in turn in laced around several tuning pegs that perforate the body of the drum near its playing end. Such drums are played with the hands, sticks, or both. A second basic design is the double-headed, hourglass shaped drum with lacing running the length of the drum’s body. The shape of the body and the positioning of the lacing allow the drummer, who squeezes the drum with one arm, to produce rising and falling pitch inflections when beating on just one of the heads with a single curved stick beater. The rectangular-shaped frame drum played with an open palm is a third distinctive drum design. The final form of drum is a western-modeled, double-headed cylindrical drum. Smaller versions (snare drum size or smaller) are held vertically on the player’s lap so that one of the heads can be struck with a single stick beater, or horizontally and played with a pair of stick beaters. Western-style bass drums are also found.

The primary aerophone instrument of the Fante is a side blown horn made from wood or ivory. It is used in two ways: alone, as a speech surrogate instrument; and in a set of seven (each capable of producing a single pitch) as part of an ensemble. A single-pitch tin whistle, used as a time-keeping instrument, is found in one particular ensemble. Imported western valve and slide brass instruments have probably been present in this part of Ghana since at least the end of the nineteenth century.

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The word “musicking,” the archaic gerund of the verb “to music,” was resurrected by Christopher Small as the key concept in his 1998 book Musicking–The Meanings of Performing and Listening. By it he means to divert our attention away from thinking about music as an object (“a piece of music”) and towards considering it instead as an action rich in interpretive potential. Small’s most developed definition of the word is:

Members of a certain social group at a particular point in their history are using sounds that have been brought into certain kinds of relationships with one another as the focus for a ceremony in which the values–which is to say, the concepts of what constitute right relationships–of that group are explored, affirmed, and celebrated. (p.183)

Users of this site are encouraged to contemplate the sounds they encounter here not as musical art but rather as the sonic byproducts of members of a community performing their deep values and shared identity.

I would characterize the musicking I witnessed in Anomabu as being deeply integrated into community life, i.e., performed as an integral component of lifecycle, community-wide, and religious events. Music making seems to me to be woven into many of these events to encourage the participatory involvement–usually through dancing–of all present, whether or not they are part of the performing group itself. Live, functionally integrated music making in this community was, as far as I could tell at the time of my research, a totally non-commercial activity. While there may be some form of payment made by an event’s sponsor to a participating music group, members of such groups in no way depend on such income for their livelihood (especially since payment for such services is most typically made in the form of food and locally-made palmwine or gin [apothishie] consumed by the performers during the event itself). Interestingly, the only professional music activity I witnessed was in the form of “sound system” entrepreneurs who could be hired by a sponsor–say, for a wake–to set up a PA system and play over it pre-recorded commercial cassettes. My sense is that, especially for devout Christian families, this sort of deejay-ed musical presence is preferable to contracting a local group that might carry with it and their instruments “heathen” associations. I deduce this from the two or three events at which I heard such sound systems in operation–commercial recordings of Ghanaian gospel and dance band music constituted the playbill on these occasions.

Although I have no way of comparing current musicking in Anomabu to that of times past, I must confess that I was surprised by the degree to which live, distinctively local and non-commercial music making thrived in this one community during the period of my research. With radio, cassettes, television, and greater mobility making it possible for the contemporary Ghanaian to have access to many other worlds of music and lifestyles, why should a town such as Anomabu still have such an enduring and vibrant music scene that exhibits little or no acquiescence to the popular cultural forms that are so aggressively distributed throughout the world today?

One explanation that I can propose is that, due to the relatively impoverished conditions of most Anomabu residents, the town is simply not inundated with the agents of mass communication–radios, TVs, and cassette machines. There are radios, TVs and cassette machines in Anomabu, and I would be very surprised if anyone in the town has not been exposed to them and the sorts of commercialized forms of musical expression that get transmitted over them. But economic conditions work against most residents spending excessive amounts of time soundtracking their lives with mediated music. Residents must dedicate most of their wakeful hours carrying out subsistence activities (fishing, mending nets, repairing boats, cleaning and drying fish). If they have cash, there are numerous other more pressing drains on their resources–feeding and clothing themselves, fulfilling clan obligations such as contributing to funeral expenses or school tuitions of its members–that leave little in the way of cash to purchase and maintain playback equipment and to buy phonograms. If local musicians wish to emulate the commercialized styles of music with which they have become familiar through their limited exposure to the mass media, they will be very hard pressed to come up with the capital to purchase the equipment (instruments and sound systems) necessary to pursue such dreams of professionalism. Such conditions appear to be conducive to the perpetuation of traditional music making for they necessitate the cooperative effort of many community members in providing the variety of musical forms needed to animate the town’s daily and ceremonial life without requiring much in the way of an infrastructure involving cash flow.

All of the music making in Anomabu that I witnessed was performed by non-professional musicians. As far as I could ascertain no one was labeled or identified by the community as being a musician by profession, even though several performers were acknowledged by peers and the community at large as being more musically knowledgeable and versatile than others. The knowledge necessary to perform any given genre of Fante music competently is transmitted orally, passed on incidentally and indirectly through exposure to performance in its social context and through the criticisms the more experienced performers direct toward an emerging musician in the course of performance. No indigenous musical notation of either a prescriptive or descriptive nature, or of indigenous or foreign origin, exists to my knowledge.

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The town of Anomabu (also spelled Anomabo and Anamobo), founded in the 16th century as a fishing village, is located in the hilly, coastal grasslands along the Gulf of Guinea, about fifteen miles east of Cape Coast, the capital of the Central Region, and one hundred miles west of Accra, the capital of Ghana (see above maps).

The settlement got its name from offshore rock outcrops on which seabirds alight (Anomabu = “stone for birds” or “bird rock”). The 1984 population of Anomabu was estimated at 6,700.

The majority of adult residents are involved in the fishing industry–men do the actual fishing as well as maintenance of nets and boats, women dry the fish and then distribute them to local and distant markets. Some residents run small businesses in town or carry out small scale farming of maize, plantain and cassava yams outside of town.

The soil is of poor quality, so farmers employ the slash and burn technique timed to the local pattern of seasonal rainfall.

Life is economically tough for the vast majority of residents, most of whom I would describe as living just above subsistence level. At the same time, a few residents have achieved success in the local business world and

possess some of its material trappings such as cars, ownership of which is far beyond the means of the vast majority of Anomabu residents. Natives of Anomabu for the most part need to relocate themselves, typically at great distance (e.g., Accra or abroad in Europe or America), in order to achieve economic success.

Most of the residents of Anomabu speak Fante and would identify themselves culturally as Fante. They belong to the larger cultural complex known as the Akan, who constitute the majority ethnic group throughout much of the southern half of Ghana (see area 26 on the Linguistic Map of Ghana).

The Fante trace their origins back to the inland area of Techiman, from where they believe their ancestors emigrated in the 13th- or early 14th-century. Their first settlement in the coastal area was a town called Kwaman, which is now known as Mankessim. From Mankessim subgroups spread out over the sparsely populated coastal region and formed small autonomous states, one of which was centered in the town of Anomabu.

Contacts with Europeans began as early as 1640 with the establishment of a Dutch trading lodge. Over the ensuing decades, the Danes, Swedes, French, Dutch and English vied with one another for trading concessions along the West African coast. In Anomabu, the British finally prevailed; they built a fort in 1674 (destroyed in 1731) to protect their trade interests from sea attack, and a second one in 1756, Fort William, which still stands today (it is currently used as a prison). Some of the earliest evangelistic efforts by Methodist missionaries in West Africa took place in Anomabu in the 1830s, and quite soon thereafter much of the church activity they initiated was being carried out by Fante converts. In the 1890s an impressive Methodist church–still standing–was built in the town that could accommodate several hundred worshippers. During the late 19th- and the first half of the 20th-century, Anomabu was subsumed under the British colony called the Gold Coast. In 1957, residents of Anomabu became citizens of sub-Saharan Africa’s first post-colonial nation state of Ghana.

What does it mean to be a Fante?

In addition to speaking Fante as one’s mother tongue, it seems to me that four other relationships are central to one’s identity as a Fante: membership in an abusua (a matrilineage), affiliation with an asafo (warrior organization), allegiance to oman (a state headed by a paramount chief), and awareness of, if not subscription to, beliefs in obosom (local nature spirits). These latter four components of Fante identity will be briefly introduced in the following paragraphs and explored in greater detail throughout the website.

Like other Akan peoples, the Fante organize themselves into matrilineal clans called abusua that bind together all those individuals in a town that can trace themselves back four generations to a common ancestress. These local matrilineal clans are an essential component in an individual’s life, especially at death when it is the responsibility of the deceased’s clan to provide proper burial rites to send their kin to the realm of the ancestors. In addition to one’s clan membership, one also inherits membership into a local warrior organization, called an asafo, through one’s father. The presence of this paternally-inherited affiliation within an otherwise matrilineal kinship system has led to the anthropological description of the Fante as practicing dual descent.

A Fante also views him- or herself as belonging to one of about eighteen autonomous traditional states, called oman, each of which is headed by a paramount chief. Although the Fante are governed today under the administrative umbrella of district and regional levels of the Ghanaian national government, many cultural matters are addressed by local bodies of authority such as the traditional council of each oman. This council, headed by the paramount chief (omanhene) and including representatives of the areas abusua and asafo as well as lesser chiefs and several religious specialists, is responsible for setting and overseeing important traditional rituals and ceremonies that are believed to safeguard the welfare of the community as a whole.

As straightforward as the generalizations presented in the preceding two paragraphs may sound, in the reality of the daily lives of Fante individuals facets of their identity in regard to abusua, asafo, and state affiliations can be very complex. For a deeper explication of these complexities of Fante identity see Tsukada (2001).

Both indigenous animistic religious beliefs and Christianity are to be found among the Fante. Like many West Africans, the Fante believe in a supreme god they call Nyame who, although not worshipped directly, is thought to have created the world and humans and is felt to be omnipresent and omnipotent. This supreme god created a number of lesser deities or nature spirits (obosom) who are believed to watch over the activities of mankind and to punish those who act contrary to customs of the society. A priesthood has long existed to act as intermediaries between the people and these nature spirits. It consists of individuals, both male and female, who have been possessed by a spirit and thus called into its service–they are called akomfo, “the possessed ones.”

It is estimated that over half of the Ghanaian population is Christian in their religious orientation, and this approximation probably holds true for the residents of Anomabu. Proselytizing on the part of a number of Catholic and Protestant denominations began in the first half of the 19th century. As a result, among the contemporary Fante one finds, in addition to animists, many Methodists and Catholics as well as numerous adherents to a wide range of Pentecostal sects.

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