An Interview with J. H.

Kwabena
Nketia: Perspectives on Tradition and
Modernity
Trevor Wiggins
This paper presents an edited transcription of interviews between Professor J. H.
Kwabena Nketia and Dr Trevor Wiggins in November 2003, with additional
commentary by Trevor Wiggins. Drawing on Professor Nketias long career and diverse
engagements with many aspects of music in Africa, discussions cover a range of
issues around Ghanaian traditional and contemporary music, African musicology
and the International Centre for African Music & Dance. A version of this interview
will also appear in French in Cahiers de Musiques Traditionelles 17, 2004, Geneva:
Georg Editeur.
Keywords: Africa; African Musicology; Ghana; Nketia; Post-colonial; World Music;
Music Education
J. H. Kwabena Nketia was born in Mampong, Ghana, on 22 June 1921. He was
educated as a teacher in Ghana and moved to London in 1944 to study first
linguistics and social anthropology at the School of African and Oriental Studies,
then music at Trinity College of Music. Returning to Ghana in 1949, he worked as a
teacher of music and English at the Presbyterian Training College in Akropong before
becoming a research fellow in African studies at the University College of Ghana,
progressing to a full professorial chair in the new University of Ghana in 1963. In
1962, a School of Music, Dance and Drama, with Nketia as its director, was
established as part of the Institute of African Studies at the university. African studies
was a major innovation in university policy, bringing indigenous arts onto a campus
where the curriculum and organisation were dominated by a colonial heritage. The
change polarised attitudes, with the new studies dubbed dondology,
1
a term perceived
Trevor Wiggins is Director of Music at Dartington College of Arts. He is currently working on a book about the
recreational music of the Dagaba people of north-west Ghana. His work reflects on music and issues of
education, pedagogy and change, explored through recording and writing. Correspondence to: Dartington
College of Arts, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EJ, UK. Email: t.wiggins@dartington.ac.uk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online) # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/17411910500089138
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2005, pp. 57/81
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by some as abusive (since it seemed to imply that African music, dance and drama
might not be worthy of academic study), but generally treated with humour by
Nketia in telling the story.
The Institute of African Studies received a grant from the Ministry of Culture that
required promotion of the performing arts of Ghana, specifically through the
development of a National Dance Company, of which Nketia became the Director.
Ghana became independent in 1957 and the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, set out
to forge a new national identity from the diverse groups, languages and organisations
that were the colonial legacy. Nketia worked with his friend Mawere Opoku (Artistic
Director), bringing in expert teachers of traditional music and dance, then
supporting them to research and learn other Ghanaian styles. Nketia was made
Director of the Institute of African Studies in 1965, a post he held until his retirement
from the university in 1979.
Between 1979 and 1991, Nketia spent most of his time working in the USA, first at
the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) then the University of Pittsburgh,
teaching and developing his musicological views on African music. Since 1969, he has
also held professorial appointments at six other universities, in Australia, China and
the USA. He is Professor Emeritus at UCLA, Pittsburgh and the University of Ghana.
In 1992, he returned to Ghana, working to establish the International Centre for
African Music and Dance (ICAMD), located at the University of Ghana and
supported by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations. Although he has recently retired
as the director of the ICAMD, he remains a consultant for the establishment of
centres elsewhere in Africa, seeking to enhance the documentation and availability of
African research materials in Africa and taking a proactive role in issues of cultural
development.
Nketias curriculum vitae lists more than 200 publications and his most widely
known book, The music of Africa, has been translated into several other languages,
including Chinese and Japanese. He now lives (most of the time) in Ghana with his
family, continuing to work at the university most days.
Nketia is in a unique position, able not only to reflect on issues for the study of
African music but also to advise on cultural, social and educational action and
intervention. His life includes experience of a traditional African childhood (albeit
under a colonial regime), the period post-independence of the conscious creation of a
Ghanaian national identity, through to the current ambivalent engagement with
Western technology and economics where many Ghanaians perceive the policies
required by international engagement as the antithesis of their traditions and values.
He has directed and observed changes within Ghana as a senior figure in the
university and adviser to the government and has also spent substantial periods in the
academic communities of the UK and the USA. The extent of his influence on
scholars of African music and wider issues of perspectives on musicology can be seen
in the tributes paid by the numerous contributors to African musicology: current
trends , a Festschrift in his honour published in 1989:
58 T. Wiggins
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The greatest influence . . . has been his philosophy of discussing music, especially
African music in the context of culture and society, and his three dimensional
approach to the analysis of music in terms of sound, structure and function. (Vidal
1989, 111)
Other contributors cited Nketias various publications, such as his 1985 article in the
journal World of Music, where he supported:
the need for a holistic approach to the study of music that takes into account not
only the traditional preoccupation of comparative musicologists / scales, modes,
tuning systems and their measurements, melodic and rhythmic analysis, polyphony
and organology, but also the systematic study of the processes involved in music
making. (Nketia 1985, 9)
Figure 1 J. H. Kwabena Nketia. Photo by Trevor Wiggins.
Ethnomusicology Forum 59
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On a more personal note, I am one of many researchers who will always be grateful
for the generosity and assistance of Kwabena Nketia in giving his time to discuss ideas
and for his practical support in negotiating Ghanaian bureaucracy. The breadth of his
approach has provided a model for my own engagement with African music,
integrating practice with observation and concerns for preservation, innovation and
transmission.
The following text has been edited from two interviews with Professor Nketia at
the University of Ghana on 15 and 18 November 2003.
Wiggins: Can I begin by asking you about ICAMD? It is well established but how do
you see its role?
Nketia: First of all it is to provide some space, some place where one can think about
the different aspects of music and dance in Africa, and how one can get those who are
working in the area and those who are performers occasionally to have a point of
reference. If there is a centre and we all know about it, then it provides at least one
way of making sure that people can get in touch with one another. That was the main
idea but the second idea, which was important for me, coming back to Ghana after a
long stay in the USA, was how to create something in Africa which would serve all
continents so that there is a centre of gravity for the studies because the materials are
in Africa. The additional thing was that people in Africa were not active enough in
enquiring into what African music is, what it has to teach us. So perhaps if we had
something in Africa it might help us to think about certain lines of research and feel
that they are a part of the ongoing global research.
Wiggins: I think its also very timely that this Centre has been developed in an
African location, which is important, but the technology now exists to be able make
this available worldwide.
Nketia: For the last five years this has been our concern; how to . . . [achieve
worldwide dissemination]. Even the approach has to be changed now because,
although its good to have conferences in one place, there is also a way of circulating
materials so that people are in touch through the Internet. That is also a very
important step. We have been interested in creating a secretariat of the Centre in
various places, again, because there is a need to think of the Centre not just as a
Ghanaian thing but as a co-ordinator for something that is shared by Africans. Of
course it was difficult to get the universities to support [this] because they always
think about the financial implications.
Wiggins: It is particularly indicative of the economic issues that the place where it is
most difficult to get support for an African centre is Africa.
60 T. Wiggins
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Nketia: The economic issues are always very difficult. Up to now, we have only three
possible places that will be active; we have a centre at the University of Transkei, and
we also inaugurated a similar thing in the University of Ibadan [Nigeria]. We are
interested in other new centres; Kampala [Uganda] was interested in setting up and
also collaborating with Maseno [Kenya]. Our next step was then to get [Research]
Fellows invited to be in residence at the Centre and actively promoting it, so you can
see that the idea of an African centre, which would also be an international centre,
was what we had in mind.
Wiggins: Youve already started to talk about funding. Can you see ICAMD becoming
self-supporting to some extent?
Nketia: We have had Ford Foundation funding for ten years and I think we have
come to the end of that form of support. We are now thinking of how to sustain the
Centre and make it do the work we had in mind. We could have started with
membership and things like that, but I was not quite sure of how that would be taken,
but now, with some evidence of what can be achieved, perhaps the time has come to
have associate members and make something of interest to individuals who are also
able to contribute to its support. [We should also] make sure that we have all our
conference reports and publications lined up [for sale] and disseminate materials
from the archive in the same way, so that we come to a point where we are more
productive, not just running the office.
Wiggins: The idea of production raises for me an interesting area of the policy of
ICAMD; is it about documenting or can it be pro-active?
Nketia: Initially if you look at our archive and holdings from the 1950s, we were very
anxious to preserve, to collect and document, and that has gone on, but its not
enough. Even while we were documenting and preserving, there was the challenge to
use some of the materials. There were all the new political aspirations and the need to
change protocols, to change the state / all the forms of ceremony and so forth / so
the relation between research and its application came to us quite forcibly at the time
of [Ghanaian] independence. [At present] we are still preserving and so forth but the
importance of making what we collect available to the educational system has been a
big challenge. Last year I organized a conference to see how we could also have
something on the Internet for our young people, because there are so many Internet
cafes in Ghana. All the young people are going there and listening to music
[available] from Napster and we are not giving them any opportunity to listen to
their own traditional music. If they [Ministry of Education] created [Internet access]
stations all over [Ghana], then we would have something we [ICAMD] could use to
promote music of all kinds. In terms of accumulating materials, recently we have
been videotaping eminent pop musicians in Ghana / I think we have about 50 of
those interviews. This is the kind of material that needs to go back to our audience, to
Ethnomusicology Forum 61
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the television stations / this can contribute something to our [national] under-
standing of music. That potential is here, and getting people who can contribute to
that kind of thing is important, so that is the way I like to look at the Centre now.
Wiggins: I think that is an issue across the whole of Ghana. The young people are not
so interested in their traditional culture / they want Western pop music / but also, as
you are saying, aspects of that traditional culture are, to some extent, changing or are
not available to young people.
Nketia: But there are a few things that always give me some hope that this [educating
young people in their traditional culture] can be done, that this [situation] can be
changed. Only last week Nana Osei Bonsu, the paramount chief of Mampong
2
came
to an event in Accra. We were going to raise funds for Mampong so he came, and, to
my surprise, the person who came with the group to represent the Obrafuo&,
3
to
recite the poetry was a small boy who apparently has been taught by his father. And
now this little boy, around 8/10 years old, gets up and stands in front of the chief and
recites this poetry / first time. I know that in other areas, [like] playing the kete
drums, schoolchildren have also been employed and brought together at the court of
the Asante in Mampong, and they play kete every 40 days when they have their Adae
Ketewa
4
/ the children have been doing it. I was interested in how they were taught
and how they are able to continue the tradition. The problem that I had in mind was
what they do when they grow older and whether one could arrange it so that you have
[something] like cathedral choir [schools] so the young people are replaced all the
time. I have seen that some chiefs in Asante anyway are encouraging young learners
and young performers, so that gives me a little hope because all of them go to school
as well and it shows what we can do in the school system if we teach these things
properly. The only problem with the school system is that, when we teach these things
they are good, they belong to the culture, but in terms of applying what we teach
[subsequently] it is very limited, because you cant go back to your village and say I
know, I can play Adowa.
5
Let me do it! because these things have been assigned to
[specific] households [that are linked with the royal lineage]. So there are those
problems; how to make what they learn relevant in terms of their own lives and the
contemporary challenges. Unless there is that link, this will become some curiosity,
some cultural thing that we do in your secondary [education] and after
that . . . [handclap].
Wiggins: There are so many issues here. You can understand that the children have to
see that what they are learning is valued by other people, or something they enjoy,
and, as you say, when they get older what will they do with it? On the other hand, in
the UK there are a large number of people who studied music to a high level but
decided not to make it a profession, but they dont think the time studying music was
wasted.
62 T. Wiggins
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Nketia: This is what I appreciate when I read the BBC [Music] magazine, because I
see that this music is the culture but individuals are interested in it, not because they
have been told but because it is something that you do naturally.
6
I see the
advertisements in the magazine for old [period] instruments so that people can buy
them. That way of democratising music is what Im looking for in Ghana. I was
pointing [this] out to my colleagues in Winneba [teacher training institution]. They
are claiming that they have trained about 500 music students. Where are they?
Probably in the schools, and if we include [the University of Ghana at] Legon we can
count about 1000 people who have been through some form of training, but what
impact have they made on music because of their training? What impact have they
made in schools? When you train music teachers and they are employed by the
Ministry [of Education], the teachers are sure they will get their salaries at the end [of
each month], so they have nothing to worry about [financially]. But they forget that
they are musicians [not just teachers]. When you have money so you can live, then
you have the opportunity to develop your musicianship, your professional [skills],
and so these people could be very effective if in addition to what they do in the
classroom they are doing something in the community, even with the children. In
that way we can see a new kind of musical life developing in the contemporary area
when we dont have the [traditional] rituals.
Wiggins: What about when the students come to the university, the balance between
the study of African music and Western music?
Nketia: I believe that the bi-cultural approach that we have in Ghana / [Ephraim]
Amu
7
also had that kind of background / is a good one. What I think we need to do
is help people to understand what it means to be bi-cultural, and the kind of
challenges that emerge being exposed to two cultures, which form a part of ones
experience. The colonial experience is not something one can ignore because it has
such a footing in our cultures. But one can look at it from a positive angle so that one
could use it to enrich ones experience. If we think of the bi-cultural [approach] in
such a way that it is not really two things side by side, but two things that merge, that
fit into what we call music, then it is possible for people to develop ways of thinking
that allow them to work in these areas without much difficulty. Western music has
something to offer, at least in terms of its skills and techniques. I tell some of my
friends, I dont mind you teaching your choir to sing a good Bach chorale because the
skills you acquire through that, if you do it properly, is something you can use. If you
write an equally challenging African piece, or even give them a traditional song and
let them sing it properly, you will have given them some [transferable] skills they can
apply.
Wiggins: Is there a problem to be overcome in that a lot of the modes of enquiry and
systematisation that we use in ethnomusicology are drawn from Western music? Im
thinking also about one of my favourite quotations drawn from Malidoma Patrice
Ethnomusicology Forum 63
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Somes book, Of water and the spirit (1994). Some is a Dagara man from Burkina
Faso writing in English about his experiences growing up in a traditional village. He
said, One of my greatest problems [in writing this book] was that the things I talk
about here did not happen in English; they happened in a language that has a very
different mindset about reality. There is usually significant violence done to anything
being translated from one culture to another. Modern American English, which
seems to me better suited to quick fixes and the thrill of a consumer culture, seems to
falter when asked to communicate another persons world view.
Nketia: The language problem is a difficult one. In music, apart from all the problems
of definition, there is something there that we feel, something tangible. How we deal
with it in terms of talking about it may become the problem. If linguists did not
have a way of looking at language generally (because there are recurrences in all
languages with systems that overlap), then it would be difficult even to deal with
linguistics [as a study]. What we are doing in the area of music is taking whatever we
have had to start with and expanding or redefining it in order to accommodate those
aspects that were ignored because the first formulation was based on a particular
experience / that is the important role ethnomusicology can play. Bringing new
musical things from elsewhere means that we challenge our previous assumptions
about music and we are then faced with reformulating [our theories] so as to include
these new things. You can make an exception, but, if you do, then they become
marginalized. Bringing them into the system, making them a part of the system and a
part of the options that are available to the musician seems to me the thing that we
need to do and I would welcome an African music programme that does that. First, it
does it for Africa itself, for the cultures so that, even though I am [personally] Akan I
dont think only in terms of the Akan scale; I can think of the Ewe or whatever scales
that I know, so I have all those options to use as a contemporary musician. My
parents, they only used the traditional things they had grown up in, but I am now in a
position to go beyond that. In terms of Africa, this way of looking at all the variants,
differences and creating my own system is the first thing that I want to do.
Wiggins: Is there a distinction here between the musicians approach and the
ethnographers approach?
Nketia: Those are two different things. The ethnographer is in fact interested in the
specific and the ethnographer creates a problem for himself because he says to himself
that this thing belongs to this context and that is where it fits. It has no meaning
outside [that system]. Once you say that, then you are looking at things that are
different or isolated, you have a basketful of different things. But if, in addition to
having all those things in the basket, you look at their relationships, then you create
something else beyond the ethnographic fact. Those things that we create beyond the
ethnographic fact are done by people who have an interest in systematising
knowledge and not by those who are interested in describing just what those
64 T. Wiggins
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societies are. The ethnographic view is very good in terms of giving you all the details
that you need about a culture, but if you have two, three or four ethnographers, then
the relationship between the ethnographies becomes the second level of abstraction.
The scholar has the capacity to integrate and thus provide another level of knowledge
and understanding. In ethnomusicology, this is what we are doing, progressively, so
seeing how things fit / or dont fit. As far as the African area is concerned, very early I
struggled with the concept of music and musics / African musics / and
abandoned it because I thought it was silly. I struggled with our diversity but I have
come to a point where I accept all the diversity and yet accept African music as a
concept. For me, the Aka and Mbenzele [people] have a unique way of singing and I
admire them but I regard that as one of the things that the African genius has been
able to create. It happens to be just with the pygmies but I wouldnt throw that away
and say that it is not part [of African music] because [you may] discover something
else somewhere else. [For example], the Highlife music that you find [in West Africa]
may give you a basis for looking at [other] African music in a different sort of way.
Wiggins: I find myself wondering whether the current tools we have for looking at
music and for describing the creation of music, miss out an important element for
African music, which is movement and physicality. I dont just mean dance but the
physical movement of the drummer. You cited Judy van Ziles paper [1988] in your
Seeger memorial lecture [Nketia 1990]. She talked about task accomplishment versus
visual aesthetics and she said, lifting the forearm, pausing, and then lowering it in a
large circular fashion as the hand prepares to strike the drumhead, may go beyond
what is necessary to produce sound and enter the realm of visual aesthetics or
psychological function. The drummers I have seen, when they are creating rhythms,
two important factors are language and the physical dimensions of the movements
that produce the sound.
Nketia: Sometimes, you can make that [the hand movement] a spectacle / there are
those performers who do that / but normally, the way you move is part of the music
in terms of what the music is asking you, the propulsion. If you fling your hand, it is
because you feel a certain thing at that particular point, not just because of a certain
aesthetic, because sometimes when you perform [at night] you dont have light and
we dont see everything and people are not watching the drummers. I think about the
movement in the music more than the act of producing the music. That has its own
area in terms of dynamics and the act of performance, but movement in the music is
extremely important for me because this is where my cultural habits seem to have
developed. Certain things I do are because I am used to that way of doing them. I
would see the difference between Western music and African music in terms of the
movement aspect, very much so. I was looking at a video of a pianist [and thinking],
if I was playing in my African way I wouldnt use that run, I would do something else.
But acquiring the rhythms of another culture is a difficult process, but that is why we
study other cultures in order to get it.
Ethnomusicology Forum 65
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Wiggins: It does seem that we dont have appropriate terminology for this area of
movement / it is assumed as peripheral to the music.
Nketia: I think that I dont blame Western terminology too much even though I see
the limitations, but as I was saying in linguistics, if certain categories were not
recognized, basic categories of nouns, verbs and things like that / we are not saying
that every language should have the same thing / but once somebody discovers and
categorises them, there is a beginning. You will find something that is not like it and
want to give it a different term, and this is the way they have worked / quite
satisfactorily as far as I am concerned. They are always refining the descriptions
and terms, but at least there is [a system of] linguistics and there is a language
with the different levels of looking [at it]. I think that in music too, we can look
at a particular piece but sometimes one needs to go beyond that and see what a
particular set of pieces tell us about [music in general], but I dont think that
Western terms are necessarily bad. They may be limited in terms of what they
tell us because of what they are supposed to account for but we can always [work
with that]. Meki Nzewi and others are quarrelling about cross-rhythm.
8
For me that
is not so important because in my own language we say twa or twemu
9
/ we
cross / we use that. So the concept of cross-rhythm is not something I would fight
with, as long as I know exactly the circumstances, the configuration that we describe
as cross. It is the finer detail: what are the ways of crossing? Thats more important
to me.
Wiggins: To what extent is traditional African music still being developed as part of
society, or has it become much more a conscious and cultural production?
Nketia: In the traditional setting it is going on in the usual way but changes in
attitude are taking place in the country since independence and the deliberate
attempt that we made to recontextualise [music in the new state]. This has influenced
the ways that some of them approach their music, but it was something we were
forced to do because at the time of independence we had nothing of our own to hold
onto. Celebrating independence, we brought performing groups from all parts of the
country to perform at the stadium / the first time we were recontexualising these
things / and at the beginning it was quite a problem because the performers we
brought were not given enough time to perform. They had [only] ten minutes, so
before they were ready they were off [again], but it was symbolic. Symbolic in the
sense of giving us something to hold onto / this is our own / and this was really for
the benefit of those of us who had left the culture. For those people who came [to
perform], it was bringing them from the periphery to the centre, so politically there
was also the sense of making them feel part of a new nation. Everything went on that
way / now performing groups in villages know that they can also go to other places
and they will perform to audiences that dont understand their language, so will make
certain adjustments because of the audience. But the traditional thing is [still] going
66 T. Wiggins
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on in the true kind of context, in the ritual ceremony and social lives that you have in
the community.
Wiggins: What about the situation for African composers? It seems this is still very
much a developing genre, which is creating a space between the Western tradition
and an African one.
Nketia: Exactly. I was talking about building bridges between traditional and
contemporary. That is where we are in many aspects of development, managing the
transition from tradition to modernity by building bridges. It has a good future but a
lot depends on the accessibility and the starting point, because you cant build a
proper bridge unless you know the parts you are bringing together. That is where we
find differences, where a composer might start not from the traditional foundation,
but from somewhere else and try to go into tradition. When you do that, you have a
problem, because you may find that you have the traditional thing there but you are
not using the traditional thing as your language. Many African composers face that
problem because we all start a kind of conservatory training before we discover
ourselves. I was fortunate, perhaps, in not going through it the same way, because
when I was young, [Ephraim] Amu had come on the scene and nationalism of a
certain kind had emerged / he was talking about African music. Even though the
music he created was not traditional, there was enough of the traditional style that he
brought in to show that there was something in traditional music you could use. I
really got into the bi-musical thing / it wasnt planned, but it happened because I
studied as a child in the traditional community, going to traditional dances. As far as
my growth as a child was concerned, my parents were non-literate and they did not
care if I went here or there, but they always allowed me to go to traditional
performances. My grandparents were Presbyterians, but they never prevented me
from going to traditional performances [either], because my grandparents also had
enough traditional background. When I did my research later I found that they
appreciated traditional music, they knew traditional songs, [which] they taught me.
So I grew up in that kind of situation where I knew my traditional music, and then
when I encountered Western music, I liked it too. Teachers taught me to read tonic
sol-fa and I would copy everything and go and practise. I did not build up the
Western thing and, after that, try to go back to [my traditions]. Except that when
Amu met me and said I should not copy his music and said I should go to the
traditional people, he strengthened the path because he made me suddenly aware that
traditional music had a role / an important one. When I went back to my town and
talked to my grandmother
10
who sang Adowa songs, I learned a lot. I learned to sing,
I learned the texts and she explained the difficult words. Looking back, she was an
extremely good teacher and I learned so many songs that I could create my own in the
traditional way. That was the thing that saved me, but it also meant that I appreciated
Western music and could see the difference.
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Wiggins: Can I ask you about the balance between dealing with complex issues and
what appears to be a clear commitment to clarity of communication in your writing?
I wondered how much you are conscious of negotiating between the concepts, which
may be complex, and the conception of your audience.
Nketia: Usually, any time I have a subject I am dealing with, I approach it as though I
were explaining it to myself. Many of my articles are my attempt to understand
something, so I usually set it out to show how I understand it. That probably helps a bit
because then you dont put too much in at a time; you take each little bit, explain it,
and then go on and I also find that, in some of my things, I will make a general
observation / an observation based on a certain experience I have had, derived from a
number of instances, but usually I have a habit of finding a way of making a statement
that covers the instances, than I use the examples to explain. This was the way I
approached my [book] The music of Africa [Nketia 1974]. Usually, a paragraph would
make a statement and it would be followed by a discussion and it has become a habit.
Wiggins: I know you have been very clear that The music of Africa was a textbook.
Nketia: I was approached by [the publishers] Norton to do this and they timed it well
because they came to me at a time when I had taught courses and done a preliminary
thing with African music in Ghana [Nketia 1963a], where I had been thinking about
various categories, topics and so forth.
Wiggins: One of my arguments has always been that, in order to write a textbook, it
can be just as much research because you have not only to know the material well but
know your audience equally well and work out how you can mediate between the
two, explaining the one in appropriate terms for the other.
Nketia: The important thing about writing a textbook is deciding what to exclude:
what might be a matter of detail, what might be difficult for a student of a certain
background to understand at that point. In some cases, you tend towards a simpler
kind of statement than an elaborate one, but the experience as a teacher in the
classroom guides one who is writing a textbook for students to read. In the case of
The music of Africa, it wasnt aimed at music specialists only; it was aimed at the
general student, like freshmen in the USA taking science [as their main discipline]. So
the task was keeping technical terms down to a minimum and also explaining
[concepts], but, for me, the challenge with The music of Africa was what I needed to
omit / I could have written a lot on music and religion but I only make a passing
reference.
Wiggins: The other thing that interests me about The music of Africa is the title,
because its the music of Africa. Your book is a survey of Africa, but do you think its
possible to make generalizations about African music?
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Nketia: I think it is, but I dont call them generalisations, I talk about
observations because observations will be true to the instances you have looked
at. If you get other instances that are different, it means that you have to make
another formulation to cover those instances. Sometimes, instead of trying to find
one big generalisation that will cover everything, it may be better to have a series, so
that this will deal with this set of instances and you deal with sets of data that way.
Then you can get a picture of how this accumulates when you look at the large Africa
and know that this one applies to this area or this one applies to certain societies that
choose to specialise in this kind of thing. If you approach it in that way, then you are
not worried by questions of generalisations that hold good for everybody; you are not
even worried by exceptions because the exceptions are as important as the common
things. Thats why I talk about cultural alternatives. I came to this because, apart
from looking at the literature, the few festivals we had in Africa in the 1960s,
beginning with [Leopold] Senghors
11
World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar [in
1966] / which brought together for the first time, performing groups from all over
Africa, including people like the Tuaregs that I had never met / were extremely
interesting for me. I was seeing for the first time the differences as well as the
similarities. Then the concept of Africa as a multiple, rather than as a single thing,
struck me. Every time we had that kind of African festival I was struck by this and it
seemed that we needed a way of dealing with that and making sense of things that
were different. The concept of nationality that emerged in Ghana immediately
exposed all of us to the challenge of knowing other cultures. It became important,
when we were setting up a [Ghanaian National] Dance company. Guinea and other
places had taken people who were already experienced, knowledgeable about their
own dance forms and they would [each] come in little groups and perform for ten
minutes, something from their own place. We told Nkrumah
12
we wanted to do it
differently and we were going to train our dancers [in different traditions and styles]
instead of just picking already formed dances.
Wiggins: So it was very consciously setting out to provide focus for a national
identity rather than a place where all the different groups come together?
Nketia: Right / doing it that way and giving them the opportunity of learning dances
from other places meant that we were creating new Ghanaians. Their parents knew
the dances of their village but these young people know dances from all over Africa.
That was our concept of integration / not creating one uniform but providing this
kind of opportunity so that the creative people among them can make any
combination and it will make sense because they understand the dances, they
know the transformations / the transition from this to that kind of movement. We
were hoping that this would happen in music, and in the arts.
Wiggins: Looking back now, how successful is that notion of the national identity?
One view might say that these people now know these dances from the whole of
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Ghana and are able to integrate them in relation to their existing skills / they know
them in that sense. Another view might be to say, they know the dances of their own
area but in other cases they have just learnt the dance from that area, so they couldnt
create in that style.
Nketia: Thats an interesting thing because when we were experimenting with the
music and dance, we took the dancers to the communities. We sat back and, as they
danced with the communities, we observed their comments. In some cases, they
admired the dancing and, when we checked, it was someone who did not belong to
that culture, who was fascinated by that new thing and had learnt it. One of the
interesting things we had during our work was getting a Ewe
13
master drummer,
Gideon Alorwoye, who was fascinated by [Asante] Adowa. He learned to play Adowa
and the teacher of the Adowa dance preferred Gideons playing of Adowa to the
Asante drummer. Sometimes the result of this way of approaching it is to create a
new kind of relationship between your performers, between your musicians. They
begin not only to do each others dances, but they begin to have a certain relationship
beyond [this].
Wiggins: Another version of your bi-musicality?
Nketia: You begin to get that kind of thing. Many contemporary dance groups have
emerged following Opokus
14
way of choreographing, but I find this is the case
perhaps more in Accra than other places because the Ghana people seem to have a
history of assimilating other cultures.
Wiggins: Its interesting that you mention the ability of Ghanaians to assimilate
new ideas because its one of the things I wanted to ask you about. It seems that
something Ghanaians are assimilating very effectively is new technologies. In
some ways, that can be very positive / the ability to engage with a worldwide
frame and to use, e.g., Internet technology for dissemination. On the other hand,
when you look at current Ghanaian popular music, I know John Collins
15
despairs
that he hasnt heard a live drummer in a pop band for more than ten years and in
most current pop music, vocoder
16
technology is used to give a deliberately de-
humanized effect. So this technology has also been embraced, to the exclusion of
everything else.
Nketia: I know John complains about the machines, but I think thats also a part of
the popular music milieu. To change, to adjust, to take on new things, so for me it is
not surprising, but when I was thinking about this the other day I was seeing a
difference between the young people of today and the young people of my time. Same
age, but those of my time related not only to other young people but to adults. In
other words, the Highlife musicians were not playing only for young people. They
played for the elite in society as well, so relating to them meant that they also kept
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certain values. So they wouldnt go to the extreme that people today will go to
because the relationship between young people and older people was perhaps closer
than it is today.
Wiggins: Is that one of the things that Ghana has learnt from the West, because the
Western teenager pretty well seems to want whatever adults dont want, whereas my
impression of Ghana, certainly in the traditional areas, is that there is not a separate
world for children and young people? They are all integrated.
Nketia: Right. I used to worry about the accounts of teenagers in Britain. The whole
question of counter-culture and rebellion. At some point, I thought this was being
over-emphasised, and, yet, there was some truth in the fact that this is the way
they are going, but I was worried because it was not like what I knew the youth to
be in my country. But now it is increasingly becoming so, except that I dont think
the counter-culture idea has become established. I see a few young people [in Ghana]
who go out of it [mainstream culture], but really they are not consciously creating
a counter-culture, they are just doing things that they like. If what they like is
counter to what we like, it is just a generational problem rather than an attempt to
create a visible, palpable opposition. When you look at Nkrumah and all those
[leaders from that period after independence], they were quite young when they
were leading this political change. The youth of that time had a certain energy and
perhaps the challenge of their time made them a little different. Thinking about all
the creative people of the time in drama, in literature, they were all quite young.
But, of course, the idea of independence itself was a big push. It is what I often tell
people in Asante, when we had the British to fight, we kept a lot of our traditions. It
was very important for us to play our drums the way we did, and during the
last British-Asante war [1900], when we were able to get the British army [confined]
in their forts in Kumasi, we created one F&nt&mfr&m
17
piece, Buroni bowu abansoro
do / The white man will die upstairs, and this was played as a joke saying,
Well, there they are, they are all in the fort. So when you look at the repertoire
of court music / F&nt&mfr&m and so on / I appreciate the creativity that goes into
it because they create a [complete] piece and they play it and it has a certain
meaning. You can say for F&nt&mfr&m, we have one, two, three, four different pieces
but Buroni bowu abansoro do was the last piece that was created. I said, Well, because
we were conquered by the British, nothing critical happened to us [since then to
cause us] to create. Our creativity and innovation seem to have halted and now we
are only playing the repertoire that has come to us from the past. We do that well, but
gradually we lose some of it. When I compare some of the things I did in the 50s and
60s with what I hear now, I know that it has gone down. You know the critical things
that happened were also inspiring creativity, so the moment we had independence
was quite different from now.
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Wiggins: The other area I wanted to talk about was the development of African
musicology; specifically the extent to which, when you mooted the idea, where you
thought it might lead and where it has got to now?
Nketia: I look at African music along the same lines as other scholars have looked at
African materials. African linguistics deals with African languages and those who
interest themselves in this area may be Africans, they may be Indians, whoever, but it
is the material that is the focus. Those who work on these materials are colleagues, or
should be colleagues. They profit from talking about what they find from their
perspective, taking [into account] the differences in their background. It means that
there is a certain growth in the discipline, which comes from the background that
we bring to it. For me, African musicology was again African music / something that
we recognise as distinctive in the particular region, in the particular location and
practised by a number of people. This is the material of interest to scholars / scholars
from outside who want to understand it, who want to know it and who, because they
are also interested in other musics, are interested in the dimension that can come
from a good analysis and exploration of this other material. Naturally, African
musicians in traditional communities make their music. When they talk about it,
they are talking about certain issues, sometimes performance issues, sometimes
behavioural issues. Because there were ethical problems related [to the special nature
or function of some music], we dont really talk about the music itself / it is not our
concern but we are interested in new things coming into the music and other ways of
[doing things]. Africans go to school, they learn music, suddenly they become aware
of their own music, so they also become people interested in exploring something
they left behind. This is what happened to Amu; a colleague of his who was a
missionary at the training college asked him why he was not teaching the students at
Akropong some of the songs that the labourers were singing. This was the point
where he [Amu] became conscious of his [own] music, and then this consciousness
and literacy and whole idea of studying and research then leads you to try to find out
about your culture. So that is the beginning of your musicological interest and of
your musicological attempt to understand something in your culture. So you have
Africans coming to work on their own music as musicologists, and African
musicology becomes a field of interest to anybody who is interested in knowing
about Africa, and particularly to those who think they can make new things out of
this knowledge. It is the discipline, the subject area first that defines the term African
musicology. For a long time, I did not want to talk about African ethnomusicology
because it is the material that determines how you approach it.
Im happy with the information I find in terms of data and I believe that
contributions to African musicology come from those who are astute observers and
are able to communicate what they find. As for the extent to which things that they
find remind them of their own culture, that is their business! [Alan] Merriam quoted
a fellow anthropologist who was saying that he was interpreting the other culture to
those who know nothing about it. He will give certain details that will be irrelevant as
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far as I am concerned. Its like the question you raised earlier about your readership:
who do you have in mind, who are you talking to? There could be differences in
African musicology in terms of the audiences they address and, if you find yourself
addressing a particular group because you are annoyed about something, its
completely different from dealing with the material. Unfortunately, I see that these
last few years, this has become the thing in African musicology at our end. Africans
becoming aware of the problems in their musical culture and wanting to explain seem
to be bothered by the explanations of other people and they are annoyed about it.
Perhaps they feel challenged in terms of scholarly authority; they must be the
authority in their own culture and not somebody else, but scholarly authority is
established not by membership, but by what you do with the culture. So I hope that
African musicology will continue as an interesting field for all scholars because it is a
learning experience, it is a discovery process, and it is a way of sharing.
Afterwards . . .
Nketia ranges across a number of interrelated themes in these interviews: post-
colonial developments and views, the preservation and/or development of traditional
and cultural heritage, education in and through music and arts, and issues around the
relationship between the experience of the observer and the observed. Many aspects
of these cannot be separated in discussion but it is helpful to locate Nketias views
within the current social and cultural situation of Ghana.
Culture and Education
As Nketia indicates in the early part of his interview, there are interesting cultural
challenges facing Ghana, in common with much of Africa. More young people are
moving or being born into urban environments that provide greater and more varied
opportunities for financial advancement and career pathways than a rural agricultural
existence. Many of the traditional functions, ceremonies and rites of passage
involving music are observed in a reduced form (if at all)
18
and commonly found
only within a cultural festival environment, so the young people do not absorb
them every day as previously. Many young people aspire to Western clothes and
music as indicators of wealth and success and cultural traditions are sometimes seen
as colo (colonial) or old-fashioned. What then is the status and role of traditional
music and dance in society and education? If Ghanaian arts are increasingly not a
participatory part of urban society, how and where should they be taught or learnt?
There is a strong impetus from many senior Ghanaian educators and hereditary
chiefs for music and the arts to feature more strongly in education.
19
Politically and
economically, the education system needs to equip students for a contemporary
world mediated through mass communication systems, so the arts are more often
viewed as an extra-curricular activity. Nketias objective (not surprisingly given his
previous position in Ghanas culture) is to see the arts taking a full part in the
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curriculum, even though he recognises that something learnt in school is not the
same experience as the music, dance and context of a dynamic ritual. When I have
interviewed local people around Ghana about this, responses are usually strongly in
favour of the preservation of the tradition, but seem to take little account of the
interests and motivations of the young people or the change in the nature of a
tradition when it is taught in school. Nketia has always taken a proactive role, not
only observing or documenting tradition and change, but also thinking through
possible future directions and outcomes, feeling empowered by his identity within the
culture to recommend an active intervention. Nketia is not only concerned with
traditions. He also recognizes the interests of young people, documenting video
interviews with popular musicians through ICAMD, suggesting the use of the
Internet for dissemination and proposing that something akin to a specialist music
school (the English cathedral is the model) may provide the best answer to both
identify and motivate some young people to carry the tradition. Nketia is very much
the pragmatist; things will change, so how can we identify the best outcomes,
preferring some form of preservation within a changed context (recognizing the
impact of this on the music/dance/drama) to the alternative of the event falling into
disuse. A problem with this, not discussed in the interview, is the extent to which the
nature of a music is integrated with its method of learning and teaching. Talking
about the development of an outstanding Ghanaian xylophone player, Aning states
that In Lobiland parents do not actively teach their children to play the xylophone
(1989, 99). This lack of direct instruction is integral to the development of an
individual and unique repertoire by each performer, contributing to the ongoing
development of the genre. Nketia was aware of this dilemma in 1961, writing that:
the perpetuation of African tradition has depended very largely on the
opportunities created in a community for learning through participation, through
imitation and slow absorption rather than institutional methods. . . . [But, given
the changing situation] if traditional instruction is to be maintained, it cannot be
done entirely by traditional methods or by relying largely on informal enculturative
process (cited from the original typescript, Nketia 1961)
Nketia has always been a teacher or rather, an educator, at heart. Ben Aning writes of
being given his first lessons in music theory by Nketia at the Presbyterian Training
College around 1942 and the way in which these lessons set me on the path to
investigate my ethnic Akan music (1989, 93). Mantle Hood was so impressed with
the program of music and dance in the Institute of African Studies set up by Nketia
that he set out to document it (Hood 1971, 207), and Wayne Slawson writes of
Nketias uncanny ability to inspire curiosity, to ask interesting questions himself, and
to lead others to ask interesting questions (1989, 307). Many of Nketias publications
address issues of music education, often linked with traditional music and, later,
curricula for world music. This strand is present throughout the interviews, in the
discussions around the continuity of traditional music, the role of ICAMD and the
conception of The music of Africa as a textbook. Nketia positions himself as a
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communicator, a purveyor of meaning between different cultures, ages and
approaches, setting out to explain, clarify and provoke.
Tradition versus Modernity
An area of cultural change for many Ghanaians, which seems least recognised, is from
being an active participant in musical events to becoming a recipient and consumer.
Agawu (1995, 8/30) describes the rhythmic and musical components of a typical day
in Ghana where everyone is a participant and contributor to the sonic world. Many of
these elements can still be found even in the large urban centres, but what, even ten
years ago, was self-made by street sellers and traders beating out rhythms with boxes,
bells and rattles, is now more often provided by pre-recorded music. In the interview,
Nketia has summarized the problem for music education, not just in Ghana but
worldwide as being how to make what they learn relevant in terms of their own lives
and the contemporary challenges? Unless there is that link, this will become some
curiosity, some cultural thing that we do in your secondary [education] and after
that . . . [handclap].
The relationship between the young people of Ghana and their elders also forms
part of the later discussion around popular music styles. Nketia observes the
increasing stratification of Ghanaian society away from the traditional extended
family group towards a separation where, for example, young people make music for
other young people rather than for the whole community. For a complex set of
reasons, the majority of young people in Ghana make and play music that is almost
completely dominated by technology. The vocalist will be real, but highly processed
through a vocoder, not just to ensure that the singer is in tune, but also to impart a
more unreal computerized quality to the sound. There may be a guitarist, but all the
rest of the band will be synthesized. There are few musicians making a name in Ghana
by developing materials based on traditional musical material. Those musicians
working with traditional materials, such as Nana Danso Abiam and Aaron Bebe
Sukura,
20
are better known outside Ghana. Where John Collins sees the end of
the tradition of acoustic Highlife music, Nketia sees young people responding
to contemporary opportunities, although now more separated from the world of
their elders.
The bi-cultural observer?
Nketias conception of a line of bi-culturality evident through Amu and himself
to present students is interesting. It is always possible to pick apart the basis of
almost any statement involving the word culture but this bears further examination
to ascertain its nature. Both Amu and Nketia had a traditional upbringing
insofar as they were located within a largely rural community and an extended
family group, at a time when many traditional customs and rituals were still
observed. Christian missionaries had already made a considerable impact and
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were generally opposed to animist religious practices, although these, and their
associated rituals involving music and dance, would still have been much in evidence
in the community. Both Amu and Nketia were then educated to university level
in a British system, both within and outside Ghana. Arguably, it was the assumed
pre-eminence of the British approach and the values it set out to embody and
inculcate that caused them to return to, research and reflect on their African
heritage. It is the cultural distance travelled that is probably a primary instigator in
provoking an aware, thoughtful and conscious re-learning and re-examination
of traditional materials. The same pattern can be observed in the development of
many later Ghanaian musicians: Kofi Agawu, Willie Anku and Daniel Avorgbedor to
name a few from the start of the alphabet. This is a different situation from that
of an ethnomusicologist, born and educated outside Africa, who has then made
a major study of African music / to what extent could s/he also claim to be
bi-cultural? Because of their expectations of music and culture absorbed through
their upbringing and because the different areas in which they lack knowledge,
the insider and the outsider will undoubtedly ask different questions, but if
an engagement with Western education is sufficient to give an African musicologist
a bi-cultural outlook, sufficient immersion in African music should do the same
for a non-indigenous researcher? Nketias comments at the end of the interview
suggest that he might support this view. As the experience of young people
growing up in Ghana changes, one might attempt to map the changing ways in
which the experience of an African with a Western education will continue
naturally to be bi-cultural. I remember Professor Atta Annan Mensah in 1989
berating music students at the University of Ghana for their lack of knowledge of
their own traditions. When Nketia suggests that we think of bi-culturality as two
things that merge, that fit into what we call music, this outcome has both positive
and negative attributes in relation to the preservation or re-conception of the
tradition.
The Post-colonial and the Contextual View
Nketias commitment to a universalist, rather than a comparative approach to
(ethno)musicology emerges in several places. Based on his education, he speaks of
linguistics and the common elements of language as a model for formulating theories
of music that can then be reviewed to accommodate new information, experiences
and perspectives, being clear that rigidly following a rule that creates exceptions will
soon marginalize some music. Although Nketias early work involved detailed
accounts of musical traditions
21
with considerable ethnographic information, he
generally set out to make a broader analysis of trends, strands and commonalities.
This can be seen in the titles of his publications as well as the content: African music
in Ghana (1963a), Folk songs of Ghana (1963b). Nketias approach at this time also
explicitly defined a methodology based around context that was distinctive and has
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proved robust and capable of ongoing analysis and development. In 1962, Nketia
wrote that:
attention should be paid to the processes that shape and define music in culture.
Regarding music as an event occurring in varying contexts of situation, the
investigator proceeds to analyse such an event and the components of its context
from the point of view of the immediate situation as observed by him and the
situation in a general context of culture. (Nketia 1962, 4)
By 1989, in his Charles Seeger Memorial lecture, Nketia was able to set out his
contextual approach
22
in a systematic way (Nketia 1990), negotiating between aspects
of musical meaning that derive from specific contexts while avoiding an anthro-
pological approach that is unable to draw any conclusions outside the specific
context, referred to as the second level of abstraction in the interview. Nketia
himself sees his Seeger lecture as a sort of crowning thing in my career as an
ethnomusicologist (Akrofi 2002, 52).
A contextual way of approaching African music emerges in a number of Nketias
statements and decisions. It meant that he was able on the one hand to consider
whether Africa produces a coherent definable music or whether the diversity is
better represented by African musics. Given appropriate contextual information to
ensure that differences are not glossed over, African music provides a better identity
for a systematic enquiry. Between 1962 and the publication of The music of Africa
(1974) he had also attended the first World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966, and saw
for the first time the differences as well as the similarities between the music
produced in different parts of the continent,
23
so his bi-musical experience
probably contributed to being able to formulate an holistic approach, rather than
being overwhelmed by the variety.
Nketias response to one of the current debates around the representation of
African music is also contextual. Nzewi, Agawu and others have criticized the concept
of cross-rhythm typically applied to African music in situations where, for example,
one part (or one hand) can be seen performing a rhythm that has a duple basis while
another can be analysed in a triple metre (3 against 2). Agawu says: one must ask
whether African musicians really think of a span of time that they divide up by 2s or
3s and fill simultaneously. This seems unlikely. Because the two rhythms unfold
together, articulation of one pattern presupposes the other. [. . .] 2 and 3 belong to a
single Gestalt (Agawu 2003a, 92).
Nzewis objection is also about the concept in relation to society, describing cross
rhythm as antithetical to African social and, therefore, ensemble philosophy. A
community/family/team does not work together at cross purposes. This musical
structure [3 against 2], which has depth essence, derives from the African philosophy
of interdependence in human relationships (Nzewi 1997, 36).
Nketia has little time for cross-rhythm as a problematic concept, partly because,
in his experience of Akan music, words in Twi meaning cross/pass can be used to
describe rhythmic relationships, but also because he considers the description
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acceptable if he has more contextual information: who is making this statement,
what are they using the concept to describe, what are the circumstances, the
configuration that we describe as cross? It is the finer detail: what are the ways of
crossing? This is also typical of Nketias background as an educator; expecting more
of the receiver/learner in making sure that they have understood through
interrogating what is being said.
Nketias experience and career are highly involved with issues around colonialism
and national identity. He would surely agree with Said:
No one today is purely one thing. . . . Imperialism consolidated the mixture of
cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was
to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or black,
or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also
make their cultures and ethnic identities. (Said 1994, 407/8)
Agawu provides a good description of the practical outcomes of this in West Africa:
[People] probably know more facts about the French Revolution or the Hundred
Years War than they do about the Songhay or Mail empires. The musicians among
them may have played hymns or Mozart at the harmonium, danced to highlife,
sung a chorus or two from Messiah as members of a church choir, and been
assaulted by soul, reggae and funk on radio. Some wear suits to work, cloth or
agbada to funerals, and designer jeans to nightclubs. (Agawu 2003a, xviii)
Some of Nketias background is recognisable in Agawus description, as is Nketias
engagement with a wide range of arts from different cultures. Post-colonial Ghana
under Nkrumah was one of the first countries to try to find an identity spanning its
heritage and the engagement with global economics. Nketia was one of those selected
to develop a national cultural identity / a project that is arguably ongoing. Within a
West African social context, the chief or the head of the social unit has (or perhaps
had?) greater power to influence cultural direction than contemporary elected leaders
in Western society. The chief s actions, interests and dress would be admired and
imitated. Thus Nketia, in working with Opoku to develop a pan-Ghanaian identity
and approach to music and dance, could reasonably expect that this would be taken
up as a national model / and this can still be observed in cultural groups
throughout Ghana. But as Ghanaian society changes towards urban residency and
structures, the role of the chief is becoming more ceremonial and less influential. As
was mentioned earlier, young people in Ghana are increasingly influenced by mass
culture and are making their own decisions about their particular blend of heritage
and the contemporary. The role of cultural leadership in Ghanaian society is in the
process of changing, with the power passing from chiefs and institutional figures like
Nketia to models created by mass media communication and multi-national
companies, more aligned to the European/American situation. Nketia is setting out
to ensure that Ghanaians have access to their cultural heritage in making their
cultures and ethnic identities as Said suggested but Agawus observation of peoples
78 T. Wiggins
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dress, where traditional attire is worn only for ritually important occasions like
funerals, is probably indicative of the current situation for Ghanaian culture
generally.
So how is Ghanas post-colonial identity being defined? Agawus argument (2003a:
151/71, 2003b) about difference being over-emphasised and misinterpreted by
non-African observers still points to the significance of outsiders in defining
culture and cultural heritage through their re-presentation to Africa of an external
African identity. African people that I have talked to do not see themselves as any less
African because they use technology, clothing or music invented elsewhere. Even if
others see them as adopting Western values or dress, in their own minds, they are
African and do not feel the need to demonstrate it by setting out to be different
(although this is not the same thing as being individual). Nketia has held his position
consistently in this argument. He is not worried by other views of Africa or African
music and traditions / differences are innate / but he wants a greater sense of
disclosure of the position of the commentator and the contextual information that
defines the event so that he can understand what is being implied. A different view is
not a wrong interpretation, it is simply different, to be valued according to the insight
it provides.
Nketias contribution to the study of African music is extensive and not limited to a
single focus. His main legacy is the integrated nature of his approach, drawing on
experience, developing a contextual enquiry, threading through issues of education
and learning, linking with current debates around the study and representation of
African music, and investing his role as a communicator of and about African music
with humour and insight.
Notes
[1] A word created from the name of the Akan hourglass talking drum, dondo.
[2] The region of Ghana north of Kumasi where Nketia was born.
[3] The person responsible for praise poetry on court occasions.
[4] A traditional ceremony found throughout the Asante region, forming the basis of the local
calendar.
[5] A traditional Asante dance from the court.
[6] Nketias point is that, for Western classical music, there is both the possibility of a career and/
or an enjoyable social (cultural) activity. For Ghanaian traditional music, the possibilities of
a career are very limited and the model of coming together socially to perform music that is
often embedded in ritual contexts has not developed.
[7] Ephraim Amu (1899/1994) was an outstanding teacher, musician and composer. From the
generation before Nketia, he was trained in Western (mostly Christian) music, but then set
out to create a repertoire and style of music relevant to the people of Ghana. He was
instrumental in the musical development of Nketia, both as a model but also through direct
advice to seek his own style.
[8] See, for example, Nzewi (1997) and Agawu (2003).
[9] Words in the Twi language meaning cut/cross/insert/pass.
[10] Grandmother here is referring to one of the sisters of his grandparents.
[11] The rst president of Senegal.
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[12] Kwame Nkrumah became independent Ghanas rst president in 1957. A major gure in
setting the agenda and style of the new nation, he was deposed in 1966.
[13] Group of people living in south-east Ghana and Togo.
[14] Professor Albert Mawere Opoku was a founder of the National Dance Ensemble of Ghana.
Choreographic transformations of traditional dances formed the basis of the works he
created with the group.
[15] See Collins (1994).
[16] A vocoder is a digital effect that imposes vocal timbre on a waveform, creating a singing
synthesizer. In Ghana it is often used to make the voice sound more like a robot, also
resulting in entirely discrete pitches and perfect (Western) tuning.
[17] F&nt&mfr&m is a warrior dance from the Asante area, using a percussion ensemble led by two
tall drums named after the dance.
[18] See, for example, Sarpong (1977, 92).
[19] See for example, Wiggins (1998).
[20] See, for example, The Pan African Orchestra, Opus 1, (directed by Abiam) Realworld CDRW
48 (1995) and Acoustic Ghanaian Highlife by Aaron Bebe Sukura & the Local Dimension
Palm Wine Band Arion ARN64599, 2003.
[21] See, for example, Nketia (1955, 1963c) as well as numerous articles.
[22] For further discussion of Nketias contextual approach with reference to ethnomusicology
and anthropology, see Chernoff (1989).
[23] This is the counterpart to one of the fundamental points made by Agawu in his recent book
(Agawu 2003a: 151/71): that many musicologists from a Western background see and
emphasize more the differences between African music and the European tradition.
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