The Bird with Its Head Tilted Backwards

The Bird With Its Head Tilted Backwards

A Call for ‘Sankofa’ in Music

Fig. 1: Kofi Ghanaba (aka Guy Warren), inventor of Afro-jazz and star of Sankofa (1993), peeking through a sceptre with the Sankofa symbol atop, 2007. © Nana Kofi Acquah.1

Alexander Lewis-Whitaker 18812187

Digital Music & Sound Arts AG317 Final Essay Supervised by Johanna Bramli 13/01/21

1 N. K. Acquah, ‘The man who gave the world African jazz’, The Power of Culture, 2007, http://www.krachtvancultuur.nl/en/current/2007/september/ghanaba.html, last accessed 11 January 2021.

Contents

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

1. Scrambled Africa 5

2. Universal Uniforms 8

3. Elder Speech 11

4. Old Rock 'N' Roll, Not What You've Been Told 14

5. Ideal Nonsense 17

6. The 21st Century Plantation 20

Conclusion 22

Bibliography 23

List of Works 29

Abstract

The colonisation of the Gold Coast by the British in the 19th century set in motion the syncretism of musical forms between this area of West Africa and the Western world that resulted in new genres including highlife, hiplife, Afropop, and gospel. However, it also spurred a psychological change among those colonised in which their supposedly inferior ways of life were suppressed in favour of a Western lifestyle. Despite achieving independence in 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, the newly-renamed Ghana and its diaspora are still victim to Eurocentric hegemony under the guise of globalisation, unfair trade practice, and a failure to restore the ways of the past. The political instability and failing economy that followed Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966 forced musicians out of the country, birthing new generations with inevitably little knowledge of their roots. This effect will only be amplified as the generations go by unless there is a convincing enough call to retrieve the instruments, practices, languages, ideologies and other cultural forms that are at risk of being relegated in importance or completely replaced by those of another race. The Akan concept of ‘Sankofa’, which encourages being advised by the past in order to make positive progress in the future, could offer stronger cultural definition for both resident and diasporic Africans. This essay analyses why identity is imperative but problematic in a globalised world, as well as how ancestral ways may be perpetuated in music, looking in depth at Ghanaian enigma Ata Kak and contemporary Edinburgh trio Young Fathers.

Keywords: Sankofa, indigenisation, syncretism, neocolonialism, globalisation, social constructionism, essentialism, double-consciousness, heritage, Pan-Africanism, emic, universality, uniformity

Introduction

This essay is concerned with the ‘internal desire for cultural definition’ among diasporic and resident Africans in reaction to the ‘cultural casualties sustained in the experience of being involuntarily immersed in Western culture’.2 This is a contemporary manifestation of the Akan concept of ‘Sankofa’ (Fig. 1), translated from Twi as ‘go back and fetch it’; the past holds indispensable information which can illuminate the path forwards for those who are psychologically conflicted due to the colonial legacy. As put by Marcus Garvey, ‘A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots’. However, given Africa’s diffuse history of syncretism and interaction with other parts of the world, it is unclear which is the ‘taproot’ and which are the laterals. This essay will investigate, primarily from a musical perspective, why identity is so important, and the problems facing suppressed cultures in an increasingly Westernised world. Ghanaian artist Ata Kak and Scottish trio Young Fathers have been explored to illustrate how Africanity can be perpetuated through music. It is important to mention my own heritage here to indicate the potential bias within this essay: I am three-quarters White English and one-quarter Ghanaian, specifically of the Asante (aka Ashanti) subgroup of the Akan meta-ethnicity. A mixed-race heritage can already be confusing in that there is such a wide frame of reference in which to position oneself.3 The issue is compounded when one culture is seen as the oppressor of the other culture: any attempt to pull from the latter could be interpreted as a continuation of colonial methods, especially since my skin is white and so the Africanity is not obvious. Under the one-drop rule of southern America in the 20th century, anybody with even a single black ancestor was regarded as black; questions over cultural appropriation would therefore not have been asked as I would have also been oppressed. In a society where I can be the same mix of races but not be oppressed, while others still are, these ‘neocolonial’ concerns may hold greater weight.

2 C. N. Temple, 'The Emergence of Sankofa Practice in the United States: A Modern History', Journal of Black Studies, vol. 41/no. 1, 2010, p. 128. 3 A. Emielu, 'Some Theoretical Perspectives on African Popular Music', Popular Music, vol. 30/no. 3, 2011, p. 373.

1. Scrambled Africa

Ethnic groups do not have to be viewed as essentialist but socially constructible,4 whereby the culture will continuously evolve based on the interactions of people from many different groups. The national borders of Ghana are themselves constructs of British making, with people formerly of rival ethnic groups, such as the Asante, Fante, Ewe, and Ga, being united into the singular ‘Gold Coast’ that fit the motives of the Europeans. The Berlin Conference of 1885 saw almost an entire continent divided up without deliberation with the Africans themselves.5 This ‘Scramble For Africa’ left discrepancies between ethnic homelands and national borders, raising questions over what sort of identity is more important for those attempting to reawaken their heritage. Prioritising a tribal identity would cause confusion over nationality in many cases, such as with the Ewe people, who are spread across Ghana, Togo and Benin. On the other hand, prioritising national identity would mean accepting the geographical decisions made by the oppressors. Should the social constructionist excuse still apply in the case of forced acculturation? There is also the Pan-African outlook advocated by civil rights activists including Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois, which suggests a singular, continental identity. The ‘shared experiences, customs, and spiritual values’6 among Africans may warrant a unification that would benefit the continent from an economic standpoint. This broader ‘African’ identity may be the only option for certain diasporic Africans, as ancestral knowledge is not always passed down the generations. This is most evident in the case of the Transatlantic Slave Trade that preceded the colonisation of Africa, as slaves often changed their name to that of their plantation owner, making lineage tracing unreliable. Therefore, African-Americans in particular may only be able to identify with the continent of Africa, or at least the extensive group of countries within Western and Central Africa where the slave trade was most operative. This continental identity can be observed in the grouping of disparate genres of contemporary African music under the umbrella term ‘Afrobeats’, a label which ‘reeks of a desire to package African culture in a format that is digestible and thus, sellable to Western audiences’.7 Although there may be political and economic advantages to Pan-Africanism, would this not

4 ibid. p. 380. 5 H. Fischer, ‘130 years ago: carving up Africa in Berlin’, DW, 2015, https://www.dw.com/en/130-years-ago-carving-up-africa-in-berlin/a-18278894, last accessed 11 January 2021. 6 M. Christian, ‘Marcus Garvey and African Unity: Lessons for the Future from the Past’, Journal of Black Studies, vol. 39/no. 2, 2008, p. 327. 7 K. Akinsete, ‘Call Us By Our Name: Stop Using “Afrobeats”’, OkayAfrica, 2019, https://www.okayafrica.com/afrobeats-genre-name-stop-op-ed/, last accessed 11 January 2021.

proliferate the ‘flattening’ of distinct African cultures into one ‘vast monolithic land where everyone speaks the same language, shares the same culture and beats the same drum’?8 The political landscape of Ghana post-independence has also had an impact on the diaspora and, by extension, the musical output of Ghanaians, as many have flocked to more opportune areas in the Western world, especially London, Hamburg and Toronto.9 The political instability and economic collapse following the overthrow of Ghana’s independence leader and first president, Kwame Nkrumah, in 1966, meant that the large highlife ensembles which had become emblematic of the Nkrumah administration could no longer be afforded,10 and the curfew imposed during the 1981-1992 rule of the late Jerry Rawlings consequently killed all nightlife.11 The resultant out-migration of musicians would have supplemented the continued imposition of Western values and musical characteristics, at least among successive generations, considering the aforementioned likely destinations of these migrants. Despite the various coup d’états post-independence in 1957, Ghana has seen a relative lack of violence, with her current Global Peace Index ranking of 43rd being superior to everywhere else in West Africa.12 The country is therefore prone to neocolonialist forces such as globalisation, with transnational corporations looking to expand by taking advantage of developing countries, undermining Ghanaian traditions and self-sufficiency. The presence of telecommunications companies in Ghana, such as Vodafone (UK), who have sponsored the Ghana Music Awards since 2011, Zain (Kuwait), and Bharti Airtel (India), has been referred to as a new ‘Scramble For Africa’.13 These operations have introduced a ‘conflict between a cosmopolitan vision and a nativist vision of African identity and culture’,14 as for a country that traditionally prioritises communalism, individualistic lifestyles have been advertised.15 For example, Vodafone’s $1m giveaway in 2009, that included a four-bedroom house in suburban Accra’s Trasacco Valley, a Mitsubishi 4x4 vehicle, and a year of free broadband, promoted ‘hegemonic conformity to a personal lifestyle that is far beyond the reach of the majority of the population’,16 and is not concurrent with the traditional egalitarianism and human interdependence among rural African communities. This Western involvement in Ghana post-independence is indicated further in the suggestions that the CIA were secretly part of the plot to overthrow the allegedly communist-aligned Nkrumah, as admitted to by

8 ibid. 9 S. Broughton, M. Ellingham, and R. Trillo, World Music: The Rough Guide, 2nd edn., London, Rough Guides, 1999, pp. 494-495. 10 ibid. p. 491. 11 J. Oduro-Frimpong, 'Glocalization Trends: The Case of Hiplife Music in Contemporary Ghana', International Journal of Communication, vol. 3, 2009, p. 1091. 12 ‘Global Peace Index 2020’, Vision of Humanity, https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/, last accessed 11 January 2021. 13 H. Osumare, 'Becoming a "Society of the Spectacle": Ghanaian Hiplife Music and Corporate Recolonization', Popular Music and Society, vol. 37/no. 2, 2014, pp. 199-200. 14 ibid., pp.190-191. 15 ibid., p. 202. 16 ibid., p. 193.

former operative Johri Stockwell.17 These examples of Western encroachment highlight a dilemma particularly for those of mixed white-and-black ancestry: how can both allegiances in an identity be respected if they are antagonistic?

17 S. M. Hersh, ‘C.I.A. Said to Have Aided Plotters Who Overthrew Nkrumah in Ghana’, The New York Times [online archive], 1978, https://www.nytimes.com/1978/05/09/archives/cia-said-to-have-aided-plotters-who-overthrew-nkrumah-in-ghana.html, last accessed 11 January 2021.

2. Universal Uniforms

Amin Maalouf proposes that ‘a host country is neither a tabula rasa, nor a fait accompli, but a page in the process of being written’.18 However, it is difficult to determine what constitutes a particular cultural identity when there are so many different authors writing this page over many different time periods. Africa’s pre-colonial relationship with Islam complicates the identity of many cultures, as it suggests that a reversion to the state of African identity before Western interference would still not be satisfactory to a staunch essentialist, who is sceptical of any outsider influence to Africanity whatsoever. Islam had been a force in North Africa ever since Arab armies defeated the Byzantines in the seventh century.19 Musical instruments were the primary resource that filtered through to much of sub-Saharan Africa.20 Arabic instruments provided frameworks for African equivalents to be made from local materials,21 such as gourds and the wood of the tweneboa tree. The one-string fiddle, known as the ‘gonje’ among the Dagomba of Sudanian Ghana, possibly derives from the ‘rababah’ instrument of Bedouin music;22 the name ‘Sudan’, referring to the savannah region south of the Sahara, even derives from the Arabic ‘bilād al-sūdān’ (‘land of the blacks’).23 If ‘white’ rock ‘n’ roll’s origins in African-American blues music are also brought into the equation, the futility of viewing any one culture as an island becomes apparent; the roots are too tangled. However, those in the ‘tabula rasa’ camp, who might view culture as socially-constructed, could be said to be contributing to the loss of ‘essential’ cultural components. These ‘modern relativists’, as Jordan Peterson might call them, who believe morality is relative and therefore making a judgement on how to live is impossible,24 are risking putting multicultural societies into a state of nihilism and meaninglessness.25 Their bid to avoid inter-ethnic conflict has resulted in the West withdrawing from its own traditions and into a state where nothing is valued higher than anything else;26 the hierarchies of values that demarcate cultures have been flattened. The ‘multicultural’ societies have seen a form of enantiodromia, in which the unconscious opposite

18 A. Maalouf, On Identity, London, Harvill, 2000, p. 34. 19 Emielu, loc. cit. 20 J. H. K. Nketia, The Music of Africa, London, Gollancz, 1975, p.10. 21 ibid. 22 K. Iyengar, ‘The romance of single-stringed fiddle’, The Hindu, 2017, https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/the-single-stringed-fiddle-appears-in-different-avatars-across-the-globe /article18153097.ece, last accessed 12 January 2021. 23 Encyclopaedia Britannica (eds.), ‘Sudan’, Britannica, last updated 2019, https://www.britannica.com/place/Sudan-region-Africa, last accessed 12 January 2021. 24 N. Doidge, ‘Foreword’, in J. B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, UK, Penguin, 2019 [first published 2018], p. xx. 25 ibid. p. xxxii. 26 ibid.

emerges in the course of time: the lines between different groups have blurred so much that a singular ‘globalised’ culture may have formed. Arnold Toynbee outlined how societies have become increasingly alike as the current phase of human history sees the dissemination of knowledge grow at a faster rate than the advancement of knowledge, in contrast to societies of the past where the inverse was true.27 Perhaps this is why the need to express one’s identity is so pressing in the modern world: everybody is becoming too similar as a result of globalisation. Maalouf proposes that our ‘horizontal’ heritage is more influential than our ‘vertical’ heritage, meaning we are more influenced by, and therefore identify closer with, the people and context of our generation, even if we are not blood relatives, than the ancestors that we usually perceive ourselves in terms of.28 Therefore, it is no wonder that the instinctive response to the risk of uniformity has been to look to one’s vertical heritage, as the distance between us and our ancestors would presumably inject the necessary difference into this horizontal society. The result of increasing tolerance for minority cultures is a society that treads a fine line between ‘universality’ and ‘uniformity’; in fact, as Maalouf suggests, ‘you might almost wonder if one isn’t just the presentable face of the other’.29 Barbara Browning illustrates this with the ‘United Colors of Benetton’ advertising campaign in 1986 (Fig. 2), in which models of different ethnicities were dressed in Benetton clothing, holding globes.30 The ‘accentuated ethnic features’ of the models gave the impression that the garments were ‘diverse national costumes’, suggesting difference is desirable, but this is contradicted by the premise that, if a Benetton sweater is good for Italians, it must also be good for anyone around the globe.31

27 A. J. Toynbee, cited in Maalouf, op. cit., pp. 76-77. 28 Maalouf, op. cit., p. 86. 29 ibid. p. 87. 30 B. Browning, ‘EIGHT: Benetton - Blood Is Big Business’, Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture, New York, Routledge, 1998 [O’Reilly online edition, 2013]. 31 ibid.

Fig. 2: United Colors of Benetton, 1986. © Oliviero Toscani.32

There must be a middle-ground in the essentialism-versus-social-constructionism debate; the aim is to work out which branches need nurturing, and which need trimming. As put by Bobby E. Wright, ‘If Blackness is everything, then it is nothing’.33 Identity requires distinguishing characteristics; if it encompasses everything from Africa and everything from the interactions of the diaspora, then there is an unfeasibly large frame of reference by which to live, negating its own purpose.

32 Photo by O. Toscani for Benetton, United Colors of Benetton, 1986, https://nathuaisha.blogspot.com/2013/08/united-colors-of-benetton.html, last accessed 12 January 2021. 33 B. E. Wright, cited in D. A. y. Azibo, 'Can Psychology Help Spur the Re-Birth of African Civilization? Notes on the African Personality (Psychological Africanity) Construct: Normalcy, Development, and Abnormality', The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol. 8/no. 1, 2015, p. 157.

3. Elder Speech

In terms of identifying the essential elements of a culture, language is a good place to start. Africa is often thought of as the land of the drum, but these drums would not talk without language. Even the field of writing cannot be the primary focus given writing systems exist for only a third of the world’s languages.34 However, languages are among the most threatened components of cultures across the world, with linguists expecting 50-90% of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages to become extinct by the end of the century.35 Although political persecution was at fault for much of this suppression in the past, the main reasons today regard the unviability from a socio-economic standpoint of speaking a tongue spoken by so few. Learning English and other major languages is often key to accessing the best opportunities for work in a globalised world, and forced migration due to climate change means that communities have to adjust to the languages of the new residence.36 This is detrimental to identity though, as languages contain centuries worth of accumulated knowledge and indicate ways of interpreting human behaviour and emotion in ways that differ to the English language;37 they are not solely translations of English words. An analysis of a particular language can indicate how different people view the world from an emic perspective, as opposed to being an outsider. In the case of the Akan, language is vital for retaining the thousands of proverbs that not only embody their personality and act as a guide for one’s life, but also connect to many other cultural symbols and practices. The Sankofa Adinkra symbol is itself derived from the proverb, ‘Se wo were fi na wo sankofa a yenkyi’ (‘It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you have forgotten’), and is found, among other Adinkra, plastered on cultural objects and buildings throughout Ghana. Furthermore, the master drummer needs to have these proverbs and other texts in his repertoire as it is these that will be ‘spoken’ through drumming. Using pairs of drums, such as the Atumpan or Fɔntɔmfrɔm of the Ashanti, each of a slightly different pitch, the tonal Twi-language can be enunciated (Fig. 3). A small piece of metal called ‘akasa’ is even attached to the male drum to help reproduce consonantal sounds.38 This is not a ‘code’ whereby different musical phrases offer

34 R. Nuwer, ‘Languages: Why we must save dying tongues’, BBC Future, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages, last accessed 11 January 2021. 35 N. Strochlich, ‘The Race to Save the World’s Disappearing Languages’, National Geographic, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/04/saving-dying-disappearing-languages-wikitongues-culture/, last accessed 11 January 2021. 36 ibid. 37 Nuwer, op. cit. 38 R. S. Rattray, ‘The Drum Language of West Africa: Part I’, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol. 22/no. 87, Apr. 1923, p. 233.

abstract ‘tympanosemantic’ representations of linguistic phrases, but a literal ‘tympanophonetic’ vocalisation of them.39

Fig. 3: An Asante war chant: ‘m’ for male drum (lower-pitched), ‘f’ for female, accented syllables are underscored.40

Even the Kente cloth that is emblematic of Akan fashion is derived from the language, with many patterns and colour schemes based on proverbs (Fig. 4). The longitudinal ‘warp’ threads interlace with the perpendicular ‘weft’ threads in a manner which resembles the intricate relationship between alliteration and assonance in many proverbs (Fig. 5),41 as well as the vertical and horizontal repetition found in drum texts (Fig. 6).42 If you take an axe to this linguistic trunk, the branches will fall down with it.

Fig. 4: Kente cloth inspired by the proverb ‘Sika frɛ bogya’ (‘money attracts blood relations’),43 pointing out one’s responsibility towards their family if they are wealthy. © Project Bly.44

Fig. 5: A proverb displaying the inseparable relationship between alliteration and assonance.45

39 Rattray, Apr. 1923, op. cit., p. 227. 40 Screenshot from R. S. Rattray, ‘The Drum Language of West Africa: Part II’, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol. 22/no. 88, Jul. 1923, p. 304. 41 K. A. Manyah, C. Marfo, K. O. Agyeman, and J. Aning, ‘Dominant Voices and Sounds of Akan Proverbs and Riddles’, Social Science and Humanities Journal, vol. 3, 2016, p. 217. 42 ibid. p. 218. 43 P. Appiah, K. A. Appiah, and I. Agyeman-Duah, Bu Me Bɛ: Proverbs of the Akans, Banbury, Ayebia Clarke, 2007, p. 253, n. 5636. 44 Photo from Project Bly [online shop], Vintage Sika Fre Mogya Kente, https://www.projectbly.com/products/vintage-sika-fre-mogya-kente-kumasi, last accessed 12 January 2021. 45 Screenshot from Manyah, op. cit., p. 217.

Fig. 6: A drum riddle displaying vertical and horizontal repetition reminiscent of a Kente pattern.46

In terms of an imported cultural element, determining whether its presence is welcome or not can often be answered by looking at evidence of ‘indigenisation’, in which there is a ‘reworking and adaptation of otherwise foreign musical forms to reflect cultural and aesthetic benchmarks that are essentially African’.47 The highlife dance-bands of the colonial Gold Coast were a syncresis of Akan rhythms like ‘osibisaba’48 with Western guitars, horns, and dances, including foxtrots and waltzes.49 Although the music has an oppressive history in that it was performed to entertain the colonial elite, it would become indigenised to suit the African personality better, such as getting rid of the ‘intolerable formality’ of dance partners.50 Furthermore, although highlife would again be subject to Western influence in the 1990s in the form of hip-hop music, the subsequent syncretic form ‘hiplife’ would use the imported rap technique as a tool that ‘pulls away from the protective masks of melody and a pretty voice to better assert itself’51 in an Akan society where youth voice was regarded as ‘kasa a emu da hɔ’ (‘casual speech’).52 Hiplife artists’ use of proverbs, a reflection of an essential Akan benchmark, can elevate this voice to ‘mpanin kasa’ (‘elder speech’).53 John Collins attributes this continuous indigenisation of outsider influence to the ‘highlife imagination’, whereby this influence will always be temporary as there are key rhythmic and melodic tendencies stored in Ghanaian culture.54 Like the leaves of a deciduous tree, they will return when the season calls for them.

46 Screenshot from ibid. p. 218. 47 Emielu, op. cit., p. 385. 48 S. Broughton, M. Ellingham, and R. Trillo, op. cit., p. 488. 49 C. Stapleton and C. May, African All-Stars: The Pop Music of a Continent, London, Quartet, 1987, p. 7. 50 J. H. K. Nketia, 'Modern Trends in Ghana Music', African Music: Journal of the African Music Society, vol. 1/no. 4, 1957, p. 14. 51 K. Boateng, ‘Ghanaian Hip-life Rap Music as a Popular or Political Rap, and a Mixed Cultural Bag of Ghanaian High-life and North American Rap Music’, Intercultural Communication Studies, vol. 18/no. 2, 2009, p. 210. 52 G. Cho, 'Hiplife, Cultural Agency and the Youth Counter-Public in the Ghanaian Public Sphere', Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 45/no. 4, 2010, p. 410. 53 ibid. 54 J. Collins, The Ghanaian Music Scene in 2017: Seventeen Musical Pots and the ‘Highlife Imagination’, 2017, p. 27.

4. Old Rock 'N' Roll, Not What You've Been Told

J.H.K. Nketia proposes that new musical traditions ‘might enable us to see what elements are so vital to the African’s approach to music that they get perpetuated in the new traditions’.55 This might be the case for resident Africans who have a clearer picture of what this approach entails, but many diasporic Africans do not even know who their ancestors are. If the antecedent ethnic group is not known, the continent itself may be identified with, but there is still the ‘double-consciousness’ problem put forth by Du Bois whereby one is susceptible to seeing ‘himself through the revelation of the other world.’56 Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) is representative of this confusion,57 with the immense wealth of the fictional African country Wakanda not a result of the wisdom of its people but a lucky meteor strike; even filmmakers and artists of African descent seem to yield to the Western notion that Africa has no ‘thinkers to develop systems of transitioning rulership that do not involve lethal combat or coup d’etat [sic].’58 Furthermore, the only African country represented on the feature list for Kendrick Lamar’s soundtrack is South Africa;59 for a film intended to bring pride to African-Americans, it seems counterintuitive to glorify a country that was not even a part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Unsurprisingly, this cultural confusion seems to be less manifest in the music of those who have not been so far removed from their roots. Edinburgh trio Young Fathers revere their West African forefathers, with Kayus Bankole from a Yoruba family of southwestern Nigeria, and Alloysious Massaquoi’s surname indicating a Vai person of northwestern Liberia, the third member being non-African Graham ‘G’ Hastings. ‘Old Rock N Roll’, taken from their album White Men Are Black Men Too (2015),60 deals with unfounded preconceptions about black people. ‘I’m tired of wearing this hallmark for some evils that happened way back’,61 declares Massaquoi, desperate to relinquish the connotations of suffering that accompany being black. The music video flaunts the

55 J. H. K. Nketia, 1957, loc. cit. 56 W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Strivings of the Negro People’, The Atlantic [online archive], August 1897, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/, last accessed 12 January 2021. 57 R. Coogler (dir.), Black Panther, DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital, Walt Disney, United States, 2018. 58 P. Gathara, ‘“Black Panther” offers a regressive, neocolonial vision of Africa’, Chicago Tribune, 2018, https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-blackpanther-africa-colonialism-wakanda-marvel-0228 -20180227-story.html, last accessed 11 January 2021. 59 K. Lamar (exec.), Black Panther: The Album, CD/LP/Cass/Digital, Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope, 2018. 60 Young Fathers, ‘Old Rock N Roll’, White Men Are Black Men Too, CD/LP/Cass/Digital, Big Dada, 2015. 61 ibid., 0:25.

Gule Wamkulu dancers of Malawi,62 63 a dance that is itself a veneration of ancestral spirits, in response to these pessimistic impressions. African cultures need to be showcased, or else black people will be ‘living life like a bubble wrapped ape’64: viewed as primitive, with any protection offered to them born out of pity, not respect. Sankofa is to be guided by your human ancestors, not the simian ancestors of the human race itself. Massaquoi salutes those of a bygone era in the line ‘Congo Square is open for business / I was there as god is my witness’65; the slaves that congregated in Congo Square, New Orleans, as far back as 1724 were fundamental in keeping the African musical ethos alive and diffusing it via the Mississippi River,66 allowing syncretic forms to develop that included rock and roll itself. Whether in the form of the oft-uncredited dissemination of African music, the slave trade, or the refugee crisis, which is particularly poignant for Massaquoi having been forced to flee the Liberian Civil War himself, this concept of African movement is embedded in the music itself: the album is ‘perfectly audio-tuned for tinny ear phones’,67 with the vocals being particularly thin, as though they must compete with the background noise of an outdoor voyage. In terms of which elements of African music are being perpetuated, ‘Old Rock N Roll’ indicates that vocal traditions are particularly vital to Young Fathers, despite singing and speaking in English. In Bankole’s Yoruba culture, speech and song are found to overlap, such as within the ‘ijala’ praise chant, in which a hunter’s narration of their episodes in the forest will gradually evolve into song.68 These vocal forms often emphasise the prosodic features of speech such as rapid delivery, explosive sounds, interjections, grunts, and whispers,69 which Bankole performs with great intensity to overlap with Massaquoi’s lyricism. Furthermore, Massaquoi’s upward inflections at the end of certain lines may be referring to the inflections inherent in tone languages such as Yoruba and Vai, and subsequently would be imitative of the glissandi that can be produced by the ‘dondo’ (Akan) or ‘gangan’ (Yoruba), the hourglass-shaped talking drum of West Africa. Since this percussion is therefore not needed for linguistic purposes, the African’s preference for musical textures that ‘increase the ratio of noise to pitch’70 can be augmented by Young Fathers deadening their drum

62 Young Fathers, Old Rock N Roll, Music video, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC5hXsyeork, last accessed 11 January 2021. 63 A. Klein, ‘Young Fathers & The Post-Colonial Condition: The Mercury Prize Winners Head To Malawi In Their Unapologetic New Video’, OkayAfrica, 2015, https://www.okayafrica.com/young-fathers-old-rock-n-roll-white-men-are-black-men-too-music-video/, last accessed 11 January 2021. 64 Young Fathers, CD/LP/Cass/Digital, op. cit., 0:06. 65 ibid., 2:20. 66 ‘Black History: Congo Square, New Orleans - The Heart of American Music’, Afropunk, 2018, https://afropunk.com/2018/02/black-history-congo-square-new-orleans-heart-american-music/, last accessed 11 January 2021. 67 R. Murray, ‘Young Fathers Share New Track “Shame”’, Clash, 2015, https://www.clashmusic.com/news/young-fathers-share-new-track-shame, last accessed 11 January 2021. 68 J. H. K. Nketia, 1975, op. cit., pp. 177-178. 69 ibid. p. 178. 70 ibid. p. 115.

heads with PVC tape.71 This percussion is embroiled in a swinging, driving rhythm that is unchanging throughout both sections of the track, allowing chaos to erupt all around it without ungrounding the listener. Much of this chaos can be attributed to the dissonance that arises in the second section, with the same D major melodies from the first section clashing with the incoming organ pattern in the key of C. These instruments also appear to refer to tone languages, since it is exactly these languages that are usually the cause of dissonance, at least in Nigerian music; any attempt to harmonise more than one voice using classical progressions would place severe limits on what words could be used due to the necessary inflections, rendering each line uninspired. The lyrical content of each line is prioritised instead, leaving the harmonies to ‘take care of themselves’.72 Further contributing to this chaos is the sheer density of the sonic field, with bells so loud that they are practically mandating a crowd to gather, suggestive of the exuberant scenes at Congo Square. Hastings’ approach of basing his productions ‘on the spillage and everything happening in the room’, with all three members pushing each other out of the way to get to the same microphone,73 further embodies the communal spirit of the square and of many sub-Saharan musical traditions. Young Fathers have exhibited a syncresis of identities here, drawing from personal ethnic groups as well as the broader similarities among those south of the Sahara, suggesting that perhaps the specificity of identity is less important than the need to at least be conscious of the double-consciousness within the diaspora.

71 T. Doyle, ‘Young Fathers, Graham “G” Hastings: Producing Cocoa Sugar’, Sound on Sound, 2018, https://www.soundonsound.com/people/young-fathers, last accessed 11 January 2021. 72 A. Euba, ‘Nigerian Music: An Appreciation’, Negro History Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 6, 1961, p. 131. 73 T. Doyle, loc. cit.

5. Ideal Nonsense

The prolonging of ancestral practices imbued in the music of Young Fathers is facilitated by the relatively opportune environment in which they find themselves, in terms of the audiences available to them; they have great license to experiment and still be able to earn from it, as evidenced by their 2014 Mercury Prize win. Audiences in less opportune parts of the world cannot afford to listen to music in the same abundance as a Westerner can, leaving artists to adhere to trends which are more concerned with profits than ancestral veneration. Accra-based electronic musician Gafacci attests, “You can’t be on Spotify all day — you buy a bundle of data and after 20 songs your data will run out. So that’s why it’s difficult for more experimental artists”.74 There is probably no story more demonstrative of this difficulty than that of the enigma Ata Kak, real name Yaw Atta-Owusu. Perhaps the greatest indicator of the muted, if not non-existent, reception to the music of Ata Kak, is not only that this account of his work is about 26 years overdue, but that his only album Obaa Sima (1994) did receive a cult following around the world but the artist knew nothing of it.75 The tape was the inspiration for Brian Shimkowitz’s blog (and later, label) Awesome Tapes From Africa, set up in 2006, but it took Shimkowitz almost ten years to track down the man himself, and inform him of his celebrity status.76 Born in Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti Region, in 1960, Atta-Owusu emigrated to Germany and then Canada in the 1980s,77 like many other musicians, likely due to the unrest and unemployment under the Rawlings administration. The individualism of the West is very apparent in the unique identity he has carved out for himself: Obaa Sima has been described as a blend of highlife, hip-hop, funk, disco, and Chicago house. As with Young Fathers, the vocal forms hold so much of the Africanity still present in the music, particularly in terms of Atta-Owusu’s use of the Twi language, scat, and Akan proverb. The decision to rap in his native language is perhaps the clearest case of indigenisation, both here and among many other hip-hop-inspired African artists such as those who comprise the Afrobeats scene. Merriam suggests, 'Through the study of song texts it may well be possible to strike quickly through protective mechanisms to arrive at an understanding of the ethos of the culture and

74 K. Rymajdo, ‘How Electronic Artists are Reshaping Ghana’s Music Scene’, DJ Mag, 2019, https://djmag.com/content/how-electronic-artists-are-reshaping-ghanian-music-scene, last accessed 11 January 2021. 75 Ata Kak, Obaa Sima, CD/LP/Cass/Digital, Awesome Tapes From Africa, 2015 [original, 1994]. 76 Red Bull Music Academy [YouTube channel], Ata Kak - Time Bomb [online video], 2017, https://youtu.be/pn0_s9gJ6CI, last accessed 11 January 2021. 77 Ata Kak, ‘Obaa Sima’ [release page], Bandcamp, 2015, https://atakak.bandcamp.com/album/obaa-sima, last accessed 11 January 2021.

to gain some perspective of psychological problems and processes peculiar to it’.78 Atta-Owusu’s avoidance of the lingua franca allows him to pull from the treasury of Akan proverbs and rekindle this ancestral ethos. On the title track,79 in which he recounts his idea of an ‘obaa sima’ (‘ideal woman’), he re-words the proverb ‘kyerɛ me wo yɔnko na mɛnkyerɛ wo wo suban’ (‘show me your companion and let me show you your character’), suggesting a person is judged by the company they keep.80 81 In terms of the syncretism of musical cultures and subcultures, one would be hard pressed to find another artist in Ata Kak’s company. Atta-Owusu’s decision to scat ‘shaba-didi-de’82 over the chorus may at first seem hypocritical in that there is a juxtaposition between the stubborn retention of his mother tongue and what appear to be ‘vocalized phrases void of semantic content’.83 However, scat is not necessarily as nonsensical as the syllables that comprise it; in the case of ‘Obaa Sima’ there is an ‘introversive semiosis’84 as the voice refers to the melody of the other instruments. That is, the meaning comes from the music itself, involving an ‘augmentation of expressive potential’85 rather than any ‘exterior’ linguistic considerations. Scat has even been linked to the West African practice of assigning nonsense syllables to percussion patterns in order to better understand the resultant rhythm when multiple rhythmic parts interlock.86 87 For instance, the Ewe of Ghana might use the syllable ‘dzi’ for the hand claps and ‘go’ for the bell,88 reminiscent of the Western ‘do, re, mi ’ solfège syllables that … represent pitch. Although the concept of recorded music might seem antithetical to the African’s soundscape-affiliated, community-oriented traditional music, ‘Obaa Sima’ is rooted in a deeply communal African-American genre. Since the line of scat in question is the same line repeated over and over, it bears greater resemblance to the ‘doo-wop’ of the 1950s as opposed to the more spontaneous and dynamic form of scatting in jazz music. As David Goldblatt explains, ‘Singing doo-wop solo was something of an oxymoron’,89 as those who could not afford musical instruments

78 A. P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music, p. 201, cited in J. H. K. Nketia, 1975, op. cit., p. 205. 79 Ata Kak, ‘Obaa Sima’, Obaa Sima, CD/LP/Cass/Digital, Awesome Tapes From Africa, 2015 [original, 1994]. 80 Awesome Tapes From Africa [YouTube channel], Ata Kak - Obaa Sima (Lyric Video), 2020, https://youtu.be/2sp4rDgPsJk, last accessed 11 January 2021, 3:54. 81 Appiah, op.cit., p. 184, n. 4043. 82 Awesome Tapes From Africa, op. cit., 2:45. 83 D. Goldblatt, ‘Nonsense in Public Places: Songs of Black Vocal Rhythm and Blues or Doo-Wop’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 71/No. 1, Winter 2013, p. 101. 84 R. Jakobsen, ‘Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems’, Linguaggi nella società e nella tecnica, Milan, 1970, p. 12, cited in B. H. Edwards, ‘Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28/No. 3, Spring 2002, p. 622. 85 B. H. Edwards, ‘Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of Scat’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28/No. 3, Spring 2002, p. 649. 86 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Scat’, Britannica, last updated 2012, https://www.britannica.com/art/scat-music, last accessed 12 January 2021. 87 ‘Resultants: Eve Bell Pattern with Clap’, Ancient Future, http://www.ancient-future.com/bellclap.html, last accessed 11 January 2021. 88 ibid. 89 D. Goldblatt, op. cit., p. 102.

would form a capella groups. The street corner became a soundscape inseparable from the music, at least before doo-wop artists entered the studio.90 This is not to say that vocal tradition is the only aspect that has been reworked from the Western genres it is inspired by into an Akan framework. The drum machine pulls from house music but ignores the gaps, fills, build-ups and breakdowns of the Chicago scene; the rhythm ends much the same way it starts, in keeping with the ‘all is middle’ mindset of a soundscape-affiliated music, whereby something ‘is already in progress before our arrival and it succeeds our departure.’91 Although there may be more focus on pitch than texture throughout the track, the lo-fi quality of the recordings from Atta-Owusu’s Toronto apartment onto a tape that had subsequently been sitting in a roadside stall, degrading from the heat and humidity, has somewhat inadvertently increased the ratio of noise to pitch.92 Furthermore, the Akan’s use of homophonic parallelism based on third intervals inside a heptatonic scale is still present in the stabby chords that, like the drums, remain unchanging throughout, with the melody oscillating between two tones central of E major (B and C#m). Whereas most music during the colonial period went from being separated by tribe into the ‘shared’ cross-country music of highlife, ‘Obaa Sima’ goes the other way: he is his own tribe, which paradoxically suggests a move forward into the individualistic Africa of the future.

90 ibid. 91 R. M. Schafer, ‘Music and the Soundscape’ (1977), Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, eds. R. Kostelanetz & J. Darby, New York, Schirmer, 1996, p. 224. 92 Ata Kak, Bandcamp, loc. cit.

st 6. The 21 Century Plantation

It is cases like Ata Kak’s which highlight the need for improved promotion and awareness of music out of disadvantaged parts of the world, not only for the artist’s sake, but for the psychological benefit of their diasporic relatives in search of pride. The recent introduction of the Afrobeats chart in the UK is a step in the right direction in this regard, despite the concerns over forcing different genres under one umbrella, although a brief study of the predominantly white-owned record companies releasing the music throws up another issue: black ownership. Haile Gerima, director of Sankofa (1993),93 suggests there is a new plantation in this neocolonial era where black people are continuing to produce but they still don’t own their product.94 It is not as if African nations do not possess the know-how to become as independent as Nkrumah presumably intended back in 1957; pre-colonial empires including Asante, Mali, and Songhai are evidence of such prosperous civilisations unencumbered by Western interference. Domestic industries in West Africa were not threatened by overseas imports even in 1800, after three centuries of Atlantic trade.95 Gerima laments, ‘black people are good at emotional claiming of everything including “Jesus was black”. … Let’s quantify these claims’;96 the former glory of much of the African continent may provide at least hope that, one day, these claims of ownership can be quantified. However, the way forward is not as radical nor essentialist as Garvey’s Liberia Project would have been, through which he sought to relocate diasporic Africans to Liberia as a step towards self-sustainability.97 The world has become too complex, particularly if mixed-race identities are considered, for segregation of this kind. It would also not solve much as evidenced by the current African nations that have ended up subject to European hegemony despite their ‘independent’ status. The innovative syncretism in the arts that generations of interaction with the West have yielded suggests that Sankofa does not have to be a geographical ‘return to the roots’, but more of a psychological one. African traditions must be respected, but not so much so that there is more reverence for the past than the future.98 As put by Gilroy,

93 H. Gerima (dir.). Sankofa, DVD, Mypheduh, United States, 1993. 94 Reelblack [YouTube channel], Haile Gerima - Black Imagination and the 21st Century Plantation [online video], 2015, https://youtu.be/0hgI_DxyDoA, last accessed 11 January 2021, 0:53 - 4:52. 95 G. E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters and African Middlemen: A History of American Legitimate Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth Century, Boston, 1970, pp. 10-11, cited in D. Eltis and L. C. Jennings, 'Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era', The American Historical Review, vol. 93/no. 4, 1988, p. 957. 96 Reelblack, op. cit., 4:52 - 5:20. 97 M. Christian, ‘Marcus Garvey and African Unity: Lessons for the Future from the Past’, Journal of Black Studies, vol. 39/no. 2, 2008, p. 325. 98 Maalouf, op. cit., p. 34.

...black music cannot be reduced to a fixed dialogue between a thinking racial self and a stable racial community The calls and responses no longer converge in the tidy patterns of secret, ethnically … coded dialogue. The original call is becoming harder to locate.99 Much of the black community have not been taught the ways of their ancestors, and so they look towards Africa with a double-consciousness. If traditions out of Africa are privileged over the sounds coming out of the diaspora, however confused these sounds are, those in the diaspora will feel denied of their claim to an African identity. Essentialists must accept that ownership doesn’t end outside the borders of the African continent, particularly when Western influence is still a considerable presence within those borders. This is not to say that passing down emic knowledge is a hopeless task. The nonprofit Wikitongues aims to document as many languages across the world as possible before they die out, through their network of volunteers in over 70 countries.100 Native speakers of marginalised languages are recorded speaking in the past, present, and future tenses,101 demonstrating how, in a globalised world, the internet can assume the role of ‘ɔkɔmfo’: the medium between the living and ancestral worlds. However, heritage is not a ‘thing’ but a ‘practice’;102 documentation is not enough, as relegating traditional musics to museums and online databases without a proper ‘inheritance’ of them would only validate the suggestion that Africa is being ‘slowly emptied of its essence, and becoming a relic’.103 104

99 B. Browning, ‘INTRODUCTION: “Haiti Is Here/Haiti Is Not Here”’, Infectious Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture, New York, Routledge, 1998 [O’Reilly online edition, 2013]. 100 ‘About’, Wikitongues, https://wikitongues.org/about/, last accessed 11 January 2021. 101 N. Strochlich, loc. cit. 102 J. Rodenberg, P. Wagenaar, and M. H. Ross, Cultural Contestation: Heritage, Identity and the Role of Government, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 103 R. Letts, with the International Music Council, for UNESCO, The Protection and Promotion of Musical Diversity, 2006, p. 143. 104 C. Obioma, ‘Africa has been failed by westernization. It must cast off its subservience’, The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/12/africa-failed-by-westernisation-must-cast-off-its-subservienc e, last accessed 11 January 2021.

Conclusion

In his narrated text and projection mapping Sugar For Your Tea (2020),105 Kayus Bankole remarks, ‘There was nothing sweet in the bitter exploitation of those who gave you sugar for your tea. How much blood makes a sea? How much blood makes us see? How can blood make us free?’106 Africans will continue to be exploited and undervalued no matter how ‘sweet’ their product is unless identity is strengthened in other areas; economic ideas, intellectual theories, social ideologies, and philosophies are all concepts very rarely talked about when considering Africa in the modern world. 107 Perhaps a Pan-Africanism that ‘goes back and fetches’ from empires that have been forgotten can free African nations from the dependency issues that they have with the West, and invoke a sense of pride among its diaspora that will spur a better safeguarding of traditions. Favouring ethnic allegiance as an alternative has not built up sustainable nations, as evidenced by the civil wars of Liberia, Nigeria, Angola, Rwanda, and many others. However, a hyper-atavism that urges a complete reversion to an era before any ancestral blood was spilled would be to deny generations of progress in defusing racial tensions; my white grandfather being disinherited for marrying my black grandmother at a time when interracial marriage was not widely accepted is not something to be forgotten. The African community has been uprooted, leaving individuals struggling to carve out an identity for themselves, whether it be in the face of globalisation or double-consciousness, but it is better to bend than to break in the face of a strong wind if you want to protect your nest.

Word Count: 5,439

105 K. Bankole, Sugar For Your Tea, Narrated text and projection mapping, Edinburgh City Chambers, 2020. 106 Underbelly - Festivals, Events, Shows [YouTube channel], Kayus Bankole - “Sugar for your Tea”, 2020, https://youtu.be/iFp8hb5qrvo, last accessed 12 January 2021, 1:11 - 1:28. 107 Obioma, loc. cit.

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List of Works

Ata Kak. ‘Obaa Sima’, Obaa Sima, Awesome Tapes From Africa, 2015 [original, 1994]. Gafacci. Tabom Bass, self-released, 2020. Haile Gerima (dir.). Sankofa, Mypheduh, 1993. Kayus Bankole. Sugar For Your Tea, Edinburgh City Chambers, 2020. Kendrick Lamar (exec.). Black Panther: The Album, Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope, 2018. Ryan Coogler (dir.). Black Panther, Walt Disney, 2018. Young Fathers. ‘Old Rock N Roll’, White Men Are Black Men Too, Big Dada, 2015.

[Afrobeats] B4bonah. Work, B4BM, 2020. [Afropop] Osibisa. ‘Ojah Awake’, Ojah Awake, Bronze, 1976. [Doo-wop] The Marcels. ‘I Wanna Be The Leader’, Give Me Back Your Love/I Wanna Be The Leader, Colpix, 1963. [Traditional drumming] Mustapha Tettey Addy. Master Drummer From Ghana - Volume Two, Tangent, 1980. [Highlife] De Frank Professionals. ‘Afe Ato Yen Bio’, De Frank Professionals, Anopa Nsonoma, 1976. [Hiplife] Daddy Lumba. ‘Dangerous’, Aben Wo Aha, Lumba Productions, 1998.