JESSE WEAVER SHIPLEY Haverford College Transnational circulation and digital fatigue in Ghana’s Azonto dance craze

ABSTRACT oy FM’s Open House Party, hosted by DJ Black, is Accra’s most pop- Azonto is a Ghanaian urban dance craze whose ular Saturday night radio show, mixing Ghanaian, U.S., Nigerian, popularity is built through its global circulation. I British, and South African pop, hip-hop, and house music. One trace its production and flow across studios, radio evening in September 2011, DJ Black implored his listeners, “It’s stations, dance floors, and digital platforms in Accra been a while since Ghana had a dance of its own. So please, do and among Ghanaians in London and New York. I theJ dance!” He was referring to Azonto, a dance craze spreading across the argue that, as a technologically mediated style, country and among Ghanaians abroad. While the dance’s origins are con- Azonto is the embodiment of being Ghanaian in a tested, it was inspired by the song “U Go Kill Me,” by star rapper Sarkodie mobile, digital world. This dance reveals both the and young producers EL and Krynkman, released less than a year ear- potentials and the hazards of digital repetition and lier. The song’s sparse lyrics celebrate an azonto girl—an obscure vernac- copying for self-recognition. Ghanaian musicians ular term for a disreputable outcast or a sexually promiscuous woman. Its and fans creatively use the repetitive aspects of danceable beat and pidgin English hook celebrating the woman’scharms— digital technologies, making this dance a style of “This girl go kill me”—lend it a catchy simplicity. The track played on symbolic appropriation that links Ghanaian youth Ghanaian radio and circulated via user-to-user digital file sharing. Over both in Accra and abroad into a dispersed several months, the dance moves it inspired rapidly spread through clubs community of musical participation that valorizes and school dance competitions and online amateur videos. Other musi- mobility itself. The dance’s sudden ubiquity, cians began making tracks with similar beats and lyrics. In August 2011, a however, creates “digital fatigue,” an uncertainty Wikipedia page appeared—surely a contemporary marker of recognition— among participants about belonging in an era of initially defining Azonto as a “dance which mainly involves moving of all digital replication that threatens to unmoor signs of the joints in your body in a rhythmic fashion without taking any or very recognition from the cultural registers that empower little steps.” By Christmas, Azonto had spread to Ghanaians in Europe them in the first place. [digital media, technology, and the United States, mostly through Facebook, YouTube, and Ghanaian circulation, repetition, transnationalism, popular music websites, even reaching the fringes of mainstream British popular culture, music, dance, African urban youth, Ghana, culture. African diasporas] While the dance incorporated numerous styles, its basic steps were sim- plified such that, as a reporter for an online BBC documentary on Azonto’s popularity stated, he “learned to dance Azonto in less than three minutes” (Jakana 2012). U.S. urban fashions are preferred by aficionados—skinny jeans, crisp branded shirts, and perhaps a baseball cap worn at a jaunty an- gle. The dance is controlled and subtle, brash with a bit of humor. Dancers slouch their shoulders and cock their heads to one side, smirking in a defi- ant and flirtatious manner. One leg is stiff and planted while the performer pivots and twists on the ball of the other foot; one hand is pointed straight down, circled around the other hand held at the waist and then pointed to the sky. From this signature move, dancers appropriate and parody an array of dance styles and references to daily life.1

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST,Vol.40,No.2,pp.362–381,ISSN0094-0496,online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2013 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. ! DOI: 10.1111/amet.12027 Transnational circulation and digital fatigue ! American Ethnologist

I argue that Azonto’s rapid spread and popularity are transform it, simultaneously expanding its referential lexi- due to its performative fashioning of a cosmopolitan per- con while condensing and simplifying it. Azonto becomes a sona defined by a celebration of mobility, both semiotic and multimodal and multireferential sign built on the inversion geographic. Its transformation of a stigmatized social out- and revaluation of the figure that gives it its name. Trans- cast into an urbane hustler makes it a vehicle of individual forming the image of the outcast into that of the irreverent self-empowerment within a dispersed community of digital urbanite and technologically savvy street hustler, the popu- circulation. Artists and audiences in Ghana and in Ghana- lar dance embodies a new social persona for young Ghana- ian communities abroad are connected through the recog- ians around the world to emulate. In this revaluation, the nition that mobility itself is a sign of national belonging and dance lends itself to a theatricality that is at times sincere personal success. Azonto, in content and form, is the em- and at others parodic. I end by examining anxieties and bodiment of circulation, though the meanings attributed uncertainties about the links between identity, sound, and to its mobility vary. Azonto is identified with Ghanaian in- culture that emerge even as the musical dance’s transfor- digeneity by those abroad and with cosmopolitanism by mations provide a template for aspirational Ghanaians to those at home. In these inverted interpretations, speed and imagine popular style as a vehicle for self-making. ease of repeatability provide new possibilities as well as haz- ards: While financial and geographic mobility defines suc- Digital circulation and the art of repetition cess for many Ghanaians, it also creates anxiety among cer- tain audiences, threatening to delink references to locale This article contributes to theorizing the crucial roles that from their semiotic groundings. That is to say, technological repetition and circulation play in mobile digital media prac- reiteration and circulation can create what one music pro- tices. It does so by showing how, as Azonto is electronically ducer calls “digital fatigue,” unmooring signs of belonging made, circulated, and embodied, various tensions between from the cultural contexts that are supposed to give them prosperity and aspiration, home and abroad, popular and meaning in the first place. As Ghanaian affiliations are rean- traditional are managed and reproduced. Azonto’s rise is imated in embodied technological form, new worries arise but one example of how digital media are reshaping over- about the potential of music and fame to maintain the con- lapping national and global imaginaries and the changing nections they seem to promise. nature of cosmopolitanism (cf. Tsing 2005:3–10). Popular In the following sections, I show how Azonto’s rise culture seems increasingly crucial to the contours of glob- relies on relationships among Ghanaian artists in Accra alized identities. For example, recently, local pop songs and those abroad that are facilitated by digital music pro- have broken through their national boundaries, gaining duction and listening technologies and how participants massive global followings and inspiring innumerable user- manipulate and embody these technologies in dispersed, generated remixes further driving their unexpected online user-generated practices. I first examine how digital mu- circulation; notably, “Ai Se Eu Te Pego,” by Brazil’s Michael sic’s repetitiveness and easy replication facilitate its move- Telo, became a global trending hit in 2011, and South ment. Beat makers craft familiar rhythms that do not Korean singer PSY’s “Gangnam Style” became the biggest require a long attention span, landing easily in their listen- Internet trend to date, receiving over one billion YouTube ers’ ears wherever they are. Rappers write simple, memo- hits by late 2012. For youth around the world, popularity is a rable lyrical hooks designed to circulate by provoking hu- self-fulfilling performative that inspires further circulation morous, sexual controversy. DJs and artists circulate tracks and creative elaboration. There is pleasure and possibility on radio and as digital files, spreading music rapidly among in mobility and difference when cast in easily consumable, widely dispersed audiences. Azonto is a form of symbolic popular formats. For example, the sudden fascination with action emergent in its circulation among Ghanaian mu- Kpop—SouthKoreanpopularmusic—andwithotherinter- sicians and fans in London, New York, and across the national styles among certain American hipsters is driven globe. I demonstrate how popular songs appropriate and by the thrill of difference tempered by the familiar senses of are appropriated by informal musical networks, stimulating pop fandom and fame. But how these global trends articu- user-generated content as aspiring artists and fans shoot late with specific cultures of digital circulation needs further amateur dance videos to accompany their favorite tracks ethnographic attention (Lee and LiPuma 2002). Whereas and rapidly record new songs at informal studios. Azonto’s much scholarship on musical globalization examines how stereotypic beat and banal hook create a sonic landscape blended styles or “world musics” speak to eclectic interna- that facilitates its semiotic work of appropriating and in- tional audiences and considers the role of technology in tensively layering various registers. As the dance migrates replicating and circulating this music (Monson 1999:32), I across diverse contexts, its formal structure allows youth focus on the contextually specific relevance of a Ghanaian to incorporate disparate styles while making a specifically digital music phenomenon for the particular contours of Ghanaian cosmopolitanism. As Azonto moves, it draws in Ghanaian cosmopolitanism (cf. Dent 2009). Azonto demon- new references—to dances, rhythms, social activities—that strates broader features of popular technological trends but

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also defines a particular culture of circulation. Specifically, when we look at African public life from the perspective it allows participants to feel mobile and international of the vibrant, informal, and secular networks that most while maintaining connections to home. As one youth in youth inhabit rather than through broader institutional Accra joked to me, “As long as you can keep moving you and national frames? Popular music is the primary mode always have a chance. Ghanaians are not immigrants they through which those in the rising generation use mobile never ... imagine they are staying in one place. They all multimedia technology (Stokes 2007:10) and, in the pro- want to move back to Ghana . . . to be mobile . . . It is cess, reshape their own ideas of locality and globalization the ability to move that people want. It is not how long (Ferguson 1999; Piot 2010). The emergence of hip-hop gen- you stay in US but that you can go and come.” Ghanaian res around the world in the last 20 years reflects larger audiences become active participants in making this technological transformations that have brought popu- musical-dance craze through easy-to-use technology and, lar expressive styles to the center of political, moral, and in the process, contribute to ongoing embodied debates commercial life (Basu and Lemelle 2006; Condry 2006; about transnational Ghanaian identity. Azonto celebrates Fernandes 2011; Osumare 2008). Hip-hop’s irreverence structured improvisation as a way-of-being in the world; and rebellious ethos, in particular, provide youth with a the pleasure is in the movement and circulation itself. For counterpoint to neo-Pentecostalism’s sincerity as youths Ghanaian youth who imagine themselves on the margins make choices about their futures. The popularity of ur- of global economic and cultural movements, hustling is not ban dance and hip-hop across Africa demonstrates how a simplistic mode of material acquisition in times of need African national publics are shaped through informal net- but a complex mode of existence, reappropriating struggle works of cultural production and the creative reuse of as an often pleasurable way-of-being in the world. Azonto’s technologies (Haupt 2008; Herson et al. 2009; Ntarangwi particular ethos of mobility reflects this. 2009). In Ghana, hiplife music—an eclectic mix of hip- Recent analysts have shown the effects of changing hop and highlife—arose in mid-1990s Accra among elite technology and media practices in reshaping national and youth (Shipley 2009a). It spread to mass working-class audi- urban publics (Boyer 2005; Burrell 2012; Dent 2009; Miller ences as artists blended familiar highlife rhythms and local- 2011; Peterson 2010). Many studies of new media publics language lyrics with rap flows and hip-hop beat making in Africa explore how technologies of cultural production and swagger. Following the adoption of Ghana’s 1992 Con- transform people’s relationship both to the nation-state stitution, which mandated media privatization, private ra- and to global circulations (Goodman 2005; Klein 2007; dio stations emerged, driving the new music’s popularity Larkin 2008). Much of the research on African media cir- across the urban landscape. As the initially marginal music culations has focused on religious movements, showing became socially relevant, lyrics and rhythms were appro- how technology mediates the relationships among spiritu- priated in national moral debates, state political discourse, ality, nationhood, and modernity (Eisenlohr 2006; Engelke and commercial branding campaigns (Shipley 2013). 2007; Hirschkind 2006; Meyer and Moors 2005). In Ghana, Pop music and hip-hop—in Africa and beyond—are Birgit Meyer (2004) and Marleen De Witte (2005) argue, distinct from other expressive subcultures in how easily neo-Pentecostal new media have respiritualized a national they blur lines between producers and consumers and of- public sphere as IMF and World Bank–initiated neoliberal ficial and unofficial, incorporating marginalized, disparate reforms orient the Ghanaian state toward free market pri- youth into communities of active participation. Digital mu- vatization. Indeed neo-Pentecostals across the continent sic is cheaper to make and circulate and requires less in- have permeated civil society, emphasizing doctrines of in- frastructure than video films, sermons, fashion, or theater. dividual aspiration as states have decentralized (Engelke Churches depend on fellowship and institutions to circu- 2007; Gifford 2004; Meyer 2004; Shipley 2009b). However, late sermons and necessitate at least a nominal ideologi- media privatization has also facilitated the emergence of cal commitment on the part of listeners. While rising video- various informal, secular social realms with complex and film industries in places like Nairobi, Lagos, and Accra are ambivalent relationships to state institutions and national built on cheap technological production and distribution, publics, which have received less scholarly attention (Larkin long-form narrative video films require more resources to 2008; Perullo 2005). While the importance of the prolif- produce and distribute whether as digital or hard copies eration of neo-Pentecostalism and other religious funda- (Larkin 2008). Digital songs are particularly transportable, mentalisms to African public life is undeniable, secular can be copied from phone to phone, are easy and quick to popular cultural trends are crucial to life in urban Africa, consume in almost any locale, and require little from the lis- revealing a lot about changing media practices and related tener in terms of time commitment or previous knowledge. notions of aspiration and creativity (Barber 2003; Fabian African hip-hop and pop music have a do-it-yourself aes- 1998; Newell 2012). thetic that valorizes individual aspiration (cf. Barber 2003). Following Keith Hart’s (1973) groundbreaking ethnog- These musics rely on the image of a self-made black male raphy of informal economies in Accra, I ask, what happens rapper who both speaks for and to youths and embodies

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the spirit of entrepreneurship (Shipley 2013; Thomas 2004; Reiteration: Accra’s digital beat makers, rappers, Weiss 2009). Crucially, the music’s relevance as a black genre and DJs make Azonto activates ongoing dialogues, between urban dwellers on the Methodologically, tracing Azonto’s rise and the rapidly continent and recent African diasporic populations in West- changing relationship between old electronic media (radio ern metropoles, that are central to the making of contempo- and television), digital media, and popular culture means rary Africa (Ebron 2002; Pierre 2012). tapping into networks of artists, media workers, and fans Scholars of ritual and performance have long been con- in Ghana and Ghanaian communities abroad and following cerned with the relationship between repetition and power digital productions as they circulate online and via mobile (Tambiah 1985). Repeatability is crucial for sustaining devices. In mid-2011, I was in Accra after having been away chains of reference (Turner 1967). In their reiteration, signs for eight months, several generations in the lifecycle of pop- both rely on and reproduce their own conditions of possi- ular trends.2 New hits, new artists, and new subgenres vied bility. That is to say, referential practices produce their own for public attention. To find out what was happening on the contexts within which signs can become comprehensible music scene, I visited Rockstone’s Office, a sleek nightclub and legitimate (Kockelman 2006). The reiterative proper- run by the pioneer of hiplife Reggie Rockstone Ossei, whom ties of language normalize unequal power relations by natu- I have known since 1998. He has continued to rap but fo- ralizing social participant roles and their contextual frames cuses on managing his club, currently Accra’s most popular (Gal 2005). As Judith Butler (1997) shows, parody is a form of high-end nightspot, which has become a meeting place for reiteration that simultaneously embodies and undermines well-known and aspiring artists, successful businesspeople, dominant forms of power by making people aware of the ar- university students, and media workers. When I asked Reg- tifice of repetition. Parodic expression exposes the power of gie what was new, he introduced me to EL, a tall young man repetition by pushing it to the extreme, creating reiterative in sunglasses standing near the bar. “This is the boy-wonder overload. ... remember that track I played for you at the house? This African digital music makers strive to capitalize on is the guy who made the beat . . . he is the next big thing!” music’s repetitive properties to project themselves as far- IexchangedmobilenumbersandFacebooklinkswithEL reaching, successful artists. However, the excessive reitera- and his rap partner C-Real and we planned to meet up the tive capacity of digital music—both in repeating beats over next day. and over and in circulating songs widely—leads to ques- Later in the evening, I headed to Joy FM to see DJ tions about the sincerity and Africanness of the music. Black (Kwadwo Ampofo), another one of Accra’s musical Many African musicians who play traditional instruments trendsetters. Off a quiet street, a lone security guard sat lament the rise of electronic beat making and looping as in Joy FM’s lobby, texting on his phone. Air conditioning uncreative copying of Western styles. For older popular gen- and music blasted from the station’s broadcast studio, an res like highlife, live performances are central locales where oasis of energy in the calm night. As I entered, DJ Black music’s emotional power forges publics through shared, waved as he played a jingle recorded by Busta Rhymes when repetitive experience (Cole 2001; Plageman 2012). The rela- he performed in Accra. “You’re listening to DJ Black on tionships among musicians—and between musicians and the House Party . . . Joy FM!!” [blasting noises]. The pro- listeners and dancers—during live shows produce and re- gram’s producer screened calls from listeners and sorted iterate perduring social relations relevant across social MP3 music files while Black bantered live with listeners call- realms (Barber 2001; Cole 2001; Coplan 1994; Erlmann 1996; ing in to give shout-outs. His audience is young—mostly Keil and Feld 1994; White 2008). Indeed, John Chernoff under 30—but runs the gamut from elite, educated busi- (1981) has argued that reiteration has long been crucial to nesspeople to local, working-class kids. In the 1990s, African structuring live African music, its improvisations, and its hip-hop’s primary appeal for young men was the image embodiment. Considering music as part of a broader so- of the microphone-wielding rapper as celebrity who could cial soundscape central to how people experience place speak truth to power (Perullo 2005; Shipley 2013; Silverstein and belonging (Eisenberg 2010; Feld 1996), I show how 2004; Weiss 2009). With the growing centrality of digital digital production tools and Internet and mobile listen- production techniques and decreasing music sales due to ing technologies change where and how music is reiter- free downloading and digital distribution, DJs across Africa ative and creative. While live music creates community have become increasingly important as mediators of pop- through face-to-face experience, digital music forges af- ular tastes and stars in their own right (Charry 2012; Veal fective, embodied connections through multimodal, dis- 2007). As many rappers are known for one or two hits, pro- persed participation. That is to say, rather than focus on moters, corporate sponsors, and clubs increasingly seek out the live performance, recent popular musicians invest cre- celebrity television and radio DJs like DJ Black, who remix ativity in the studio and online, finding new forms of various artists’ hits, attracting broader audiences. (See embodied sociality in the unpredictable travels of digital Figure 1.) tracks.

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phrasings. DJ Black’s long-term popularity stems from his skill at synthesizing Ghanaian references with the latest from New York, Johannesburg, and London; he makes Accra listeners feel like they are part of a hip, cosmopolitan public without losing their local sensibility. Taking a break, he removed his headphones, and we chatted while I looked through the music playlists on his laptop. His studio serves as a center for artistic connec- tions. Musicians often stop by for on-air interviews and to freestyle. Black’s program reaches several hundred thou- sand listeners on air, and his mixes, podcasts, and inter- views are available for free download, regularly accessed by listeners in Europe, the United States, and Japan. After promoting a contest for mobile phone giant Airtel, Black played a hit by R & B superstar Rihanna. He cut back and forth between her song and his scratching turntable, bend- ing and looping sections of the song for about a minute before fading into the next track, by Rick Ross. That night he played U.S. hip-hop before shifting to Ghanaian and African tracks later in his four-hour show. His MacBook Pro is the center of his multimedia activity. Messages and lis- tener requests from several Facebook and Twitter accounts frequently popped up on his screen. He flipped between in- teracting on social media and mixing music using Serato software, which displayed two virtual mixing decks side by side on the screen. He brings hip-hop sensibilities to radio Figure 1. DJ Black at Joy FM scratching on the turntable, Accra, Ghana. Photograph by Jesse Weaver Shipley. DJing, looping beats and lyrics, cutting between tracks to explore their rhythmic similarities. As Black played Sarkodie’s “U Go Kill Me,” produc- DJ Black is a tastemaker. What he plays on air becomes tion staff and visitors danced Azonto in the cramped studio popular. He explained that DJing adds value to tracks; spin- around the mixing boards. I was amazed that a dance that ning is visual and aural showmanship. “DJing is showing did not exist a few months earlier was suddenly so ubiqui- off . . . if you’re playing a song and mixing the next song in tous. “You don’t know Azonto? . . . Azonto is the latest thing your ear, you have to act like it’s the hottest shit ... because ... outofnowhere,nowit’severywhere!”Blacklaughedat people are watching and listening to you.” Black recalls that my ignorance. “You can do the dance to many songs but it his primary engagement as a teenager with “African Amer- startedwiththistrack.ELproducedit ... Heraps,produces, ican culture” and with “what was happening in the world makes beats . . . does it all.” was through listening to American hip-hop and R & B.” The next afternoon, I visited EL (Elom Adablah) and He got involved by making mixtapes with Prime Cuts, one C-Real (Cyril-Alex Gockel) at their recording studio in Osu, of Accra’s first hip-hop-oriented DJ collectives. He spun at where they produced their own and other artists’ mu- clubs and small shows, eventually landing a show on Ra- sic as well as commercials. In 2009, C-Real, representing dio Univers, the University of Ghana’sFM station, becoming Ghana, placed second at Emcee Africa II, the continent- one of the first to play U.S. hip-hop and early Ghanaian rap- wide freestyle rap competition sponsored by Sprite and M- pers on Accra’s airwaves (Shipley 2013:69). When he moved Net, South Africa’s cable channel. Since then, he has tried to to Joy FM, Black’smusical tastes contributed to its rise as the turn his sudden televised fame as a reality-show contestant first and most successful station built on a commercial for- into sustained musical popularity.4 Like many talented rap- mula mixing primarily English-language presenters, African pers, he struggles to translate his complex lyrical dexterity American styles, and hip, urbane Ghanaian programming.3 into simple, audience-friendly pop songs with hooks that Most successful Ghanaian DJs, program managers, and pro- compel repeat listening. He explained to me, “You never ducers in the first years of Ghanaian private radio were, know, as a musician, what formula is going to hit. But you like DJ Black, from educated, middle-class families and had need that catchy hook to reach audiences.” EL has a tal- the fluency to codeswitch between formal English, African ent for finding the right mix—making songs that balance American vernacular, Akan, and Accra’s latest street-pidgin the familiar with the new. EL and C-Real were both recent

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she is bought and consumed like a commodity. The azonto girl’s self-possession and style transform her disreputable image, though activate prevalent male ambivalence toward female sexual agency. EL’s chorus is in pidgin English:

the way you dey be my spec, oh this girl go dey kill me, oh (Sarkodie: money no be problem)

The simple hook is easily remembered and repeated by listeners.8 The use of Pidgin English, the language of in- formal urban communication, gives the track broad pop- ulist appeal. Female value is sexualized and monetized, in the process gendering the process of upward mobility. Figure 2. EL in his studio making beats. Accra, Ghana. Photographs by The transformation of the azonto from social pariah to up- Saskia Kobschall.¨ wardly mobile agent is premised on the power of personal style and charismatic swagger to overcome hierarchy and University of Ghana graduates. On the verge of stardom, stigma. they represent a rising generation of popular digital artists. In the studio, El, C-Real, and I discussed the strug- They are from relatively elite backgrounds: C-Real grew up gles of crafting musical hits. Since the late 1990s, most on the University of Ghana’s campus, the son of a lecturer, Ghanaian popular music has been produced on PC com- and EL lived in a comfortable Accra neighborhood. Like ear- puters with music software like Qbase, Fruity Loops, lier hiplife artists, their success relies on transforming local Logic, and Protools, using few live instruments or samples. styles into mainstream fashion. Their work demonstrates Producers layer numerous nonlinear computer-generated a long-standing productive tension between poor and rich tracks, building rich sonic environments over which rap youth styles in Accra. As elites fluent in English, they repack- and vocal tracks are recorded. EL demonstrated to me age working-class styles and local language idioms, giving how he makes beats with Fruity Loops. C-Real quipped, them a modern sheen through electronic production and “It is a very simple program ... Anyone can make ba- recirculating them as signs of hip cosmopolitanism for pop- sic beats with it. But in the hands of an advanced pro- ular consumption (Shipley 2013:107). ducer, it is a lethal weapon.” The beat of “U Go Kill Me” For a rising artist like EL, producing “U Go Kill is similar to numerous popular dance rhythms of the past Me” for a star rapper like Sarkodie—known as Ghana’s 50 years from highlife to kpanlogo to jamma, music that fastest rapper—provided market exposure and industry now evokes pleasant nostalgia for many Ghanaians. EL ex- legitimacy.5 (See Figure 2.) EL produced the track—based plained, “Each beat maker has his secret to making a re- on Krynkman’s beat—and sang the chorus.6 Sarkodie’s Twi ally good jamma beat which I can’t show you, but the and Pidgin rap lyrics describe meeting a street girl who is basics are simple.” In about twenty seconds, EL made a there for him in times of need; in turn, he covets her atten- beat similar to the one for “U Go Kill Me.” With a few tion. He celebrates her as an outsider who achieves through mouse clicks, he distributed beats unevenly across two her sexuality and hustle rather than established social 4/4 time signatures and set it to loop endlessly while we status. talked. For “U Go Kill Me,” sparse, syncopated piano and high hat are offset, alternating with a bouncing side-beat. Water from her mouth is like champagne The vocals are autotuned and low in the mix, creating an she is azonto, still i will maintain (her) echoing, distanced effect. The sounds are from Western You’re going to be jealous. 7 sound archives built into the software or downloaded on- line, but the final product sounds distinctly West African. The metaphoric comparison of the girl to champagne Indeed, African electronic artists often recombine various is an example of how moral ambivalence drives interest in sounds and time signatures in ways software and hard- many Ghanaian songs. When the song parodies, objecti- ware designers never envisioned (Meintjes 2003; Veal 2007). fies, or praises the azonto is ambiguous. Music fans I in- As Hammer, another well-known producer, explained to terviewed among traders in a local market were split. Some me, since digital software does not cater to African musical thought that “champagne is expensive so he is praising her,” needs, part of the beat maker’s skill is improvising to get the whereas others interpreted it as a sexualized insult meaning sounds they want (Shipley 2013:149).

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Iwasstruckbyhowsimilarthebeatof“UGoKill piration. As the following sections demonstrate, informal Me” is to numerous 1970s and 1980s highlife songs and digital economies create new fantasies of cosmopolitanism 1990s hiplife. I started to think that was part of the point. for those in Ghana and signs of home for young Ghana- It became a hit—and unintentionally inspired a dance ians abroad, who rely on mobile popular music to imagine craze—because of its stereotypic simplicity and easy re- Ghanaianness. Music produces and remakes collective af- peatability, its repackaging of a familiar rhythm in new, filiations by linking the contexts of production and listen- stylish clothes. Because there are so many similar tracks, ing to a set of authorizing representations (Keane 2003:410). however, it is rare when one stands out through its rhythmic Songs like “U Go Kill Me” revitalize cultural recognitions, innovation. This song’s clean electronic sound and eclec- creating new embodied ways to experience familiar sounds tic, precise beats both contrast with and amplify its basic and movements. Digital repetitions circulate place-based rhythm’s familiarity. Combined with Sarkodie’s rap virtuos- references as immaterial, highly transportable digital tracks. ity and the poetic images of the Azonto this song was an in- stant hit. Furthermore, Sarkodie and EL masterfully perform Cosmopolitanism: Azonto goes to London hip-hop swagger associated with foreignness and mobil- Azonto’s spread to London-based Ghanaians is driven by ity. While Ghana is often seen as a privatization success informal digitally mediated dialogues between youth in story (Chalfin 2010), most youths’ daily lives are dom- Ghana and in diaspora, making a musical communality. inated by struggles to pay school fees, find work, help Producers, musicians, and audiences across various locales their families, and gain the skills and connections to pur- coalesce into a community of participation defined through sue their own aspirations. The artists’ skinny jeans, fresh this popular style. Digital production and circulation tech- sneakers, sunglasses, and baseball caps present a fantas- nologies replicate and reframe familiar sounds, detaching tic image of Afro-cosmopolitanism. Their stylishness and them from place-based associations and tying them, in- technological–musical prowess provide audiences signs of stead, to Ghanaian identity as a style of mobility. While self-made success. As one fan explained to me, “Sarkodie Azonto’s initial popularity in Accra stems from how it rein- is great because he made it through his own skill . . . Songs vents local, familiar beats with a modern twist, for young like this give you something from the streets but it’s new, London-based Ghanaians, Azonto stands in as an embod- you know? When you can’t find work or you have prob- ied representation of Ghana as home. With this transforma- lems or you are hustling you can just listen to it on your tion, Ghanaians in Ghana further thrill as a local trend “goes phone ... with your friends and laugh. But they also have international,” amplifying Azonto into a sign of global mo- aseriousmessageofhope.” bility and success. Like many songs, “U Go Kill Me” primarily circulated For the Azonto generation, dialogue between Accra 9 only as a digital file. Both industry insiders and teenage youth and their peers abroad creates a cosmopolitan style fans disseminate MP3s on flash drives, laptops, and phones. that transcends local–global oppositions and maintains The song played on computer and iPod playlists in clubs, its distinct Ghanaianness as a form of worldliness. James bars, on air, and online, although Accra’syouth listen to mu- Ferguson’s (1999) analysis of cosmopolitanism demon- sic increasingly on mobile phones. For Africans born since strates how African lifeworlds often challenge simplistic an- the 1980s—and because of lack of infrastructure, perhaps, alytic local–global dichotomies. As Ferguson shows in re- even more so than for youth from the global North—daily lation to Zambia, the local–global duality provides mythic, life centers on mobile phones and online social networking, fantastical narratives that both compel urban Africans to with digitally circulating songs crucial to informal youth strive for modernity and distance them from its claims of connections and, increasingly, to how they imagine more progress. Zambians’ recognition of their displacement from enduring linkages (Piot 2010). the promises of postcolonial advancements leads to a per- Digital artists like DJ Black and EL are cultural me- vasive abjection. For Ferguson, cosmopolitanism is about diators whose performative expertise shapes Accra’s sonic how Africans align themselves with worldly signs in the landscape. By mastering the reiterative properties of digital midst of various localities. Inverting normal definitions, he media, DJs and artists reimagine their social world, assem- argues, cosmopolitanism is “less about being at home in the bling lyrical and musical fragments into new stylish wholes world than it is about seeking worldiness at home.... Cos- that, as I show below, listeners can subsequently break apart mopolitans . . . cannot or will not be bound by the claims and reassemble in a variety of contexts. They create sounds and proprieties of the local” (Ferguson 1999:212). This is that establish the contexts for innovative referential prac- true for Ghanaian youth in Accra, who use international tices. These contexts become recognizable mobile regis- styles to invigorate local music, and for Ghanaians living ters that allow youth to include themselves as participants abroad, who use Accra’s latest trends to shape their daily in social conversations about morality, circulation, and as- lives in Europe and America (Shipley 2013:232). In making

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and replicating digital tracks and videos, artists seek fame I was impressed. I love how Ghanaians are collaborat- and connections in a youth-initiated, globally dispersed, in- ing. In the studio, people were doing the dance, prac- formal economy of music. ticing and messing around. Everyone was teaching me Online amateur videos of Azonto dancing are cen- ... how to do Azonto. In the UK, we are not united as tral to its initial spread in Ghana and then abroad. Two Ghanaians; to be honest I want to replicate that level of community; use music to help bring people together. I YouTube clips are particularly influential. One is a mon- was on a journey to find my roots . . . and the hottest tage of various Accra secondary-school Azonto dance com- music. petitions set to “U Go Kill Me.” Students wearing school uniforms dance for large, outdoor crowds (YouTube.com Fuse’s enthusiasm for what he perceived as the local 2011a). Another shows a young boy masterfully dancing unity of the Ghanaian music scene was fueled by his desire Azonto onstage at Ghana’s National Theatre as audiences to express Ghanaian identity for the diffuse African com- cheer (YouTube.com 2011e). Within a few months of be- munity in London. “I kept asking people [in London] but ing posted, both received several hundred thousand hits no one had heard of Azonto. I said they had to learn the and were repeatedly reposted and linked through Twit- dance. I called Killbeatz and Tiffany and said . . . I wanted ter and Facebook. Numerous other videos feature solo or ... to [take] it international and bridge the gaps between small groups of dancers facing the camera, submitted by people. They both came to London a few weeks later and the dancers themselves for anonymous YouTube audience we recorded [my track] in the studio.” “Azonto” begins as assessment. Some dancers narrate to the camera how to do Fuse narrates his recent trip. the dance. Comments on videos tend to be polarized: either praising the dancers’ skill or deriding them as inauthentic. See, I just came back from Ghana. As homemade Azonto dance videos set to Sarkodie’s track Iwanttosharethisdance spread, unknown and star musicians began writing new that everyone was doing over there. “A zo n t o t ra c k s. ” Higher-quality videos for new songs appeared online The song teaches the dance as a way to tell people in from Ghanaians all over the world.10 Perhaps the most influ- London what life is like in Ghana. Its English-language lyrics ential new track was called simply “Azonto,” by 24-year-old draw on a common popular music trope, describing step- London-based musician Fuse ODG (Off Da Ground), fea- by-step how to do the dance. turing Accra-based female rapper Tiffany. It was inspired by Fuse’s visit to Accra and his desire to bring the excitement They all wanna learn how to do this, around Azonto to London. The video on YouTube got over So imma take u right thru this, a million hits in its first few months, as its URL was em- Azonto dance is the movement, bedded across a variety of Ghanaian news and music web- So when u jump on the floor u betta use it, sites. Fuse tells me, “It’s the first Ghanaian video to [go vi- First step is to step, step, ral] like that” (private interviews, February 17 and 21, 2012). U can move to the right to the left, left, Ucandoitfreestylewhileustep,step, The YouTube clip initially provided a link for a free MP3 Put ur hands in the air then u rep, rep song download and, later, a link to buy the song on iTunes So go, go, go, twist ur fingers and u can wave and say (YouTube.com 2011j). Fuse was born in London to Ghana- hello, lo, lo ian parents, lived briefly in Ghana, and returned to attend Make a fist and u can hit them with a blow, blow, blow school in the United Kingdom. In June 2011, he returned No violence that’s how u do the AZONTO!!!11 to Ghana for the first time in 12 years. One night he per- formed at Rockstone’s Office in Accra. Reggie Rockstone re- Metapragmatic description makes the dance into a calls that “Fuse brought his London hard-core rap and the framework for social interaction in which participants crowd here was not feeling it. I advised him to listen to local represent, greet, freestyle, and fake violence as forms of artists and our dance vibe if he wants to appeal to Ghanaian self-expression and bravado. Breaking the dance into its audiences.” Fuse was impressed by the port city of Tema’s grammatical parts, the song posits shared steps as types vibrant music scene: “Tema has a new formula for mixing of communication. Fuse explains the song’s intent: “The hiplife, hip-hop, the UK sound.” He met rapper Tiffany and idea was to have the Azonto standardized so others could connected with Killbeatz, a sought-after young beat maker. replicate it and try to outdo each other, say ‘hey I can do He loved the energy of Azonto. it better.’” The video posits a playful communality, trans- posing a Ghanaian sensibility to London life. It shows a In the clubs, everyone was doing this new dance and male and a female dancer in black hoodies, white gloves, Iwantedtolearn.Itwasunitingpeople.Itwassoad- and white plastic “Afromasks” dancing Azonto through Lon- dictive . . . I went to Ghana to get a feel for the music. don’s streets. The rapper explains to me the significance of

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the video dancers in the language of marketing: “Afromask search for identity is itself a form of sociality. That is to say, is now the brand. The idea is that anyone could be in the as young Ghanaians grow up abroad, they struggle to be mask.” The stereotypic outfits and masks depersonalize the part of an extended Ghanaian world and, in the process, dance. The dancers use a simple disco Electric Slide step reinvent its parameters. London youths imagine Ghana as and Azonto gestures to keep time as they playfully inter- a place of vibrant cultural production, even as youths in act with diverse people—white, black, Asian, young, old— Ghana struggle to connect to what they perceive to be the in Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square. The Afromask per- excitement of Western urban life. Azonto’s transportabil- formers use dance as a mimetic bodily greeting, encourag- ity allows youths to connect with their counterparts in dis- ing people to join them and copy their movements. They parate locales by spreading and elaborating a shared bodily pose with street performers, tourists, and random London- style. ers, attempting to teach them Azonto as the lyrics prescribe Previously unknown, Fuse was suddenly in high de- its movements. Fuse and his friends shot and edited the mand, returning to Accra to perform at the Ghana Mu- video. “It was all improvised. I told people on the street sic Awards in April 2012. He also released a “slicker, offi- that ‘it is Black history month and we are showcasing a new cial music video” to cultivate interest among “big-market dance.’ We played the music loud and got people laughing audiences through MTV, Radio One and BBC ... We have ... TobehonestitwasoneofthebestdaysIhaveeverhad. afollowingandnowwanttocapitalizetomakeitmain- It made people smile on the streets of London.” stream” (see YouTube.com 2012a). In mid-2012 he launched The video was an instant success. Viewers in Ghana his new Azonto track “Antenna” with an online competition were thrilled to see Azonto dancers in London. For many in which fans submitted videos of themselves dancing in youthful Ghanaians around the world, the video was a sign avarietyofpubliclocales,forexample,attheEiffelTower of Ghana’sglobal relevance. Fuse recalls, “The next day after in Paris, in a McDonald’s in Manchester, England, in the we uploaded it, people in America were uploading their ver- London Tube, in a garden in Kenya, and in a shopping mall sion in response. I was amazed at how fast it spread . . . Peo- in Switzerland (see YouTube.com 2012e). Fuse then featured ple loved it but then wanted to make their own versions.” the most popular dancers from the viral videos in the official He explains that the track’s British popularity “started with “Antenna” video remixed with vocals by Haitian superstar Ghanaian youth; it played at all Ghanaian parties [then] Wyclef Jean (see YouTube.com 2012d). For Fuse, holding a spread. Nigerians and Jamaicans are doing it now . . . now worldwide dance-video competition was a way of “uniting it is even on the fringes of mainstream. It is in many clubs, Africans around the world, the diaspora . . . What I want on some mainstream radio ... Some white kids doing it.” my music to do [is] to actually connect people; it’s not just As it moves beyond youth circles, Fuse seems slightly em- music you can dance to . . . we can meet through music” barrassed: “Even my parents are doing it. It is a mix of older (YouTube 2012f). [styles] you know? It is not restricted to a specific dance Azonto contributes to the growing recognition of West move. It is only limited by the rhythm. Old people do it. They African pop as part of the United Kingdom music scene. look funny but it’s cool!” When Sarkodie visited London in late 2011, he played for For youth like Fuse who grow up abroad, being an artist Ghanaian audiences of several thousand, but he was also provides a way to identify with an unfamiliar homeland. interviewed on BBC Radio 1Xtra by English hip-hop impre- Music also links his experience of being African in London sario and DJ Tim Westwood, teaching Westwood Azonto to broader British public life. A generation ago, Africans in during the interview. The emergence of numerous tracks England at times hid their origins, trying to blend in with recognizable as part of an Azonto subgenre helps the emer- Afro-Caribbean communities. Reggie Rockstone recalls pre- gence of Afrobeats, a term coined by DJ Abrantee, another tending he was from New York while performing in London Brit of Ghanaian descent, to brand and package African in the early 1990s: “No one wanted to listen to Africans rap pop music for broader, eclectic audiences. In April 2011, DJ back then. It wasn’t cool . . . It was dangerous; Caribbean Abrantee began hosting an Afrobeats program on Saturday kids would hustle you for being Nigerian or Ghanaian back nights on London’s urban music station Choice FM, playing then.” Through Azonto, British-based Ghanaians search for mostly Nigerian and Ghanaian artists and, as the Guardian ways to affirm their heritage and articulate connections. newspaper stated, providing teens with “an alternative Another young Ghanaian raised in London explains what a to British urban pop music” (Hancox 2012). Famed UK struggle it is “to discover our roots . . . and learn our par- rapper Sway (also of Ghanaian descent) reflected on ents’ languages.” Popular songs like “Azonto” are a form Afrobeats’ sudden popularity: “When you’ve got African of translation, repairing a perceived loss created by limited swag and African traditions combined with up-to-date firsthand knowledge of life in Ghana. As Fuse states, many western styles, and singing in English, well—you’ve got a young Ghanaians raised abroad miss the sense of commu- winning formula on your hands” (Hancox 2012). In this nity that they perceive youth in Ghana share. For them, the sense, Azonto and Afrobeats become generic categories that

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reimagine the links between Ghanaian music and new po- The United States’ polarized racial landscape leaves per- tential publics. haps even less room for the distinction of African cultural Rising artists like EL in Accra and Fuse in London strive identities. Young Ghanaians living in cities like New York to transform the pleasures of sudden, informal celebrity struggle for recognition as imaginaries of African American and the speed and transportability of digital tracks into sus- life dominate black public culture (Pierre 2012:186–188). tainable forms of value. For this generation of digitally ori- Bronx-based rapper Sam 2-Shy’s (Samuel Frimpong) ented musicians, success comes not from sales of physical hit song “Azonto Girl” shows how this music’s digital copies of their music but from cultivating online celebrity mediation inspires innovative, non-face-to-face artistic status that leads to name recognition, performance fees, collaborations and related forms of dispersed affiliation, and corporate sponsorships (Shipley 2013). Azonto is a demonstrating the nuanced ways global connections are subgenre characterized by digital beats, lyrical references, integrated into daily life. Since 2006, Sam has performed styles of dress, and dance moves that are shared across at concerts organized for Ghanaians in the United States, a variety of locales. It provides a transportable familiarity opening for major Ghanaian musicians like Ofori Ampon- that turns distance into new types of intimacy. Its stripped- sah, VIP, and Sarkodie. “Azonto Girl” gained popularity down, digital rhythms reflect older Ghanaian dances recon- primarily as it spread through links on Facebook, and the figured for new audiences. While the music flirts with main- video received several hundred thousand views on YouTube stream popularity, for first-generation Ghanaian youth in within months of its release, though it was not well known London, Azonto is a way to identify with Ghana’s cultural in Ghana (see YouTube.com 2012f). Sam works at Cosco distinctiveness. Another London-based Ghanaian artist, and attends Borough of Manhattan Community College, M3nsa, explained to me, “So many [mainstream] UK artists though he aspires to be a full-time musician. His biography are first generation from Ghana or Nigeria; many ... are contrasts with that of Fuse, as Sam remained in Ghana only now rediscovering what is going on back at home ... until he was a teenager, whereas Fuse grew up primarily Before, they would not acknowledge where they came from, abroad. In Sam’s case, Azonto serves to maintain a nostalgic but it is becoming cool to do that” (private correspondence, relationship to Ghana—filling a gap created by loss rather January 15, 2012). In contrast, young enthusiasts in Ghana than the absence felt by Ghanaians raised abroad. watching online see Azonto’s UK success as cosmopolitan As a child in Ghana, he played music in a Presbyte- validation for local ways of life, imagining themselves part rian church and learned to make and play drums from of a global musical movement. As one Accra student who his uncles. “Music was in my family,” he explains (private is a music fan told me, “People in Ghana are really proud interviews, May 4 and 11, 2012). At school in the city of that the dance has gone international.” Even as Ghanaians Kumasi, he was entertainment prefect, becoming known as at home and abroad at times have opposing interpretations adancer.“Therewerealwayscompetitionsatschool...I of Azonto’s significance, the style’s circulatory capacity con- would mix break-dancing with my own thing . . . I had to al- nects them. ways be creative to keep my reputation up as a top dancer.” His family moved to the Bronx when he was a teen. Strug- gling to fit in, at first he “hung out with Ghanaians who were Recirculation: New York Azonto already here to learn from them how to get along.” His fa- Azonto’s adoption by U.S.-based young Ghanaians is an at- ther encouraged his music. “When I came here I started lis- tempt to embrace a distinctly Ghanaian cosmopolitanism tening to more Ghanaian rap; then doing my own music.” in the midst of dichotomous racializing identities. Azonto Beinginvolvedinmusic wasaway forhimandhisfriendsto took several months longer to become popular among feel at home. They used simple PC music production equip- Ghanaians in the United States than it did in the United ment to make beats and record vocals, burning CDs to dis- Kingdom. However, Ghanaian Americans were soon learn- tribute to other Ghanaians in the area. ing Azonto, following the dance through social media and The production of his hit “Azonto Girl” was a highly dis- Ghanaian music websites and uploading video clips of persed affair. The beat was made by Rude Boy, a Ghanaian themselves dancing in front of mirrors, on streets, in high- based in London whom Sam met online. “I know him from school gyms, and at parties. Congregation members in New MySpace times. I liked one of his beats he posted ... and York–area Ghanaian churches even began doing the dance asked if I could jump on it. He said cool and sent it to me.” during services. Ghanaians in the United States confront Sam writes most of his lyrics on his Blackberry. “When I get a different history of racism and inequality than expats in ideas on the train or anywhere, or hear a phrase I jot them the United Kingdom. In Britain, West Africans, as postcolo- on my phone and turn them into lyrics.” Sam recorded nial subjects, strike an uneasy balance between integra- the song’s vocals at JoeBaby Studios, an informal enterprise tion into an increasingly multicultural urban British life that run out of a friend’s Bronx apartment. They then sent the ambivalently includes them and navigating overlapping digital files back to Rude Boy in London to mix and mas- though distinct African and Afro-Caribbean communities. ter. The simple, homemade video uses a mostly stationary

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camera and features friends and students dancing in a liv- and then send me their beats or vocals, and we start talking. ing room. Basic graphics and video transitions were added Most of the time I am checking Facebook on my phone and before posting on YouTube. The dancers get much praise linking up with people that way.” By this means, for exam- in online comments for their Azonto style. Sam explains, ple, he met a Ghanaian vocalist in Toronto with whom he “We are trying to make our own branch of Ghanaian music recorded vocals over Skype for a collaborative track. here . . . that connects to Ghana but is also a Bronx move- Informal, digitally mediated connections made ment. People love the video and [the dancers]. They get in- through music transform into a network of familiarity. vitations to perform at shows across the country. One of Azonto spreads for two opposing reasons with inverted the girls is a great dancer but she is in high school and her geographic imaginaries: For Ghanaians abroad, it gives the church won’t let her dance anymore.” feeling of participating in Ghanaian culture and Accra’s Sam likes U.S. hip-hop and R & B but “GH music lets daily life, whereas for those in Accra it provides a sense of me connect with Ghana. I can’t forget where I am from.” outward international expansion. It is simultaneously tra- For Sam, Azonto reflects the importance of subtlety and in- ditional and new, connecting lived, daily localities around direction as Ghanaian communicative modalities (Shipley the globe. Aspiring youth in various places identify with 2013:13). “Azonto . . . is like a conversation with yourself. It this contradictory duality in intimate if disparate ways. The allows you to talk, express yourself through dance and also malleability of these opposite readings also fuels Azonto’s talk to other people. You can move in ways that describe ability to incorporate new signs. Its musical simplicity gives things in your life that maybe you don’t want to say directly.” it flexibility as a formal abstraction and belies its complexity Sam lives in two worlds. “I am a Ghanaian living in the US. as a style of appropriation. As digital signs become markers I have both countries on my mind . . . I could do English of authenticity, the proximity to home becomes less impor- hip-hop but I put more Twi language in my music because tant than the ability to be intimately Ghanaian anywhere. I prefer my local language, to get a Ghanaian and African Electronic copying facilitates circulation, naturalizing audience.” and spreading signs of familiarity and home among Ghana- On the strength of his hit, Sam headlined his first show ians around the world while providing a structure for cre- in New York in May 2012 for a crowd of several hundred al- ative elaboration on how to be Ghanaian in a mobile, dig- most exclusively Ghanaian youth. For Sam, making music ital age. A crucial aspect of digital music’s repeatability is involves both nostalgia and aspiration. “I did the song be- its ability to, theoretically, transport a sense of place in cause I miss Ghana and the dance comes from there. My the same way each time a song is played or copied, in song is on the map now. People know me. And it makes any context, without the requirements of copresence and me remember back in the day dancing at school . . . I want the contingencies of live performances. The digital logic of my music to reach out and get attention in Ghana. If I get predictability gives it scalar and geographic mobility. For enough money here I want to move back there and live example, an individual Ghanaian teenager on a bus in the well.” Reflecting the experience of many Ghanaians living Bronx can imagine she is part of a broader audience by lis- abroad, Sam is tied to the United States in practical and fi- tening to the same track with headphones and a mobile nancial ways but dreams of returning home. Like Fuse, he phone that is playing on the radio and in clubs in Accra.12 wants to be part of what he sees as the communality and In such contexts, the digital song is both an emblem of nos- cultural integrity of the Ghanaian music industry—even as talgia for home as well as the medium for experiencing a rappers and producers in Ghana strive to sound more inter- different type of belonging. In the cheap and easy produc- national. Sam feels the struggles of maintaining Ghanaian tion, circulation, and replication of digital music and am- identity in the United States. “Being here messes up your ateur music videos, listeners become active participants in mind. If your Mom speaks Twi to you and you reply in En- a rapidly evolving speech community that they themselves glish your mind gets confused. I mix Twi and English, but are making. I don’t forget my language. I am not trying to assimilate.” Indeed, the title of his forthcoming album, AmeriGhana, re- Embodying technology: Azonto as style flects the tension of his dual sensibility. of appropriation For Ghanaian youth in the United States, mobile tech- nology facilitates a geographic simultaneity. In the midst of So far, I have focused on the formal logic of Azonto’s cir- daily routines at work, school, and home, they make and lis- culation and on how digital technologies created the con- ten to Ghana music, recirculating ideas and links through ditions for its popularity. Here I describe Azonto’s semiotic social networking sites accessed on cell phones. Facebook content by considering it as a mobile, detachable sign pre- is Sam’s main mode of disseminating his music, linking up disposed to draw in numerous other signs and registers (cf. with Ghanaians around the world. As he has gained recog- Spitulnik 1996:162–164). Its multivocality relies on how it nition, “people connect on Facebook with me. I will put up eludes exact definitions. Nevertheless, as Azonto’s popular- a link and people will listen to a track. They hear my music ity grows, producers and consumers struggle to pin down its

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meaning and origins. These “debates” are driven by a di- alogic relationship between digital and embodied forms as dancers and musicians reinterpret online videos and respond by recirculating new elaborations. The dance’s generic boundaries are made through celebrating new- ness itself. As listeners identify Azonto as something new— rather than a variation of an old genre—they interpret references to established styles as creative rather than derivative. Practitioners appropriate recognizable styles and, in the process, claim the authority to redefine what is cool and innovative. The pattern through which Azonto appropriates signs is similar to that of older Ghana- ian musical–dance crazes like kpanlogo in the 1960s (Shipley 2013:39). Kpanlogo, popularized by Accra dance bands, emerged as a blend of rock, highlife, and neotra- ditional rhythms (Collins 1994:110). At first, more con- servative audiences interpreted it as foreign and overly sexual. With time, as it mixed with established sounds, nar- ratives resituated the dance as a “traditional” Accra style. Its basic rhythms and steps provided a structure for musicians and dancers to improvise and assimilate eclectic influences. AsimilarprocessholdstrueforAzonto.(SeeFigure3.) As Sarkodie explained in the radio interview with West- wood, Azonto “is a communicative dance” (YouTube.com 2011h). Its basic steps provide a rhythmic structure around which dancers improvise, incorporating moves from dis- parate registers into new embodied configurations circulat- ing among participants. As I describe above, Azonto is char- acterized by a slightly hunched posture, small steps, and discolike finger pointing. The footwork is a modified, sped- up highlife step, infusing moves familiar to most Ghanaians Figure 3. Contestants in the Miss Malaika Ghana 2012 televised beauty pageant dancing Azonto. Black Star Square, Accra, Ghana. Photographs by with hip-hop swagger. Whereas older highlife dancing in- Saskia Kobschall.¨ volves broader hip and foot movement and a relaxed pos- ture, Azonto is mostly upper-body and arm manipulation with minimal waist movement. Dancers turn one shoul- der forward, adding a subtle, twisting motion, and stare in- 2010 World Cup, numerous YouTube clips of his post- tensely with head slightly cocked. As in many West African goal dancing circulated. Gyan then recorded a hiplife hit, dances, facial control is important. Dancers often adopt “African Girl,” with rapper Castro and was prominently fea- aboredpoutandsolemnstare,alookatonceflirtatious, tured dancing in the popular video (YouTube.com 2010). mocking, and confident. Others wear a carefree, almost Young players and fans across Ghana delighted in scrutiniz- mocking smile. ing and emulating his dance moves. Dance references are ever-changing; some are inten- Recent African American and Caribbean dance crazes tional while others emanate from dancers’ experiences: that spread globally through online circulation of official they include wearing single white gloves and incorporat- and unofficial videos are also important influences: sweep- ing Michael Jackson’s signature moves; steps and posture ing arm gestures to clear space and mark time, from break- from kpanlogo and jamma, popular sports and recreational dancing traditions; sexual bending at the waist, from the dances; intricate communicative hand gestures from As- 2006 Jamaican Dutty Wine and other dancehall styles; sway- ante court dances like adowa and fontomfrom;shoulder- ing and pivoting with hands on the head, from Gracious chest compressions from the Ewe recreational–war agbadza K’s 2009 London dance hit “Migraine Skank”; gyrations and dance (David Akramah, private correspondence, April 12, head rubbing, from the Dougie, from California Swag Dis- 2012). A crucial initial influence was the goal-scoring cel- trict’s 2010 hit “Teach Me How To Dougie”; twisting the ebration dances of Ghanaian international football striker waist, from the Cat Daddy by the Rej3ctz; footwork and knee Asamoah “Baby Jet” Gyan. With his rise to international bends from the Jerk, from the New Boyz track “You’re A stardom and the success of the Ghana Black Stars at the Jerk.”

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While its parameters are fluid and constantly evolving, ited to movements that are related to work.” As artists and participants quickly refine a sense of how to judge Azonto. media debate Azonto’sorigins, its characteristics are further As dancers creatively string together gestures, they main- defined and legitimized. tain a distinctive posture conveying an authoritative bod- The use of Azonto as a popular term reflects established ily control. Discipline and precision are embodied-moral patterns of how proverbial speech circulates through con- traits that define mastery across traditional and popular troversy and uncertainty of meaning (Anyidoho 1994). In Ghanaian expressive genres (Yankah 1995). As one enthu- debates about the meaning of ambiguous proverbs, words, siast described it, the dance “is all about attitude. You can and signs, communities of participation emerge. Refer- do anything from your feet up and call it Azonto as long as ences to azonto in “U Go Kill Me” and later tracks follow this you are controlled and have the right attitude.” Azonto pro- common pattern. Proverbial speech in Ghana condenses vides practitioners with a way to literally and figuratively and circulates socially significant moral narratives (Yankah claim position. A young dancer at a bar in Accra told me, 1995). Ghanaian popular musicians have often revived ob- “The dance is saying, ‘here I am.’” Another teenage dancer scure rural or urban terms as proverblike song hooks, lend- saw the dance as marking generational change, explain- ing them the authority of an established oral provenance ing, “The difference between Azonto and older [Ghana- circulating in new form (Shipley 2013:161–162). For some, ian dances] is attitude and emotion ... by doing it you azonto was a recognizable if obscure term. A 30-year-old are talking to society about what you are capable of.” The man in New York recalls hearing azonto in secondary school dance’s competitive structure recalls the disco and break- in Accra, as an insulting, joking term: “It meant a loose dance crazes that swept Ghana in the mid-1980s. It is easy girl from the street.” For others, it was a new word. Its enough that most kids can do basic moves but complex sudden prevalence made many seek explanation. One 22- enough to allow virtuoso performers to stand out through year-old businesswoman based in Accra first encountered their fluid references to other dances and daily life. At clubs, the term on Twitter. “I could tell from the context that it school dance competitions, weddings, and funerals, less meant a dodgy outcast like ‘oh look at these foolish Azonto skilled dancers gather on the outside of the dance floor Boys’ but I had never heard it before. I tweeted back ‘what while skilled dancers—often male—face off, and show off, does it mean?’” Another Ghanaian college student living in in the middle. The masculine aspects of dance virtuosity the Bronx joked, “These musicians can make up their own are highlighted by the parodic and inverted reflections on words and new meanings ... from only God knows where.” female sexuality and agency expressed in the lyrics of the While azonto was explicitly an insult to women, its obscu- music they move to. While audiences celebrate good fe- rity allowed for it to be resignified to celebrate hustling male dancers, they also criticize them for being too sex- as a vehicle for success. This parodic inversion of azonto’s ual. Azonto dancers compete in incorporating daily activi- meaning is achieved through its excessive reiteration and ties of urban life into their repertoire, especially movements ubiquity. Its scandalous sexual aspects are normalized and that highlight young men’s struggles. For example, popular made transportable through a song’s familiar rhythmic pat- moves include boxing, shaving, getting dressed, doing var- tern. While azonto’s explicit moral message decries pub- ious household chores, driving a car, and dialing, talking, lic female sexuality and hustling, through extreme repeti- and texting on an imaginary mobile phone while looking at tion of hustling narratives across digital platforms, the older someone flirtatiously. term is remade as parody, focused on the formal capacity As Azonto’s popularity grew, so did public debates to invert its initial dubious meaning, and, instead, mark in- about its origins. Enthusiasts searched and disagreed about groupness, agency, and urbane innovation. how to place it within established musical traditions. Some Reflexive discussions about the dance demarcate how said it emerged in Accra’s bustling Bukom and Jamestown participants use it as a sign of belonging. As one fan in the neighborhoods; others claimed it originated in the port city Bronx explains, “half of the fun of Azonto is talking about of Tema. Online and television news reports and dance ex- it. It is something Ghanaians own that has caught on so perts identified Azonto as a variation of apa (or apaa), a fast. People love being in the know, ‘Oh do you know this neotraditional Ga dance. One Ga dance expert told me that step? Can you do this?’” Commentaries on videos reflect “‘apaa’ is a branch of kpanlogo that uses movements re- how participants debate the dance’s parameters, in the pro- lated to work . . . common in parts of Accra.” Apaa dancers cess identifying themselves through metalanguage about its mimic different daily tasks like washing, ironing, and driv- features and values. Some online clips entitled “Azonto” are ing. In comparison, he explained, Azonto allows “more criticized for not fitting its requirements. Policing the mu- room to improvise and add new steps than older kpanlogo sic’s evolving generic boundaries can take the form of na- styles.” Another dance teacher from Accra disagreed, ex- tional disavowal. For example, a comment on a video of plaining that “Azonto, actually, is more limiting than kpan- two kids dancing to a Francophone beat labeled “Azonto” logo [which] allows you to improvise from every aspect of states, “I’m Ghanaian and these guys are definitely not life. You can even do jazz steps to kpanlogo. Azonto is lim- Ghanaian ... the dance is not azonto” (YouTube.com

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2011d). Comments such as this reflect attempts to discern trol and being able to incorporate the unexpected defines national belonging in body movements. Many dancers re- a good performer. Azonto celebrates eclecticism through a ceive praise, with comments like “best Azonto dancer” or style of semiotic appropriation that itself conveys Ghana- “I love your moves.” Talented female dancers often receive ianness as the dance represents mobility in a variety of both respectful supportive comments and lewd praise with arenas. pleas to meet. For Ghanaian youth in various locales, devel- oping a refined eye for dance is a way to recognize them- Digital fatigue: Repetition’s uncertainty selves in embodied style. and moral ambivalence Even Azonto enthusiasts are shocked at how quickly The prevalence and spread of African electronic music the dance has become ubiquitous. Bridget (a pseudonym), represents, to musically minded youth, the promise that acollegestudentreturningfromtheUnitedStatestoAccra digital production and circulation will erase geographic in late 2012, describes how her ten-year-old cousin spends limitations and simplistic dichotomies, providing popular hours watching dance videos, copying and practicing in access to a modernity that potentially links the urbane West front of mirrors (private correspondence, May 2012). For to African localities. The ease of electronic copying high- both working-class and educated urban teens and twen- lights technology’s potential to enable mobility. But the tysomethings, the dance dominates social events, with im- ubiquity and exactness of digital copies raise the specter promptu competitions breaking out at drinking spots and of the absence of an original, even calling forth questions clubs. Increasingly, school-age children do the dance as about the moral implications of origins themselves. African they play in the streets. Bridget explains, “Kids on the side discourses on electronic music are permeated with skep- of roads are doing it without music. It connects to roots; ticism even as they praise the possibilities of new tech- its like ampe [a children’s game], they love to do it. Now lo- nologies. For example, to some listeners, Azonto’selectronic cal kids ... have become the best dancers ... they own the sound continues to be insincere and foreign. One Accra car dance.” Like other young people, however, she is surprised mechanic was annoyed by the music, exclaiming to me, when “suddenly middle-aged and old people” start dancing “These Azonto people are not serious ... this is foreign Azonto at more formal events. “It’s cross generational ... at hip-hop. It is not Ghanaian.” Another Accra-based musician funerals and important social events you normally have dif- who plays highlife and gospel refused to play Azonto be- ferent sections for old and young people ... Azonto bridges cause he felt it was “not real music” and it was disrespectful that gap; people still dance adowa [Akan funeral dance] but in that it encouraged “loose women.” now Azonto as well. It’s crazy.” While kids think of the dance Pioneering hiplife producer and head of Pidgin Music, as new and belonging to them, adults recognize traces of Panji Anoff has a theory about how digital music affects their youth in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s in its basic rhyth- the bodies of musicians and listeners. His critique resonates mic pattern. Azonto bridges generational and class hierar- with that of some traditional, highlife, and gospel musicians chies and tensions between the aspirational and successful, and other critics of the prevalence of electronic music in the modern and traditional, giving a stylish contemporary contemporary Ghana. Panji explained to me that when a sheen to a nostalgic, nationally recognizable aesthetic. drummer plays a rhythm over and over there are always In an abstract sense, the dance stands in for how slight variations. Repetitive, polyrhythmic instrumentation Ghanaians approach the modern world. For Bridget, the is crucial to many African music styles, but dance reflects the idea that mobility is a central value of Ghanaian life: even the best musicians will speed up and slow down ... vary their rhythm over time. Traditional rhythms Its motions are like daily activity. Staying busy, always have repetitions but they also have improvisations that active, always circulating. It is also a ... patient dance rely on the creativity of the drummer to respond to the ... likeyoucanjuststayinoneplace,butalwaysmov- conditions around him, the dancers, the other musi- ing, ready for the next thing. The pleasure of just doing cians, the setting. But digital beats are always exactly it; it’s like a transaction. The fun is not in saving money. the same. You take a beat, loop it, and repeat it in- That is not in our culture. Always keep in motion. Al- finitely. This affects the way that you listen, think, feel. ways communicating. If you have money you have to Over time it creates digital fatigue; this endless repeti- keep it moving not just hold it. It’s the same thing with tion in your body. [private correspondence, January 12, the dance; always ready to make a deal, connect with 2005] someone, show-off. Controlled, cool; it’s very Ghana- ian. Panji worked in media and with Ghanaian musicians The dance implies something is always changing and in the United Kingdom before returning to Accra in the moving—words and bodies and styles—though partici- early 1990s. He recalled, “It was not easy to be Ghanaian in pants remain disciplined and watchful; maintaining con- England; there was a lot of explicit racism . . . People were

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not proud of their heritage and there was no market for the nexus of various artistic aspirations, interpretations, African music.” Returning to Ghana, Panji was at the fore- and desires. While Accra-based artists Sarkodie and EL want front of artists mixing African rhythmic traditions with hip- to transform local music into a cosmopolitan sound ap- hop. As a pan-Africanist, he wanted to bring African musi- pealing to national and international audiences, London- cal traditions to a global market. But he was also wary of based Fuse and New York–based Sam 2-Shy attempt to the temptations of popular trends. “Music is an important capture and be part of Accra’s urban musical community, part of our identity. When you hear music from your cul- without fully returning to it. Digital beats stand in for a be- ture, from your childhood, your chest swells with pride. You longing that seems to elude those who pursue it from any feel good because it speaks to you. But who do we become angle. when digital repetition takes over?” For Panji, rhythm pro- Digital music forges connections by projecting young vides a collective, embodied identification. However, with musicians’ aspirations into a specifically Ghanaian multi- digital beat making superseding live instrumentation, he modal digital realm. As I describe with reference to EL’s worries about the emotional and moral effects of computer creative production techniques, Ghanaian artists recog- repetitions that “flatten out” African music’s uniqueness. nize that digital technology is not designed to fit the Here digital rhythms can be universalizing in two contra- aesthetic sensibilities of African musical styles. Aspiring dictory senses: They have the potential to create dialogue artists reshape technologies to meet their needs. Panji with new, distant audiences, though, in the process, they argues, “When we take recorded samples . . . or drum- threaten to negate the uniqueness of place-based culture beats ... built into a synthesizer or computer we are bor- that makes those dialogues productive. He elaborated on rowing sounds. We are second hand users of technology. the anxiety about identity that electronic beats can provoke: No one is designing computers for Africa.” Computer- “If you are on a dance floor in Europe or anywhere, every- generated sounds and time signatures can be deployed one will move to the same beat. You will feel the collec- by untrained, aspiring musicians who loop beats, shoot tive energy of it. But over a period of time the exact repeti- clips, and send links, creating appearances of musical mas- tion of digital music will start to effect your body negatively; tery and hopeful images of preexisting popularity; digi- you will get tired ... disoriented” (private correspondence, tal performativity presents the informal and aspirational December 23, 2008). For Panji, digital fatigue suggests as the successful and legitimate, with the desire to make that live African music relies on emotional connections them so. among musicians and participants and that the passion and Kweku (a pseudonym), another Ghanaian college stu- uniqueness of presence are lost through reliance on elec- dent who moves between Accra and the United States tronic beats. thinks Azonto’s popularity is built on a lie. He says its pop- For Ghanaian youth, digital beats provide an embodied ularity in Ghana stems from the “misperception that every- recognition. Participants from Accra to London to New York one knows Azonto abroad. It is mostly wishful thinking. It is are synchronized through shared styles—and their recog- the feeling you are part of something bigger” (private cor- nition of being part of a stylistic movement—organized respondence, April 2012). Artists, media, and fans in Ghana around a metricality or rhythmic structure of digital rep- like to talk about how the dance has “gone international” etition. Azonto’s digital beats represent the latest modern even though it is primarily Ghanaians abroad who know it. version of a Ghanaian musical tradition, structuring how Kweku explained to me, “It is huge that people think white artists and audiences align and reconfigure references that people are doing the dance. Ghanaians are empowered by reimagine their temporal and spatial relationships to past, idea that they are influencing others.” For Kweku, there is a present, and future and to here and there. But while dig- false, though powerful, sense that the musical movement’s ital circulations create possibilities for new forms of con- center is always elsewhere. “When you go to a Ghanaian nection, they also reveal tensions around uniqueness and party in the U.S. everyone clings to the [Azonto] dance. It presence. If Azonto represents the ability to circulate and in- makes people feel good like they are part of an international corporate various places and signs into Ghanaian identity, network. But it also is about people missing home and being mobility itself becomes the nexus of a specifically Ghanaian anxious that they are not a part of something that everyone form of belonging; the ability to travel, to leave, itself be- else is in on.” comes a sign of locality and a crucial aspect of being in and When Sarkodie won the award for Best International of Accra. Act: Africa (cowinner with Nigeria’s Wizkid) at the 2012 BET As aspiring young musicians show, belonging to this AwardsinLosAngeles,itfurtherenhancedhisimageamong community of musical participation entails a desire to tran- Ghanaians as an international celebrity, though he remains scend its parameters, to move beyond specificities through almost unknown outside of Ghana.13 Indeed, the award for the universality that digital mobility promises of a poten- Best International Act: Africa was presented backstage, and tially worldwide audience. Digital fatigue is a valuable way the African artists were frustrated at how little attention they to characterize the contradictions of Azonto emergent at received at the spectacular event. Sarkodie’s fame is limited

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to small circles, alternative celebrity realms that parallel and Mobility as culture of production emulate U.S. popular culture rather than overlap with it. Ihavedescribedabovehowpracticesofdigitalcircula- Ghanaian musicians abroad, like Fuse and Sam 2-Shy, also tion and repetition constitute a culture of mobility. Azonto’s aspire to fame but are caught between two worlds. They rise, with all of its potentials and contradictions, demon- are alternatively motivated and fatigued by their attempts strates how global African youths creatively use digital me- to figure out the complexity of translating their experiences dia as modalities of production and sociality. It bears re- for both the Ghanaian and Western audiences that digital peating that media of any sort must be examined through circulation promises to link. the particular practices developed by a community of users Musical networks give Ghanaians abroad the sense (Burrell 2012; Miller 2011). Studying Africa from the per- they are a part of the latest trend at home, whereas those spective of media-savvy youths, and examining technology in Ghana feel like they are participating in a global phe- and digital practices from what is often still considered the nomenon. Both perceptions lead to a productive misrecog- periphery, challenges assumptions that technology is pri- nition that the Azonto phenomenon is more widespread marily Euro-America or Asian in its configuration. Africa than it, in fact, is. Dzino, a South African hip-hop producer has not come belatedly to digital technology. While young and cofounder of Black Rage productions, explained to me Africans are often, as Panji states, “second-hand users of that this is a common symptom of recent online popular technology,” their creative responses to geographic dis- trends. “If something is trending in your circles on Twitter tance, economic struggle, and popular trending push the and Facebook you think it’s huge everywhere but people limits of electronica. New social media practices emphasize outside of your tiny circle might never have heard of it. If ev- the mobility of the technologically informed body in con- eryone you know online is listening and posting comments trast to older discourses of identity and nationhood that fo- it leads to a feeling that these trends are everywhere when in cus on place-based culture as definitive of belonging. For fact they are confined to a rather limited group with shared young Africans around the world, mobility has become a networks.” He argues that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube way of living in which desires for place-based cultural affil- communities often lead to a magnified sense of the reach iations are, by definition, never fully realized. In this sense, of something like Azonto (private correspondence, May 4, persistent theoretical dichotomies of local and global and 2012). This exaggerated perception is an unexpected con- home and away dissolve in the circulatory productions of sequence of digital sociality that exaggerates linkages made African youth. through social media networks that rely heavily on trend- Azonto’s circulation has a rhythm and organization of ing topics. For Dzino, social media circulation provides new its own; its music–dance structure is a microcosm of the opportunities for African music but also leads to misunder- rhythm of its movement across social space. Artists’ mate- standings of market and consumption patterns. Social me- rial aspirations and desires for belonging are expressed in dia’s obsessive power to decontextualize and magnify con- potentially endless chains of digital musical repetition that tent gives voice to musicians who performatively produce extend their presence out into the world from wherever they their image of a stylish cosmopolitan Ghanaian commu- are. They hope to eventually catch up to their digital em- nality. But as someone in the music business assessing the blems. Azonto’s repetitious beats and replicable tracks and financial potential of Azonto, Dzino thinks that few out- videos are proclamations of success and mobility—they are side of Ghanaian networks and a handful of Nigerians are pure attitude, forms of self-recognition that, in the process interested. of circulating, use multiple technologies and modalities— For artists like DJ Black, Sarkodie, EL, Fuse, and Sam, production software, airwaves, Internet, mobile phones, new technologies and musical styles have the potential to videos, rumor, dance—in making a diffuse community of reinvigorate young Ghanaians’ recognition of a shared cul- participation. Azonto is an embodied version of a digital ture as well as its global significance. But as Dzino points copy of an idealized mobile Ghanaian identity. The power of out, speed and ubiquity threaten to erase music’s place- digital circulation as a form of cultural production is high- based specificity and market potential. How “people con- lighted by the speed with which Azonto emerged and de- sume music these days takes away the magic of seeing it veloped from Ghana to London to New York and back to live. If you see one hundred videos of Azonto, seeing it live is Ghana. Its movement is driven by participants’ unfulfilled not a big deal. Social media popularity might not translate desires to find place and affinity through a rhythmic tra- into sales or booking live shows. Online trending can dull dition that encourages new creative input. Popular digi- the excitement of a trend and give people the feeling that tal tracks provide a model of cultural nationhood in which the action is always somewhere else” (private correspon- dispersed Ghanaian youths reinvent themselves by resig- dence, February 18, 2012). Repetitive, ubiquitous circula- nifying neotraditional rhythms that remind them of home, tion provides artists and audiences with creative potential in the process providing a structure for aspirational cos- but also a fatigue that threatens the pleasure and emotional mopolitan expectations. connectivity and financial success it promises.

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Multiple skills and forms of appropriation are required but that the hometown crowd swayed the decision toward the local for a musical style to successfully migrate across social con- rapper (see Adu-Poku 2009). texts. Producers craft beats and rappers write lyrical hooks 5. Emerging from the vibrant Tema hip-hop scene, Sarkodie first came to public attention through phone-in rap battles on Adom aimed at market penetration. DJs give authority to these FM. In 2010, he won five Ghana Music Awards, including Artiste of sounds by celebrating them. Listeners, dancers, and other the Year and Best Rapper of the Year. In 2012, he again won Artiste artists are inspired to transform and circulate new steps, of the Year, and “U Go Kill Me” won Vodaphone Song of the Year. lyrics, and beats with a wide range of references. The sym- 6. According to EL, his apprentice Krynkman, also known as bolic inversion of the term azonto—from meaning pros- Nshona, did the template for the beat and EL refined it. For more on their production and beat making, see Lebrave 2012a, titute to defining a popular swagger—relies on remaking 2012b. disreputable outsiderness into a desirable quality. Estab- 7. Lyrics translated from Twi by David Akramah Cofie, Deborah lishing azonto as a traditional, local term gives it legitimacy, Ahenkorah, and Felicity Antwi. Their rendering reflects the infor- bundling and condensing the stereotypic hustler persona mal style of the song. such that it can be easily decontextualized and inhabited in 8. Stay Jay’s hiplife hit “Shashee Wowo” provides another exam- ple of a song hook derived from a school term—slang for a sexually various contexts. At the heart of success in Ghana’s youthful loose girl—that has entered popular culture. See Shipley 2013:163– musical community is the ability to embody and abstract 197 for descriptions of gender, sexuality, and hiplife. movement itself as a form of cultural production. Azonto 9. The “official” music video was released in early November celebrates self-actualization, continuous upward and out- 2011 (see YouTube.com 2011i). The song was released on Sarkodie’s ward mobility. It is a style of cosmopolitan self-making that album RapperHolic in early 2012, available for purchase as a digital download and in limited CD copies. allows practitioners to align a range of specifically Ghana- 10. For example, T.O., aka Mr. Ghana-Germany & Stunna Kid in ian attachments while ultimately eluding attachment Hamburg, released “Fa Ko Fom,” showing Azonto and life from a itself. German Ghanaian perspective (see YouTube.com 2011c). 11. Lyrics transcribed by the artist. 12. Several New York–based Ghanaian teens discussed with me Notes how listening to digital Azonto tracks and other Ghanaian popular tunes made them feel comfortable in the midst of broader isola- Acknowledgments. IthanktheWenner-GrenFoundation,the tions as well as miss Ghana more. Museum for African Art in New York, and Haverford College’s CPGC 13. Sarkodie’s local celebrity was cemented when he was and Provost’s Office for funding this research. For research and the- “signed” by Konvict Records, the label of international R & B star oretical assistance, I thank DJ Black, David Akramah Cofie, Reggie Akon, who is of Senegalese origin. After several years, this “sign- Rockstone Ossei, EL, C-Real, Fuse ODG, Sam 2-Shy, Ronny Boateng, ing” was dubbed a largely symbolic act, as nothing seemed to come Dzino, Panji Anoff, M3nsa Ansah, Rab Bakari, Ben Angmor Abadji, of it. Jeff Cobbah, Deborah Ahenkorah, Naa Kwarley Quartey, Bridget Ackeifi, Felicity Antwi, Gebby Keny, and Travis West. For research, organization, and images, I thank Saskia Kobschall.¨ For comments References cited on earlier versions of this article, I thank Hilary Dick, Nikhil Anand, Zolani Ngwane, Alex Dent, Shane Greene, and Gabriella Coleman. Adu-Poku, Richmond I am also grateful to the journal’s anonymous reviewers and An- 2009 C-Real Robbed at MC Africa. http://www.modernghana. gelique Haugerud for their patience and insightful, transformative com/music/9705/4/why-they-call-me-controversial-chikwe- comments. ndu.html, accessed July 10, 2012. 1. For examples of Azonto dancing, see YouTube.com 2011b Anyidoho, Akuosua 2011f, 2011g, 2012b. 1994 Tradition and Innovation in Nnwonkoro, an Akan Female 2. My involvement with Ghanaian popular music began while Verbal Genre. African Literatures 25(3):141–159. IlivedinAccrafrom1998through2000conductingresearchon Barber, Karin Ghana’s National Theatre Movement. Since 2003 I have conducted 2003 The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theater. extensive research with famous and underground musicians, pro- Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ducers, media workers, and fans in greater Accra, London, Johan- Basu, Dipannita, and Sidney J. Lemelle, eds. nesburg, and New York. I have also shot music videos for various 2006 The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip-Hop and the Globalization of artists and extensive video footage of interviews, performances, Black Popular Culture. London: Pluto Press. recording sessions, and daily life of artists and audiences. Boyer, Dominic 3. Peace FM challenged this formula, coming on-air in the late 2005 Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in 1990s with primarily Twi-language broadcasting. Its popularity led Modern German Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. other stations to follow suit. Joy FM and other stations that pri- Burrell, Jenna marily broadcast in English cater to more educated, middle-class 2012 Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafes´ of Urban Ghana. listeners, whereas Twi and other “local” language stations target Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. working-class audiences not fluent in English. They have helped Butler, Judith shift public discourse to respect the use of African languages, 1997 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: though in many contexts in Ghana the use of English remains as- Routledge. sociated with education and modern sensibilities. Chalfin, Brenda 4. Emcee Africa II, held in Botswana, was won by that country’s 2010 Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Cibil Nyte. Many observers thought that C-Real should have won Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v K-wXC9MSclQ, accessed 2012f 2-Shy Azonto Girl (promo 2).mpeg. Posted by Mr- = February 1, 2013. Twoshy, January 18. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 2012d Fuse ODG – Antenna Ft. Wyclef Jean (Official ukP3cp2kuTg, accessed January 7, 2013. Video). Posted by Off Da Ground TV, December 16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v 6LCoksSQMzs, accessed = January 7, 2013. Jesse Weaver Shipley 2012e *NEW ENTRY* Fuse ODG – #ANTENNA #TeamMANCH- Department of Anthropology ESTER [THE WINNNER!!] *NEW AZONTO* *DANCE Haverford College COMPETITION*. Posted by KwameJoe TV, September 20. Haverford, PA 19041 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v kfcKzQg9IxU, accessed = [email protected] January 7, 2013.

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