Fondling Breasts and Playing Guitar

1

The agitated gang that rushed towards the premises of Victory Bible Church in the late morning hours of Sunday, May 9, 1999 definitely meant business. Armed with sticks, stones and broken bottles the mob stormed the church building in Awoshie, a North-Western suburb of Accra, and proceeded to seize loud-speakers and other equipment while engaging worshippers in a fierce exchange of menacing postures and arguments.[1] The background of this and various similar incidents is a ban on drumming and noise-making which the Ga Traditional Council imposes in advance of Homowo, the annual harvest festival, from early May to early June of each year.[2] It is customarily believed that granting the gods a period of rest and silence will yield an abundance of food in the following harvest season.[3] About a decade ago the refusal of various Charismatic churches to comply with the ban sparked off a fierce debate on the freedom of religion in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. Obviously, the role of music and sound in such a conflict is not restricted to the excitation of heroic emotions or its well known function as a performative signifier of cultural difference. In an area where the maintenance of power is immediately linked to the temporal control over its soundscape, the churches’ copious use of electric guitars, speakers and popular religious songs turned into the central focus of a hotly contested political and cultural controversy.

This article seeks to address this intricate mélange of social, legal and religious disputes as part of a multidimensional contemporary music history. Such a holistic perspective requires a linkage of political, cultural and psychological contexts to the analysis of musical structures – with the latter all too often dismissed by many Africanists as an epistemological prerogative of the Western academy. Already J. E. Kwegyir Aggrey, Ghana’s great Pan-Africanist insisted against such a self-imposed parochialism that “only the best is good enough for Africa.”[4] And in (t)his vein an analysis of music and dance should neither unduly centre on abstract musical structures or their bio-physical foundations nor wilfully ignore their methodological advances. There has been a longstanding tendency to describe the transcription and structural analysis of African music as a culturally neutral (etic) complement to the emic study of its cultural content. In the course of this article I will argue, however, that not only the increasingly dynamic and fluid character of the relation between self and other, intra- and extra-cultural knowledge,[5] but also the emergence (and ubiquitous presence) of a new scholarly discourse such as neuroscience might occasionally prompt us to reconsider the epistemological position of structural observations as a whole. With this methodological premise in place it might then be possible to preserve undeniable merits of the study of music ‘as’ and ‘in’ culture,[6] while at the same time ridding the ethnomusicological discourse of the questionable desire to study African performances under the pretence of exploring differences, rather than recognising similarities.[7] But there is a lesson to learn from these conceptual ramblings for prospective theorists of African music as well. Already back in 1971 John Blacking argued that “cognitive systems underlying different styles of music will be better understood, if music is not detached from its context … but treated as humanly organized sound whose patterns are related to the social and cognitive processes of a particular society and culture.”[8] A decidedly postcolonial and analytically discerning approach therefore not only demands the consideration of habitually neglected parameters such as gestures, movement or timbre but also needs to relate the study of musical structures to their wider social, performative and political surroundings, which might in many cases even underline their immediate relevance.

2

Considering the multiethnic layout of a densely populated postcolonial city[9] such as the Ghanaian capital it comes as no surprise that traditionalists are encountering increasing difficulties in their bid to maintain a lingual, political and religious Ga identity. In her magisterial analysis of the multi-layered sociolingual texture of Accra Mary Kropp Dabuku observed that, even though “multilingualism in the Ga-Speaking area is not declining,”

it is generally believed that the Akan language is growing in strength, at the expense of Ga. … Accra is growing physically and swallowing some of its smaller neighbours. Sandwiched between the wealthy suburbs of Osu and the elite North Labadi residential areas and the Trade Fair site, on land the La state has effectively lost, it is not surprising that the La traditional state feels itself under pressure in danger of marginalization. In such a situation people quite commonly look for a symbol to assert group identity.[10]

The “ban on drumming” clashed with modern sensibilities for the first time in the mid 1950’s when proprietors of night-clubs and dance-halls complained about its adverse affect on their businesses. As Tawia Adamafio, a Ga himself and information minister in Kwame Nkrumah’s post-independence government recalled, “a compromise was found and the traditional authorities agreed that whenever an important state or public function involving drumming was to take place a fee should be paid to propitiate the Ga gods.”[11] By the 1990’s the setting of the conflict however shifted from the entertainment business to the boisterous worshipping practices of mushrooming prophet healing churches.[12] After a violent raid on the premises of Lighthouse International Chapel in 1998,[13] the debate heated considerably in 1999 when Tawia’s son Nii Okaja Adamafio, the then Minister for Interior Affairs, openly declared his support for the traditionalists’ cause.[14] In the course of further attacks on branches of Apostolic Faith Mission, Victory Bible Church, Christ Apostolic Church and the El Shaddai Charismatic Church worshippers were harassed and keyboards, electric guitars and loudspeakers looted by irate intruders. The tense atmosphere of such an encounter is vividly captured in a newspaper report from May 2001:

Militant youth stormed the CAC church building while service was going on and resorted to smashing up the place, destroying glass windows in the just re-habilitated multi million Cedi Osu headquarters branch of the church. … Dramatically, the assailants met with fierce resistance from church members who refused to lie down and be trampled on. They returned the violent confrontation with equal zeal and a number of people sustained injuries.[15]

Not only public institutions such as the Accra Metropolitan Authority and the National Commission on Culture (who endorsed the ban) and the Commission on Human Rights and Justice (who keenly opposed it),[16] but also the press and media houses, internet-users and last but not least phone-in-callers to the programs of private FM-stations[17] contributed to the controversy. During May 1999 the conflict stirred the emotions to such an extent that even the long awaited farewell performance of Osibisa, Ghana’s most successful pop group of the 1970’s and 80’s had to be cancelled in spite of many protests.[18] In the Ghanaian Chronicle, one of Ghana’s most reputed private newspapers, two columnists expressed entirely different opinions on the issue. K. A. Kwarteng uncompromisingly insisted on the freedom of religion as granted by article 21 of the Ghanaian constitution:

Let nobody mention that the land on which the ban on drumming has been imposed belongs to those traditional worshippers. … There are certainly some Ga people around who are traditional worshippers. But there are also some Ga people around who are Christians, Buddhists, Muslims etc. … [Traditionalists] should go and present their case to the National Commission on Culture …. The commission would help them to bring a legislative instrument before parliament. If parliament sees that there is enough democracy and fairness in their case a statuary ban would be imposed …. This is not a matter between Christians and traditional worshippers. Not at all. If it were just that, I would not even have been interested in it. It is the freedom of worship granted us in our constitution which is under invasion.[19]

Legally informed supporters of the ban however pointed to article 26 of the same constitution, which guarantees all Ghanaians the right to maintain and promote their culture and tradition.[20] In this vein I. K. Gyasi was not ready to see a major impact on religious freedom in the temporal suspension of drumming. Rather, he brought the churches to book for their vociferous display of power:

If the Ga Traditional Council had gone further to place a ban on worship by Christian, Muslim and other groups, to stop the reading of the various holy books or had even gone so far as to order the closure of mosques, churches, synagogues and temples and other meeting places of religion, then, to me, this would have been an intolerable infringement on freedom of religion. The ban is on drumming for one month. The Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Anglicans, had for a long time worshipped God without playing any drums …. The new church groups, generally known as charismatic churches, sprang up. Worship was (and still is) characterised by an ear-splitting frenzy of drumming, guitar-playing, loud singing, ‘danceable’ music, a babel of forced tongue-speaking, waving of handkerchiefs and endless collections of money.[21]

Beyond its legal dimension the controversy blatantly illustrates the rapidly fading usefulness of labels such as ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in Africa, which need to be treated as constantly negotiable and dynamic entities rather than as clearly distinguishable antagonisms.[22] ‘Traditional’ religion is not at odds with hymn-singing in European missionary churches, which for a long time strongly opposed the use of drums in their services, but quarrels with charismatic congregations for whom songs, dances and tongue-speaking constitute part and parcel of their worshipping practices.[23] What we have here then is indeed “an African mode of worship running up against another African custom” and “not quite the clash between ‘foreign culture’ and ‘African tradition’ that it appears to be at first blush.”[24]

After a permanent “Conflict Resolution Committee” to mediate between traditionalists and representatives of the churches was installed in 2002, the controversy has of late flared up only occasionally. It needs to be noted however, that the row over the ban on drumming beyond its religious dimension can fairly be regarded to be an overt expression of a latent conflict of interests between the old-established inhabitants of Accra and the increasing number of non-Ga residents. Since the late colonial period[25] debates on the distribution of land or the language of instruction in schools became increasingly politicised, and on more than one occasion disgruntled Ga Youth took their protest against a perceived marginalization to the streets of the Ghanaian capital.[26]

3

Part of the Homowo celebration in La, a coastal suburb of Accra, is the performance of Kpa songs, which – similarly to the Kpashimo street processions in the neighbouring town of Teshie[27] – fall into two basic categories. The first one can best be described as a proliferation of tales on the settlement of the Ga-people in the Greater Accra Region, whereas the second one (Kpa-Sokpa) brings current political and social issues to public attention. Margaret Field already in the 1930's described their performance as a parade of groups “of about ten young men … stamping and chanting” whose songs are “essentially scurillous and consist of all the pieces of scandal whispered in the town during the year but not hitherto spoken openly.”[28] Unpopular politicians, misbehaving members of the community and social miscreants are openly castigated, which in a sort of carnevalistic manner can however only be done during the annual festival:

In dealing with situations of this nature, all niceties are thrown overboard. Some of the things mentioned in the songs are outrageous and worthy of condemnation under any normal circumstances; on this occasion any one who feels like expressing himself and has somebody in mind uses the occasion as a licence. … A woman who did not go steady with one man had the habit of bedwetting; any man who enjoyed her graces had to experience this disgraceful habit of hers. Some people got to know of it and they felt it was their duty to make the public aware of it.[29]

Due to an ongoing dispute within the La-community, in the year 2000 no public performance of the already rehearsed songs took place. One of these privately recorded pieces,[30] composed and performed by members of the “La Amoaku Mbii,“ however, translates the tension between Ga traditionalists and charismatic Christians into the mode of music and performance by referring to widespread criticism against the latter’s worshipping practices.[31] In continuing musical and textual variations a pastor is accused of embezzling collection proceeds while simultaneously engaging into sexual intercourse with women attending his “unwanted spiritual church.” The song thus denigrates the ‘osofo’ (pastor) as well as the female worshippers – disparagingly referred to as promiscuous old ladies – who are providing the financial means for miracles, prayer sessions and the excessive use of candles and “floda water”[32] (holy water):[33]

After imitating the common practice of ‘spiritual tongue-speaking’ through an glossolalic rendition of so called nonsense-syllables (“alabalaba”) the song puts a dubious prophecy (“a witch in your house, because of her you don’t succeed in life”) into the mouth of the pastor. At this stage a conspicuous shift from Ga to the widely understood Akan language (Twi), whose various dialects are the mother-tongue of some 50% of the Ghanaian population, occurs. Such kind of code-switching – though admittedly widespread in the Ga musical repertoire[36] – here however underlines the perception of Charismatic churches as enterprises of intruders, who refuse to assume their traditional role as clients of the old-established inhabitants of Accra.[37]

The final section of the song in which the density of textual references is deliberately reduced in favour of repeated references to female breasts and the corresponding “tso” (literally a stick or small tree, and here the erected male sexual organ) subtly refers us back to the controversy over the ban on drumming and noisemaking. The pastor leads the women to the nearby beach and – in the presence of the arch-angel Gabriel – begins to remove his attire. His fondling of the women’s breasts is mischievously associated with the striking of chords on an electric guitar. Characteristic syllables (“timitiri” etc.) imitate the sound of these instruments which have become an indispensable part of services in Ghanaian prophet healing churches. In this way, the final climax of the piece establishes nothing but an acerbic acoustical metaphor of charismatic worshipping practices:

Figure 1. Members of the La Amoaku Mbii-group during a recording session in September 2000

4

Like many other African performances the musical structure of this satirical song is closely interrelated with aspects of bodily motion, a socio-(e)motional system of distancing and approaching spectators,[43] gestures, mimics, stomping and feet-tapping.[44] In order to arrive at the initially advocated holistic perspective some remarks on the current scientific assessment of the temporal and spatial coordination of movement[45] and the interaction between lead-singer and chorus thus appears to be appropriate here. Neuroscientists have for some time now studied a sensorimotor loop, which includes the posterior parietal lobe, premotor cortex, cerebrocerebellum, basal ganglia and transforms sensory information into motor output.[46] Of late particular attention has been paid to the function of the ventral premotor cortex, a section of the frontal brain lobe which in humans largely overlaps with Broca’s language processing area, that controls our oro-laryngeal, oro-facial and brachio-manual actions (the movements of mouth, face and hands) and thus appears to be simultaneously involved in the processing of gestures, language and music.[47] Musical sound as a result of neuronal processes might then – as Overy and Molnar-Szakacs propose – be “perceived not only in terms of the auditory signal, but also in terms of the intentional, hierarchically organized sequences of expressive motor acts behind the signal.”[48] (It is perhaps worth mentioning here that already the musicians of ancient Egypt, Africa’s first civilization, referred to the act of singing in the context of a chironomic system of signifying musical gestures quite literally as “making music with the hands”[49]).

Motor action however results in distinctive, interpretable gestures only within a culturally and socially determined context. Proponents of a more or less unmediated transfer of evolutionary theory to the realm of aesthetic and cultural expression dwell extensively on hard wired evolutionary traits of the human body,[50] but tend to underrate the highly flexible and environmentally adaptive nature of our cognitive capacities, which “are tempered by the cultural specificity that constructs the role of the body in musical performance.”[51] It might in this vein also be useful to reconsider Todd’s differentiation between a primarily gestural and a tempo-associated locomotive musical motion, which in analogy to the motor theory of speech presumes a virtual image or representation of motion.[52] In order to acquire a distinctive cultural meaning, a signifying gesture (such as a finger pointing or the waving of a handkerchief, a common practice also in Ghanaian churches) needs to be distinguishable from a continuum of instrumental or rhythmically supportive movements. The ostentatious imitation of breast fondling and guitar plucking for instance is linked with the musical time flow mainly through the vocal imitation of the instrumental sound. The most obviously musically determined movements on the other hand are carried out with the least expressive parts of the body: Feet-tapping and stamping occurs in repetitive sections and at (cross-rhythmic) points of interchange between the lead singer and chorus within the individual melodic phrases, each of which contains 32, 48 or 64 basic pulses (smallest rhythmic units).[53] The function of tapping-movements (including its variability, perturbation and models of error correction with respect to phase and period) may thus be described as a sensorimotor synchronization of perception and action, and neural representation through the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and a cerebellar-cortical loop.[54]

Figure 2. Rhythmic interchange between Chorus (C) and Lead-Singer (L) in a melodic phrase, which contains 48 basic pulses (smallest rhythmic units) and is supported by regular (and partly cross-rhythmic) feet taps (F)

5

The performance of Kpa songs as part of a crowded and tumultuous street procession naturally requires a close coordination between the motor actions of individual participants. The continuous physical movement of the performers thus coincides with the perceptual and apparent one of the sonic structure.[55] Exactly this important conceptual analogy however makes a strong case for the claim that African songs deserve a micro-analytical approach and should not merely be regarded as specimens of socially defined genres such as cradle, work or protest songs.[56] Just like the song-text ridicules a couple of unnamed characters in an entelechic tale of religious fraud and sexual harassment, its sonic realisation establishes a structured network of temporarily altered, reshaped and finally abandoned patterns and melodic formulas, which become implicitly loaded with dramatic meaning: Part of this sonic narrative are the slight intonation and timbre differences[57] of the alternating lead singers as well as the diastematic relation between the phrase that defames worshippers as prostitutes and the melodic formulas since the crucial entry of the earlier mentioned witchcraft-prophecy. It would thus be worthwhile to extend the aesthetics of embellishment and playful variation which Kofi Agawu employs to confront a generic and rotational reading of Ghanaian time-line patterns with an African mode of discourse into the realm of verbal creativity and melodic development:[58] Each of the following variations fills the tonal space between E-Flat and B-Flat at the outset of the phrases in a slightly different manner and thus acts – similar to Baudrillard’s quite differently contextualized description of simulacra as continuous production of copies without an original – as a diastematic derivation of a virtual model, which is realised in numerous peculiar occurrences, but never appears as such[59] (see musical examples below). It is thus perfectly possible to describe this musical feature as a sort of “interversion,” a term that according to Rudolph Réti signifies the “interchanging [of] the notes of a thematic shape in order to produce a new one.”[60] Even though a staunch postcolonialist might dismiss this conceptual analogy as a feeble eurocentric misrepresentation of African performances, it could equally be perceived as an overdue shoulder-rubbing with an established discourse, that exactly through its intercultural extension ceases to be the sole intellectual property of ‘Western’ theorists. Be that as it may, one can nevertheless fairly regard this tonal variability as a direct aural equivalent of the verbal creativity which the text displays in the continuously refined innuendos of the lead singer: Mumo sɔmɔ → Mumo oblayei → Mumo sɔmɔ oblayei → Mumo sɔlemɔ yaimeji or Shika hɛwɔ → Ame hemona hɛwɔ → Miidza nyoŋma hɛwɔ → Kofi ne Ama hɛwɔ.

Figure 3. Four variations of the same (virtual) melodic model in four different sections of the song[61]

In stark contrast to such micro-motivic developments the song closes off with the climactic repetition of the profane and ambiguous expressions “be etswa” and “tso gbemi.” Detached from a purely textual and verbal function these final motivic split-offs thus acquire – similar to the imitation of guitar sound and other innuendos of the alternating lead singers (their rhythmic shape nevertheless betraying their former role as a bridge between two text phrases) – an almost gestural character themselves. Such structural consideration may admittedly lie beyond the reach and disciplinary interest of both neuroscientists and social anthropologists convinced that with either an appraisal of coordinated movements or its social function music’s essential raison d’être has already been aptly understood.[62] In the light of current trends in music research, exactly the critically bemoaned investigation of abstract tonal structure can however assume the important role of a mediating link between an inner bodily neuroscientific perspective and the (event-centered) performative perception and organisation of music and sound in society.

In addition to its discussion of the performative transition of a conflict over the proliferation of music and sound into the realm of song and performance, another aim of this article has thus been to question the epistemological barrier which separates the discourse of “ethnomusicology” from ‘Western’ musicological and music-theoretical knowledge production.[63] Both the (to a large extent universal) neurobiological premises of bodily motion and the examination of the inherent structure of its sonic representation situate the socio-cultural contexts of African performances within an intellectual framework that moves beyond its (pejorative or idealised) perception as a complementary ‘other’ to the music of the ‘West.’ The emerging cracks in this crumbling disciplinary wall may in addition to that however task a more malleable, interdisciplinary and culturally open-minded theory of music to bridge the widening gap between the study of cultural content and the plain bio-musical foundations of music making. In order to attain a truly comprehensive and impartial picture of African Music, then, its 21^st-century analysis needs to combine cultural, scientific and historical competences with the necessary attention to the dense textual strategies of performative action, a vast and enduring challenge which makes an emphatically holistic musicology not only one of the most exciting, but also intellectually most challenging fields among the humanistic disciplines.