GOSPEL-HIGHLIFE: GHANA'S NEW RESPONSE TO URBAN ANXIETY
BY JOHN COLLINS
PAPER READ AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MUSIC AND HEALING IN AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA SEPTEMBER 3 - 5, 1997 HOSTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR AFRICAN MUSIC AND DANCE AND THE INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF GHANA LEGON
Published under the title ‘Urban Anxiety and its Sonic Response’. Glendora Review, Lagos, Nigeria, (ed.) Olakunle Tejuoso, Vol. 3, No, 2 & 4, 2004, pp 23-8.
Since the 1980's a new musical-cum-religious phenomenon has swept Ghana. This is the gospel highlife dance-music of by the Christian churches. Infact gospel highlife now constitutes around 60% (1) of the country's local cassette production and musical airplay. There is even a gospel musicians union formed in 1987 and the churches run several gospel recording studios.(2) Moreover, some churches have begun using concert parties, a form of local popular drama or highlife opera (3). The clientele at my own Bokoor Recordings studio in Accra reflects this development. When I began running it in 1982 it catered mainly for secular highlife and concert party bands and now it's practically all gospel groups.
An economic explanation for local popular music moving from the secular to the sacred is that during Ghana's economic slump of the 1970's the music industry almost collapsed. Many musicians moved abroad (4), whilst many of these who remained behind went under the patronage of the churches - who began to use popular dance music for outreach purposes. Whatever the reasons for this fusion of popular performance and local churches, it brought together two quite distinct spheres of life that both have a long history of reflecting and articulating the urban anxieties arising from the rapid socio-economic changes that began under colonialism.
Very briefly these changes are as follows. Strains within the traditional Ghanaian family system, increased migration, the emergence of modern social classes, economic uncertainty and the growth of cities.(5)
The anxieties resulting from this modernisation are, however, often expressed in traditional terms: witchcraft and 'juju' accusations, magical 'money doubling ' and the help or hindrance from spirits such as forest dwarfs (Akan mmoatia). Another example are the waves of urban hysterias concerning strangers that have occasionally swept the country and couched in supernatural terms. In 1969 many people painted white crosses on their doors and bolted them after dark as there was rumour that the forest devil, Sasabonsum, was looking for his son who had run away to town. A little later there was a market panic over a giant man-eating grass cutter from Togo and Nigeria (6). Then in May 1974 another paranoia swept through Ghana over strangers from Benin and Nigeria whose touch or handshake would wither a man's genitals or women's breasts (see attached newspaper cartoon). An accused man was stoned to death for this by a frightened crowd at Circle, Accra that year. In January this year (1997) a similar hysteria occurred again and this time about twenty people (including strangers) were killed.(7)
What some writers have observed (Christensen 1962, Field 1960, Garlick 1971, Twumasi 1975) is that witchcraft accusations are paradoxically a modern if neurotic response to change that have even actually increased in Ghana this century; triggered by cocoa money, the fragmentation of the extended family, the weakening of traditional authority, the rise of aggressive individualism and the other modernising factors mentioned earlier.
Traditional witchcraft accusations were a dramatic religious way of limiting excessive individualism and wealth by communally oriented social systems. Ironically, whereas the socio-economic changes initiated by the British led to an increase in witchcraft accusations, at the same time they banned the very practices and cults that traditionally exposed witchcraft: especially in southern Ghana where the British colonialists had a firmer grip (8). As a result, from the 1920 there was a ‘search for security' as the social-psychologist Margaret Field put it (9), with southern Ghanaians patronising new anti-witchcraft movements: either by importing cults such as Tigari and Blekete (10), from the north, by re-orienting older local cults (11) or by founding separatist Christian sects.(12)
These spiritual Christian sects were led by charismatic prophets who preached a millennial message to their congregations composed mainly of new urban migrants (13). They also employed many traditional religious practices: spiritual healing, exorcism, divination and possessions (by the Holy Ghost)
Unlike the European churches, the separatist spiritual sects. also employed drumming and dancing for worship. In the 1920's the church of the Twelve Apostles clapped, swayed and danced to gourd rattles that helped drive off evil spirits. The Musama Disco Christo sect om the other hand used local Asafo drums (Baeta, 1962: 15/16 and 36). Later other instruments were added. The Keta based Apostolic Revelation Society for instance was, by the 1950's, using harmonium, brass instruments and playing in 'night-club style' (Ibid:92).
Infact, it was partly the refusal of the orthodox churches to allow drumming and dance-music that led to Ghanaian Christian congregations moving in ever increasing numbers to the separatist spiritual and pentecostal sects. By 1955 there were seventeen of these denominations in Accra alone(14) and today there are literally hundreds of them throughout Ghana (15). And the main concern of their congregations is 'witches and evil men at workplaces’ (16).
Although drumming and dancing have spread nowadays to the orthodox churches it was the separatist churches, with their traditional African emphasis on worship through dance, that pioneered gospel-highlife. For instance, the Kristo Asafo Mission formed in 1971 runs seven gospel dance bands and one concert party (Collins, 1996: Chapt 34)
Highlife performance has not only been drawn into the orbit of the local spiritual sects and churches but also exhibits some similarities with them. Let us look at this in more detail.
Firstly, both are trans-cultural 20th century Ghanaian responses that successfully blend African and Western elements. Secondly, they cater very much for the same intermediate class of people who have emerged in between the Westernised elites and subsistence peasant farmers: these include cash-crop farmers, new urbanites, semi-skilled workers, artisans, petty traders, clerks, teachers, drivers and so on.(17)
The third similarity between local popular performance and spiritual churches is that they both provide their audiences with cathartic release in the Aristotelian sense of a therapeutic purging of the emotions (18).
Catharsis is an aspect of the Ghanaian ritual dance dramas associated with many initiation, divination and possession ceremonies and annual festivals.(19). Some of these old cathartic procedures have found their way into the spiritual churches. Their congregations dance, become possessed and speak in tongues whilst their charismatic prophets make dramatic divination's, miracles and exorcisms. The resulting cathartic renewal is reflected in such terms as 'revival' and 'born again.'
In a more secular context, cathartic release through dancing, weeping, laughing, applauding and jeering is a feature of the local concert party. This modern form of popular Ghanaian opera involves both a highlife session for its audience to dance, followed by a comic plays full of moral messages, exciting action and melodramatic confrontations between old and new, good and evil. Bame (1968, 1969) claims that the concert party is a 'social tranquilliser' that integrates anti-social behaviour, whilst Ricard (1974: 1978) says that the Togolese variant 'fills an emotional vacuum' for the newly urbanised.
Bame (20) particularly points out the cathartic release is reinforced by the high degree of audience participation associated with the genre (21). Moreover, humerous depiction's of strangers such as Nigerians and Liberians (22) helps deflect or displace inter-ethnic hostility. Equally emotionally defusing is the lampooning of the pompous lawyer, policemen and teacher, or the illiterate; often by the genre's central ‘Bob’ character, who is a stage version of the traditional trickster hero, Ananse-the-Spider.
A fourth similarity between popular performance and the separatist churches is that they both concern themselves with the anxieties and tensions of modern urban life, either trying to spiritually resolve them or, as in the case of popular text, depict them and comment on them. Let us look at what Brempong and Barber (1984;260 and 1987; 50) call the 'chaos' and 'horrors' of city life as portrayed in highlife songs and concert party texts. I will focus in on the topics of urban migration, class stratification, the break-up of the extended family and the contemporary fascination with stage demons.
New jobs and the expansion of the education system have resulted in increased urban migration,(23) which in turn has exacerbated drunkenness (24) and prostitution (25): all topics found in popular texts. The highlife song 'Ankwankwaa Hiani by the Modernaires (Decca W. Africa 1944, 1959) is about a poor youngman who is forced to town by poverty, where he meets worse problems that the ones he left behind. In Yamoah's song 'Osigyani' (Senofone FAO 1520) of the 1950's a bachelor complains that he has turned to drink because he has no girlfriend or wife, a common plight of the poor new urban migrant. Okukuseku's song ‘Robert Mensah’’ is about a Ghanaian football hero who was stabbed to death in an akpeteshie (local gin) bar in 1972.(26).Drunks, fast living playboys and ‘good-time’ girls also commonly feature in concert party plays (27).
Unlike the traditional social system,(28) the modern one based is on competition, open social mobility and individual achievement. This has resulted in enormous disparities in wealth and in sudden changes of fortune. However, although the plight of the poor and the appearance of a nouveau-riche is a common theme in popular text (29) these are not usually depicted in modern terms of class-struggle, but rather in the traditional ones of morality and spiritual medicine.
Concert party plots often portray the humble and hardworking who 'suffer to gain' in contrast to lazy and immoral spend-thrifts who end up destitute (30). Traditional medicine and witchcraft as the causes of riches and poverty is also a common theme in popular text (31). For instance the African Brothers most famous song of the early 1970's is about the forty year old 'Yaw Berku' who complains that, due to witchcraft, he does not even have forty pounds to his name.
Ghanaian popular entertainers do not only see success or failure depending on supernatural forces, but employ these forces themselves. After a series of unlucky incidents the highlife musician King Bruce acquired a charm from an Ewe 'juju-man' (Collins/Bruce forthcoming). Likewise the Jaguar Jokers concert party had a traditional priest annually bless their musical instruments and had taboos on certain foods when on tour (Collins, 1994: 135 and 423). Mr. Bampoe, the leader of the Jaguar Jokers told me (Ibid.: 131) that he had never made a highlife record because a successful recording-artist friend of his of the 1950's had actually been 'jujued' by a jealous competitor whom had bewitched needless used in playing some of the man's records (i.e. sympathetic magic). Bampoe claims to have seen three such needles in his dead friend throat.
Popular performance texts also deal with the break-up of the extended family, a rather neutral sociological expression which does not convey the destructiveness and misery of this process: which involves inheritance disputes (32), co-wife rivalry (33), neglected children and witchcraft accusations.
The orphan rejected by the evil stepmother is a common theme of popular text (34) and three reasons can help explain this. Firstly, the customary seniority arrangements between co-wives in polygamous families are being eroded (by education for instance) leading to disputes over the allowance and inheritance to their respective children. Secondary, high rates of migration are causing increasing divorces and broken homes, resulting in what Ester Goody (1966) calls 'crisis fostering' where a parent remarries and the child is maltreated by the new parent or guardian. Thirdly, the orphan state itself may be a poetic way of describing the acute sense of loneliness and anomie that many feel in the big city.
Accusations of witchcraft and the use of evil poison within the family is also the subject of many highlife songs and plays (35). To take just one example, in a long soliloquy in the Jaguar Jokers play ‘Man Needs Help’ (Onipa Hia Mmoa) the comedian Opia talks of witchcraft being the cause of debt, barrenness and sickness (Collins; 1994:10-2). This follows a highlife lament by his friend Tawia who accuses his own mother of making him a useless drunk by putting a 'grawa' (a large water-can0 in his stomach (36).
Moving away from witchcraft within the family I will end on the subject of more impersonal supernatural forces that have become popular with concert parties since the 1970's. These are the depiction's of forest and water spirits (37). Those concert parties that specialise in stage conjuring, such as those of ‘Professors’ De-Ago and Hindu (38) employ midgets whom they claim to be forest dwarfs. The more standard form of concert party are also full of monsters that are depicted in both the plays themselves and on the hand-painted 'cartoons' and eye-catching stuffed demons (39) they use for pre-show publicity.
The 1973 Jaguar Jokers play 'Orphan Don't Glance' (Barber et al, 1997:104/5) contains a scene in dim red light of a satanic bat-winged Sasabonsum forest spirit that attempts to axe an orphan (see attached picture): only to be defeated amidst thunder and lightening by three hymn singing angels. A 1977 production by the same group entitled 'Opia in Court' includes a justice dispersing ten-foot high pale-faced goddess who represents the West African mermaid 'Mammy Water (40). More sophisticated stage demons have appeared since. For instance the Kumapim Royals concert party uses day- glow paint and ultra-violet light for illuminating forest scenes of floating heads and figures of death (41).
The recent appearance of these elaborately constructed spirits by concert parties may reflect their audiences anxieties in two ways. Firstly, impersonal monsters dramatise fearful and unknown urban dangers that include hand-shaking wiches involve forest spirits coming to town. Secondly, stage versions of dangerous nature spirits may symbolise the general unease in a country undergoing de-forestation and pollution for the sake of rapid urban sprawl.
In short, whereas the spiritual churches use spiritual healing and exorcism to ward-off and drive out evil spirits, popular performance depicts and defuses them theatrically.
To conclude: both local popular theatre and the spiritual churches reflect and articulate the anxieties of new urbanites. Both also, quite independently, attempt to alleviate and solve this angst; either through popular dance, song-text and theatrical catharsis on the one hand or sacred dance, Christian ritual drama and spiritual healing on the other.
It is therefore not surprising that with the emergence of gospel-highlife these two distinct 20th century trans-cultural forms have recently fused together. In so doing they have created a contemporary home grown therapy that, like the traditional Ghanaian one, combines rhythmic music, dancing participants and dramatic catharsis. What a westerner would call secular music therapy is therefore in Ghana encapsulated within sacred performance and spiritual healing.
FOOTNOTES
(1) The Christian Messenger newspaper, Ghana, 1990, Vol. 15, pp. 1 and 4..
(2) Jesus Above All Studio, East Legon and one above the Catholic Bookshop in Tudu, Accra.
(3) The Kristo Asafo Mission has one, through which the ace comedian Nkomode passed. Conversely the leader of F. Kenya's concert party became a prophet in Abidjan in the late 1980's and used his group for evangelical purposes.
(4) One quarter of registered members of the Musicians Union of Ghana were abroad in 1979 (Collins, 1996:247).
(5) See Max Asimeng (1981) for a full discussion of this.
(6) Personal communication with market trader/concert actress Vida Oparebea, 2nd May 1974.
(7) Togolese nationals were initially thought to be the culprits this time. The origin of this mass hysteria is thought to be the Cameroon's and it may have been part of a widespread West African phenomenon, as just this July (1997) there were reports of similar killings in Senegal.
(8) The Anlo Native Jurisdiction/custom ordinances from the 1880's reduced the religious role of Ewe chiefs and banned 21 cults. In 1902 the British attempted to confiscate the Golden stool, the key symbol of the Ashanti Union. The ban on 'carrying the coffin' reference was from E.F. Collins personal communication.
(9) This was the title of her pioneering 1960 book that looked at 23 new Ashanti shrines and the patients who were exhibiting neurotic responses to change such as depression, anxiety and paranoia.
(10) Tigari came from northern Cote d’ Ivoire in 1940 (Acquah, 1958:153). Blekete (or Kundi) reached the Volta Region, via Fanti land, from the north Ghana in 1932 (Hill, 1981, Chapt.5)
(11) Twumasi (1975:20 - 3) refers to new-look traditional medical cults that, compared to older ones, deal with high rates (20%) of the 'cleansing' of witches. Field (1960: 80) mentions the revival of a more benign form of the old Ashanti executioners cult, Obosum-Brafo.
(12) The very first was the Fanti church of the Twelve Apostles founded in 1922. It was an offshoot of Liberian prophet Wade Harris’s earlier movement.
(13) Asimeng (1981:46-52) sees the growth of separatist sects as being response to urbanisation, migration and the anomie of city life.
(14) For the 1955 figures see Acquah (1958:145-151)
(15) 1600 religious organisations were registered with the National Commission on Cultures Religious Affairs Department in 1991 of which 800 were Christian. (Ghana Broadcasting Corporation News, 29th December 1991)
(16) See Joe Bradford Nyinah's 'Cult Culture: How it Develops' Graphic newspaper, Ghana, November 18th, 1988, p.7. He also states that between 66% and 88% percent of the sects congregations are women.
(17) For the intermediate status of Ghana popular artists see Collins (1994: 289/90 and 292/3) .
(18) Catharsis was an aspect of ancient Greek ritual dance-drama (that involved Saturnalia, possession and ritual rebirth) and the later secular Greek theatre that evolved out of it.
(19) These ceremonies and festivals often contain 'marginal' (van Gennep, 1960) and 'liminal' (Turner, 1967) periods of taboo breaking and license that mark ritual rebirth and seasonal renewal. Some Ghanaian example of such festivals are the Ga Homowo (see Field 1937:47), the Brong Apoo festival (see Bame, 1991) and the close of the Winneba Aboakyere deer hunt festival (see Etherton, 1982).
(20) Bame says (1969) that in a survey he conducted 22.5% of the audience claim they weep during a play and 64. 5% say they find the play's moral helpful in their everyday life.
(21) Audiences often go up to the stage to offer condolences, praise, money and food to the actors
(22) Examples are the 1954 Jaguar Jokers play 'Kashele' about a Lagotian tricked boy a Ghanaian women (see Collins, 1994: 157) and the 1930 Two Bobs play 'Minnie' the Moocher' that involves two rice-eating Liberian "Kroo Boys' (see Sutherland, 1970)
(23) By 1960 23% of Ghanaian were urban (Asimeng, 1981:140) of which one quarter were migrants (Twumasi, 1975:52). For positive correlation between level of education and desire to move to the urban areas see Twumasi (1975:53/4). (24) See Akyeampong (1996) who deals with the emergence of young men's urban drinking clubs as far back as the 1860's
(25) See Twumasi (1975:53) on the dangers of female urban migrants becoming prostitutes.
(26) Two examples that connect drinking to economic hardships are Onyina's 1956 "Ewiase Ye Me' (The world is Affecting Me) and A. B. Crentsil's early 1980's hit 'Akpeteshie Seller.
(27) See Bame (1968) and Ricard (1974). For a 1950's Kwaa Mensah play on this theme see Collins (1994: 154-47 and 196)
(28) For the caste-like traditional social structure see Asimeng(1981;117/8)
(29) See Yankah (1984:572) and Brempong (1984: 556-60). Of the 117 highlife songs (on 78 rpm shellac record) of the COLLINS/BAPMAF collection that have been translated into English nine are on the topic of money and poverty. (BAPMAF, the Bokoor African popular Music Archives Foundation is a NGO set up by musicians in Ghana in 1990)
(30) See Bame (1985:84-7) for a synopsis of a Kakaiku play about a Cinderella-like Mansa who ends up marrying a chief. See also the 1973 Jaguar Jokers play 'Awisia Yi Wo Ani' (Orphan Don't Glance, i.e. enviously) in Barber et al (1997: 92-116).
(31) See Yankah (1984: 592) on the theme of witchcraft in highlife songs. In the COLLINS/BAPMAF collection 10 out of 117 songs are on this topic.
(32) This is particularly acute in the Akan areas whose matrilineal system is at odds with the imported patrilineal one of the West.
(33) For co-wife jealousy in highlife songs see Asante-Darko and van der Geest (1983); and for this topic in concert party plays see 'the Jealous Rival' translated by Bame (1985:103-28).
(34) For highlife songs see van der Geest (1980) and Yankah (1984). For concert plays by the Jaguar Jokers see Barbers et al (1997: 92-116), by E.K.'s Akan Trio see Collins(1996: 13/4), by the Happy stars of Lome see Ricard (1974:169 and 117) and by Ahamanodo’s and Kakaiku's groups see Bame (1985), In the COLLINS/BAPMAF collection 5 out of the 117 translated songs concern the plight of the orphan.
(35) See Brempong (1984) for songs by Alhaji Frempong, Opambuos, African Brothers, Yamoahs, Dr. K. Gyasi and the Ramblers. Six of the COLLINS/BAPMAF 117 translated songs on this subject.
(36) Brempong (1984:243) refers to a highlife by Opambuo's Band with almost the same refrain. Akyeampong (1996: 154) refers to K. Gyasi's song ‘Nsa Mennim Nom' about a family teaching a member to drink.
(37) The first reference I've seen to the supernatural in concert plays is the late 1920's 'Fear No Ghosts' by William's and Marbel of Accra. However this had no elaborate costumes or sets (Collins, 1994:152/3)
(38) For a description of a De-Ago show in 1976 see Collins (1994: 152/3). Professor Hindu became the 'guru' of the famous late Nigerian Afro-beat star, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, for a while in the mid 1980's. One of the very first stage conjurers was professor Kobina Segoe who became president of Ghana's first concert party union in 1960 (Collins, 1994:115/6 and Barber et al, 1997:16 -18).
(39) Brempong (1984:109) notes that during the 1970's F. Micah's group carried a stuffed animal/supernatural creature on top of its touring bur for pre-show publicity.
(40) The original 1974 version of 'Opia in Court' had no monster characters at all (Collins, 1994:141 and 127/8 )
(41) For a description of this 1992 Kumapim Royals play 'Me Mbo Adam Nkwaa Soboo' (Don't Blame Adam Alone) See Collins (1994:168-171)
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