THE IMPACT OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN PERFORMANCE ON

WEST AFRICA FROM  1800

by Prof.  John Collins

 

 

Paper read at 19th International Biennial Conference of the African Studies Association of Germany (VAD) on Africa in Context: Historical and Contemporary Interactions with the World. Held at the University of Hannover, Germany 2-5^th June 2004

 

 

In this presenatation I will look at the enormous impact that  the popular performance and entertainment of the Black Americas has had on Africa over the last two centuries or so. Due to time constraints I will focus on just three Anglophone West African countries: namely Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone

Most are already aware of the effect   of the music and dance of African slaves and their descendents on the popular music idioms  of the America in the 19^th and 20^th centuries: minstrelsy, ragtime, jazz, blues and soul music of the United States;  calypsos, meringues,  rumbas  and zouk of the Caribbean and the samba of Brazil.

However this talk will concentrate the movement of this black performance styles across the Atlantic and back to Africa – constituting what might be considered the completion of a Trans-Atlantic black performance feedback cycle.

The audience is probably be familiar with relatively recent  examples  of this return or ‘homecoming’ of  the performing arts of the Black Diaspora to Africa.  For instance the impact of soul music and rock (based on African American rhythm ‘n’ blues) in the 1970’s on  Nigerian  Afro-beat (pioneered by  Fela Kuti)   and Afro-rock (pioneered by the Ghanaian band Osibisa). Or more recently  the influence of Bob Marley and  reggae on Alpha Blondy of the Cote d’Ivoire, Kojo Antwi of Ghana, Majek Fashek of Nigeria or Lucky Dube of South Africa. And even more recently has come African variants of American  disco-music, rap and hip-hop – such as the ‘burger’^[1] highlife and local rap or ‘hiplife’ of Ghana.

However in this presentation I want  to push the story of this  homecoming  of black American popular performance to Africa much further back in time  - and I will do this by working backwards from the 1940’s and 50’s . 

  

ONE : THE IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR – SWING, CALYPSOS  AFRO-CUBAN PERCUSSION &  LOUIS ARMSTRONG

During the Second World War  Anglophone West African music was greatly  influenced by wartime swing style of jazz music followed by  Calypsos (especially after the Andrew Sisters  ‘Rum and Coca Cola’ record hit)  and Afro-Cuban music and instruments. Particularly important was the fact the  American and British soldiers were stationed in these countries.

            In Ghana these foreign  servicemen made on impact on both the music and night-life.  the E.T. Mensah,  the leader of the most important of the post-war highlife dance band, the  Tempos, refers to a Scottish Sergeant Leopard, who had been a professional dance-band saxophonist in Britain.  In the 1940 Leopard formed  a band in Accra called the  Black and White Spots that consisted of foreign service-men and some local musicians, including Mensah.  It was the  American soldiers (who began coming to Ghana in 1942 (after Pearl Harbour), who  particularly  stimulated the growth of local drinking spots in Accra such as the Weekend-in-Havana. California and Kalamazoo where jazz and swing records were played. Besides the Black and White spots another wartime, band was the `Firework Four'  composed of four Ghanaians that included the drummer Kofi Ghanaba (then called Guy Warren) and saxophonist Joe Kelly. However the most important of these wartime swing-jazz bands was the he Tempos band founded in 1940 by the Ghanaian pianist Adolf  Doku and an English engineer and saxophonist Arthur Harriman, who recruited two members of the armed forces stationed in Accra and later joined he Ghanaian musicians E.T. Mensah, Joe Kelly and Kofi Ghanaba .

            After the war and with the departure of white army personnel the Tempos became totally Ghanaian, as did its audience. Not surprisingly the group added highlifes to its repertoire, but with a strong swing influence.  However, it was the addition of two other musical ingredients that made this band's version of highlife so successful.  These were Afro-Cuban percussion and the Trinidadian calypso, both introduced to the Tempos by Kofi Ghanaba who spent some time  in London in the late 1940’s  as bongos player for Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists (modelled on Stan Kenton's band) and also as the  compère of a BBC radio calypso program.  As a result of these innovations and under the leadership of E.T. Mensah,  the Tempos became the most successful West African dance-band of the 1950's and its  small swing combo line-up of alto and tenor saxophones, trombone, trumpet, trap-drums, Afro-Cuban percussion, double-bass and guitar, became the model for many other  Ghanaian bands: the  Rhythm Aces, Stargazers,  Rakers,  Joe  Kelly’s Band , Red Spots and later the Broadway, Ramblers and  Uhuru dance bands. The Black Beats was another important highlife dance band influenced by the  Tempos,   formed in 1952 by King Bruce and Saka Acquaye. It was particularly influenced  by the `jump' swing-music of Louis Jordan  and by the Trinidadian calypso musician  Lord Kitchener. These urban dance bands also influenced the low status highlife guitar bands of the period (most important being  E.K. Nyame’s group)  which began to utilize dance band instruments (trap-drums, bongos and  double-bass) and  incorporated  swing, calypsos,  rumbas  into their repertoires.

            As in Ghana,  British and Americans servicemen stationed in Nigeria  interacted with the local musicians in Lagos and  According to Waterman (1986) it was during this time that the Eastern Progressive Swing Band, the Harlem Dynamites, the Delux Swing Orchestra and other swing dance-bands were established in the city.The most important dance-band leader of the period was Bobby Benson who had been in the British navy and had entertained foreign wartime troops.( see Williams 1983) . Benson was naturally enough influenced by wartime dance fashions and in 1948 he formed his Modern Theatrical Group that played ballroom dances rumbas and sambas and calypsos  and boogie-woogie. He also  (see Clark 1979) put on `black and white minstrel type shows for Lagos audiences and   danced the jitterbug and kangaroo  wearing a `zoot suit'.

Unlike the Ghanaian dance-bands the Nigerian ones  did not play local African music , but after tours of Nigeria from 1950 of   E.T. Mensah’s Tempos,   Bobby Benson and other Nigerian dance-band leaders  (Rex Lawson, Sammy Akpabot,  A..C. Arinze, Bill Friday,  etc) were soon playing Yoruba and Ibo variants of this music

            Sierra Leone's nightlife also felt the wartime impact, and `big bands' like the Mayfair Jazz Band, the Cuban Swing Band and Melody Swingers were set up in Freetown.  In addition by the late 1940's  records calypsos also became popular in the country, provided by the local bands of Tejan Sie, Ali Ganda and others.

            During the 1950's and early 60's  another wave of jazz that made an impact on Africa was the  `Dixieland' style of Louis Armstrong who with  made two African  trips in 1956 and again in 1960/61; visiting Nigeria, Ghana, Zaire, Togo, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.

            In 1956, Armstrong,  his All Stars Band  and the singer Velma Middleton  made a s three-day trip to Ghana that  organized by the Columbia Broadcasting System who were making a film called `Satchmo the Great'.        When Armstrong, first arrived at Accra Airport they were welcomed on the tarmac by a collection of local dance-band musicians who greeted the Americans with the old highlife song `All For You'.  Armstrong recognised the melody as a turn-of-the-century Creole song from Louisiana.  There was a controversy at the time as to whether this song was an American one brought by African-Americans, or an old African melody taken to America. In fact the  melody of `All For You' is also identical to that of the Trinidadian calypso `Sly Mongoose' which, first recorded in the 1920’s by Lionel Belasco. This demonstrates the close and early musical contact between three black cultures; those of the Southern United States, the Caribbean and West Africa.

            On the 1956  trip Armstrong met  Prime Minister Nkrumah, performed before an Accra crowd of one-hundred-thousand and he  jammed with the Tempos dance-band at E.T. Mensah's Paramount Nightclub in Accra.  Satchmo's trumpet playing made a deep impression Mensah and other local dance-band musicians who began copying the American's phrasing and this jazz  influence was strengthened when the All Stars clarinettist, Edmund Hall, returned to Ghana to run a jazz band for a time at the Ambassador Hotel in Accra.

           

TWO : DANCE ORCHESTRAS,MINSTESLSY AND RAGTIME

We now move backwards a generation to First World War times  when large dance orchestras of almost symphonic composition were established by educated Anglophone West Africans  to play music for the local westernized elites introduced via sheet-music and early recordings. They played a range of music from light classical pieces to ragtime music, banjo songs ^[2], negro spirituals  and calypsos . They also played western ballroom dances which included African-American/Caribbean /Latin derived genres such as the foxtrot, one-step or turkey-trot , sambas, la congas and later rumbas and mambos. Sierra Leonean ensembles   included Triumph Orchestra,  the  Dapa Jazz Band  ( Horton 1984 and Ware 1978)   and the African  Comedy Group of Freetown (Nunley 1987)  In Lagos there was the  Maifair Orchestra and Chocolate Dandies (Waterman 1986 and 1990) . The earliest in Ghana was the Excelsior Orchestra of Accra formed in 1914,  and this was followed  up to the Second World period  by  a host of others: such  as the Jazz Kings, Rag-A-Jazz-Bo, Accra Orchestra,  Winneba Orchestra,   Cape Coast Sugar Babies, Casino Orchestra  and West African Instrumental Quintet. (the latter’s music re-released on the  Heritage CD 16 UK 1992) [3]. It was incidentally in the context of these Ghanaian high-class  orchestras that the name highlife was coined by local people  in the 1920’s for orchestrated renditions of local melodies. Ragtime pianists of the period included David Christian Parker and Lawrence Nicol of Freetown and  Squire Addo from Accra. The Ghanaian musicologist A. A. Mensah  believes that many of the features of early highlife, such as the use of dominant sixths, chromatic runs, breaks and  riffs,  were derived from ragtime.

Often associated with the performances of these high class ballroom events  were  vaudeville blackface minstrel acts (called concert parties in Ghana)  and the first references to American minstrelsy is in Lagos in the late  19^th century s  (Clark 1979)

In Ghana minstrelsy came later,  through early silent films and touring vaudeville acts.  One such was the African-American (or possibly Americo-Liberian)  man-and-wife  team of Glass and Grant who worked for two years in Ghana. They were brought from Liberia   in 1924 by the Ghanaian film distributor Alfred Ocansey  before  moving on to Nigeria in 1926. In Ghana they were understudied by the Ghanaian comic duo of Williams and Marbel and the Sierra Leone one of Williams and the previously mentioned Lawrence Nicol.  In Ghana the concert party were subsequently Africanised between the 1930’s and 50’s by Bob Johnson, the Axim Trio  and  E.K. Nyame who ‘hijacked’ the genre from the elites and took it to the villages. 

           

 THREE:  BLACK SOLDIERS    

Moving further back in time we come to the 1870’s when fife-and-drum and  brass-band of  West Indians Regiments began to make  a notable musical impact on Anglophone West Africa and acted as a catalyst in the formation of popular performance styles. For instance there were five companies of the West Indian Regiment were stationed in Sierra Leone as early as 1819 which according to Harrev (1987)   began playing European songs and hymns at public Sunday concerts in  Freetown by the 1860’s.

            By the 1840's there was a `native' military band at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana that played both martial and popular English tunes.<sup>[4]</sup> Then  in the early 1870’s  the  West Indian Rifles Regiments were  brought to Cape Coast and El  Mina  by the British to  fight in the `Ashanti Wars' of 1873/4 and 1900. These six to seven thousand West Indians (mainly from Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados) had an enormous impact on local  Fanti (Akan sub-group) brass band musicians as in their spare time these black Caribbean soldiers would  plays  syncopated Afro-Caribbean music, one of the favourites being the calypso `Everybody Likes Saturday Night'. (Mensah 1969/70) .   Up until the coming of these black regiments there is no evidence of Ghanaian brass bands playing any local music . However  the young Fanti brass band musicians were influenced by these West Indians and during the 1880’s went on to create their own syncopated  brass-band music  that utilized both West Indian clave rhythms as well as African ones that used hemiolas, offbeats and 6/8 poly-rhythms.  This music was called ‘adaha’ and brass bands that played this  ‘proto-highlife’ subsequently became popular  throughout southern  Ghana.  Ghanaian contact with black Caribbean soldiers would also explain why the adaha band musicians marched about in colourful `zouave' uniforms (red-rimmed black uniforms and matching red hat with tassel) as these were also worn by the West Indian Regiment  Furthermore, this  contact also explains why Caribbean-type street masqueraders (backed by  local brass bands) became  popular in the coastal Fanti area of Ghana  and are still performed there during Christmas and Easter parades.

            Two companies of the West Indian Regiment were also stationed in Lagos from the late 19th century and reminiscent of the  Ghanaian situation, Waterman  (1990) mentions that these influenced local marching bands; the most famous being the Calabar Brass Band of the 1920's and 30's.

 

FOUR :  FREED SLAVES  - THE  BRAZILIAN INFLUENCE

An   important group of freed African slaves who made an early impact on African popular entertainment were the Brazilian and Cuban slaves who settled in many West African coastal towns, particularly Lagos in Nigeria and Porto Novo in the Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey).  Although this influx began in the 1840's, it increased so dramatically after Brazil emancipated its slaves in the 1880's  that by that decade these Yoruba emancipados constituted ten percent of the Lagos population, where they were known as the `Aguda' or `those who have gone away' people.

            In addition to the architectural and other innovations (carpentry skills and processing of gari/manioc), these `Brazilians' introduced Afro-Brazilian performing arts to Lagos, Porto Novo and the `Brazilian quarters' of other West African towns. These included `carata' fancy dress, the elaborate `calunga' masquerades, and the `bonfin' festival. Also introduced were the samba da rodo dance and the `samba' frame-drum. ^[5]]  The small  rectangular samba drum is similar to the ‘asiko' one (associated with early West African guitar/accordion music)  ; indeed the two names are interchangeable. The asiko/samba drum was later incorporated into Yoruba juju music and  pan West African `palmwine'  music styles (Waterman 1990)  

            The `Brazilians' or `Aguda' people also made a contribution to the early popular drama of Lagos, for these immigrants helped introduce western type concert and theatre. For instance the Aguda elite established a `Brazilian Dramatic Society' in the 1880's that put on `Grand Theatre' that included humorous pieces and songs for violin and guitar ^[6].

 Although not employing the samba drum, Ghanaian highlife music may also have been was influenced by the music  of Brazilians (there was a small Brazilian quarter in James Town, Accra) as the Ghanaian musicologist  A.A. Mensah (1969/70) remarks, the samba rhythm is a dominant pattern in highlife music and ‘provides a visible link with the Latin-American spirit.'

 

FIVE: FREED SLAVES THE  MAROONS OF JAMAICA 

            The very earliest case of black American music and dance influencing Africa is the case of Goombay (Gumbe, Gumbay or Gumbia), a Jamaican ^[7] drum-dance of myelism, a neo-African healing cult associated with the maroon descendents of runaway slaves (Bilby 1985)  It is played on the European bass and snare drum and the large square goombay framedrum upon which the player sits.  The first reference to goombay in Jamaica is in 1774, from whence in 1800 it was taken to Freetown onboard ship by 550 maroons. This followed the maroon rebellion of 1795 when, because of white fears of a Haitian type black revolution in Jamaica, the British gave some of the surrendering  rebels the option of going to Freetown to join other groups of freed slaves who had begun to settle there.

            The first Freetown references to goombay are from 1820/1 and 1834, and indeed by 1858 this maroon drumming had so scandalised elements of the Krio elite that the local church Mission Society published a newspaper article warning people that `Gumbay is the cause of many vices'. (Harrev 1987).

Goombay is of course still played in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, where it is used to accompany masked dancers (Ware 1978)  and sometimes features the  ‘musical saw' that is bent and scraped with an iron rod.  A variant of this music evolved there around 1900 called  ‘asiko' (or `ashiko'), that shortly after became popular in Ghana and Nigeria and was played on frame-drums, guitars and accordions.

            Inspite of this opposition, goombay drumming and dancing continued to flourish in Freetown and spread. To other African countries. The Ghanaian musician Squire Addo told me that `gome', as this dance and drum is called in Ghana, was first introduced to the country around the 1900 Ga carpenters and blacksmiths returning from the Belgian Congo where they had been  working . In fact they were working there alongside  Sierra Leone artisans, as these two groups of skilled West African workers were employed between 1885 to 1908 in building the docks and infrastructure of the then Congo Free State, the private and ruthlessly run private domain of King Leopold of Belgium who had trained no local Africans to do such work ^[8]. A later wave of gome music was introduced to Accra in the 1940's from Fernando Po by Ga migrant fishermen returning home.^[9]

            A `gombe' drum is also found as part of some western Nigerian juju music ensembles,(Collins 1985) most probably introduced there by `Saro' (i.e. Sierra Leone) people; that is the descendents of Yoruba recaptive slaves who had been liberated in Freetown in the early 19th century and later that century returned home to Nigeria. `gumbe' or `gube' was also popular in the Malian capital Bamako between the 1930's and 50's where it gave its name to the multi-ethnic associations of young people.(Meillasoux 1968)  Likewise `le goumbe' was connected with the urban multi-ethnic youth associations of Abidjan in the Côte d'Ivoire in the 1940’(Lloyd 196() . According to Harrev  goombay has spread altogether to about twenty West and Central African countries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AIG-IMOUKHUEDE Frank. 1975  Contemporary Culture. In: Lagos, The Development of an African City, A.B. Aderibigbe (ed), Longman Nigeria, pp 197-226.

ALAJA-BROWNE Afolabi  1987.  From `Ere E Faaji Ti O Pariwo' to `Ere E Faaji  Alariwo': A  Diachronic Study of  Change in

Juju Music.  Paper read at the Fourth International Conference of IASPM (International Association for  the Study of Popular

Music) held in Accra, Ghana 12-19th August.

BEECHAM John. 1841. Ashanti and the Gold Coast, John Mason London.

BOONJAZER-FLEAS, Robert and GALES Fred.1991.  Brass Bands in Ghana. Unpublished manuscript with BAPMAF archives. Accra. 

BILBY Kenneth M. 1985. The Caribbean as a Musical Region.  The  Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, Washington D.C.

CLARK Ebun. 1979.  Hubert Ogunde:  The Making of Nigerian Theatre.  Oxford University Press.

COLLINS  E.  John   1985.   Music Makers of West Africa. Three Continents Press, Washington DC.

----          1986.    E.T. Mensah the King of Highlife.  Off The Record Press London.  Republished  Anansesem Press, Ghana 996.

---            1987.  Jazz Feedback to Africa. In: American Music, Illinois Press, Vol. 5, No. 2, Summer, pp. 176-193.

----           1992.  West African Pop Roots. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

----           1996  Highlife Time,  Anansesem Press,  Accra.

----           1997.  West African Popular Theatre. Indiana University Press. With Karin Barber and Alan  Ricard

COLLINS John and RICHARDS Paul.  1989.  Popular Music in West  Africa. In: World Music, Politics and Social Change, Simon Frith (ed), Manchester University Press, Chapter Three.  Originally a joint paper for the 1st International Conference of IASPM, Amsterdam, 21st-26th June 1981.

COURNET, Rene. 1958. La Bataille Du Rail, Brussel.

CUNEY-HARE  Maude. 1936. Negro Musicians and Their Music, Associated Publishers Washington DC, p. 21.

ECHERUO Michael J.C. 1962.  Concert and Theatre in Late 19^th Century Lagos.  Nigeria Magazine, Lagos, No. 74, September, pp. 68-74.

HARREV Flemming.  1987. Goumbe and the Development of Krio Popular Music in Freetown Sierra Leone. Paper read at the 4th International Conference of IASPM, Accra, Ghana, 12th-19th August.

HAMPTON Barbara. 1983. Towards a Theory of Transformation in African Music. In: Transformations and Resiliences in Africa, (eds) Pearl T. Robinson and Elliott P. Skinner, Howard University Press, Washington DC, pp. 211-229.

HORTON Christian Dowu.  1984.  Popular Bands in Sierra Leone,  1920 to the Present. In:  Black Perspectives in Music, Cambria Heights New York, Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall, pp. 183-192.

LLOYD P.C. 1968. Africa in Social Change:  West African  Societies in Transition. A Freder Paraeger Publication, New York.

MEILLASOUX Claude. 1968. Urbanisation of an African Community.              University of Washington Press, Seattle.

MENSAH Atta Annan  1969/70.  Highlife.  Unpublished manuscript with  COLLINS/BAPMAF Archives.

----           1971/2.  Jazz the Round Trip. In: Jazz Forschung/Research, Universal Edition Graz, Internationalen Gesellschaft Fur

Jazzforschung, No.3/4.

NUNLEY John W. 1987.  Moving with the Face of the Devil: Art and Politics in Urban West Africa. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.

WARE Naomi. 1978.  Popular  Music and African Identity in Freetown Sierra Leone. In: Eight urban Cultures:  Tradition and Change, Bruno Nettl (ed), University of Illinois Press, pp. 196-319.

WATERMAN Christopher. 1986.  Juju: The Historical Development, Socio-economic Organisation and

Communicative Functions of West Africa Popular Music.  Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Anthropology,  University of Illinois.

----           1990. Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an  African Popular Music, University of              Chicago Press, Chicago.

WILLIAMS James. 1983.  Orbituary for Bobby Benson.  In: New Africa, London, July, pp.51