ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CENSORSHIP IN GHANAIAN POPULAR PERFORMANCE BY  JOHN COLLINS (Oct 2004)

 

Published in Popular Music Censorship in Africa, Ashgate  Publishing Company, UK and USA, (eds)  Michael Drewett and Martin Cloonan,  2006, pp.171-186.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Censorship of the arts is one of the mechanisms that central social groups of a society consolidate and control social, political and bureaucratic power or ‘hegemony’, a word coined in the 1940s by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Furthermore, Gramsci believed that that the ruling-class hegemonic control of a society is never permanent and that it has to continually repress or moderate anti-hegemonic impulses emerging from the masses: such as trade unions, labour parties, independence struggles, youth movements, ethnic and other sub-cultures.  Popular culture is another important arena where these hegemonic/anti-hegemonic struggles are worked out. On the one hand there is the hegemony of the ruling group with its ‘repressive’, and ‘centripetal’ approach that includes artistic censorship. On the other hand there are the anti-hegemonic ‘emancipatory’ and ‘centrifugal’ tendencies towards free expression and the creation of new identities within the emergent popular culture. [1]

The most important popular performance styles of Ghana are collectively known as ‘highlife’ which first evolved as a fusion of local African and imported western and African-American performance elements in the coastal cities of Ghana from the late 19^th century. In turning to the topic of the censorship of Ghanaian highlife I focus on areas of repression that have emanated from four differing areas of central hegemony over the last hundred years, as Ghana has witnessed a transition from British colonial rule to various forms of post independence governments.

The paper therefore examines firstly the attitude of the British colonial authorities and missionaries to local popular performance up to independence.   Secondly, it turns to the negative attitude to popular music by traditional African authorities. Thirdly, the paper looks at political censorship of popular songs by the post independence governments of Nkrumah and others. The paper concludes on the current controversy over the lyrics of newer forms of highlife which the older generation see as morally indecent.

As will be seen the types of censorship applied ranges from bans on performances, arrests of artists, the de-throning of chiefs, destruction of music records, criticisms in the mass media, the banning of songs on radio, the re-writing of indecent lyrics and the curbing of songs and indeed whole music genres used by political opponents both in the modern and traditional sectors.

 

 

ONE : COLONIAL/MISSIONARY  CENSORSHIP

The British colonial system in Ghana became fully established after the ending of the slave trade in the early 19^th century and particularly from the 1870’s when the British imperial army launched a series of wars against the inland Ashanti kingdom that consolidated British rule throughout the whole country, then known as the Gold Coast. The colonial rulers and white missionaries therefore wanted to turn Ghanaians into punctual, disciplined   and  ‘civilised’ workers for the new colonial economy and utilised music to help do this: particularly the martial music of regimental bands, refined classical   orchestral concerts, ‘highbrow’ theatre and Christian hymns and anthems to counteract  ‘pagan’ drumming and dancing. Ironically these imported styles were subsequently utilised by, initially, coastal, Ghanaians to create their own acculturated or trans-cultural styles of music, dance and drama, such as highlife ‘and a local popular theatre known as the ‘concert party’.

Objections by colonial authorities to these Ghanaian popular performance forms that began to emerge in the coastal towns from the late 19^th century first concerned music played by local ‘adaha’ fife-and-drum and brass bands.[2]  In 1888 Reverend Minister Kemp described the sound of drum-and-fife bands as ‘tormenting’, and spoke of the danger of allowing Sunday school processions to be led by them would  ‘ultimately lead to the ballroom, the heathen dance and other worldly amusements’.[3] In 1908 the District Commissioner of Cape Coast, A. Foulkes, put a curb on the five local brass bands of the town by forbidding them to play their  ‘objectionable native tunes or aires’ as these led to competitive quarrelling, obstruction of roads, drinking and dancing.[4]

Despite these objections, coastal brass band music and its associated marches and dances spread like wildfire into the southern areas of Ghana during the early 20^th century. However the negative attitude of the colonialists to local brass band music continued as is evidenced by the following comment by Presbyterian missionaries in 1913 concerning the brass band playing at a festival in the inland Akan town of Akropong where people were thinking ‘more of sardines and cigarettes than their souls’ [5]. In 1923 the Father Bergi of the Bremen mission in Ghana’s south-eastern Volta Region wrote that brass band (and other local popular music styles) were  ‘loosening of morals’ of young people and ‘making them unfit for work’.[6]

This negative attitude of the churches was partly a result of a failed attempt to use brass band music and its associated drills and marches for proselytising and getting local people used to the ‘necessities of industrial time’.[7] Many of the protestant missions established brass bands at the end of the 19^th century but discovered that the musicians they trained would, behind their backs, invariably ‘backslide’ and play and dance to the popular songs of the local bands. Indeed during the 1930’s the missions practically dropped the use of brass-bands altogether and the Christian use of brass bands really only started up again after the Second World War, particularly with the Catholic church and some of the Africanised Christian sects.

Appearing a little later than local ‘adaha’ brass bands, but in the same Cape Coast area, were popular music forms created by coastal West Africans, fishermen and sailors such as ‘asiko’ (or ‘ashiko’) and  ‘osibisaaba’ that involved a combination of light percussion instruments and sailors instruments: in particular the guitar and accordion.

From port towns pan West African asiko music became popular in southern Ghana and in 1908 the Basel Mission in Krobo-land confiscated the drums of such a group for playing ‘obscene songs’.[8]  Osibisaba was a contemporary music style to asiko and was created by Fanti fishermen. From the Fanti coastal owns of Cape Coast, Takoradi and Winneba it quickly spread into southern Ghana. In 1909 the   police commissioner in the inland town of Nsawam took two Akan men to the local court and jailed them for playing osibisaaba, as according to Akyeampong (1996:61), it was a banned dance associated with social protest. The very same year the colonial authorities in Accra called the osibisaaba circle-dance ‘objectionable’ in which men and women dance indecently.[9] And in  1910 the Bremen missionaries were complaining that osibisaaba (or ‘sibi-saba’)   was spreading ‘like wild-fire’ and its texts included songs  on the topic of  pregnancy, marriage,  ‘concubines’ and  ‘doing it slowly or the bed will break’.[10]

In spite of all these protestations against osibisaaba, this guitar and accordion dance music continued to spread into the cocoa rich areas of southern Ghana. By 1927/8 recordings of this type of music (by George William Aingo and Kwame Asare’s Kumasi Trio) were being made by European companies, for as a result of lucrative cash-crops, many Ghanaians, even farmers, could afford wind-up gramophones. By the late the 1930s tens of thousands of these  ‘native recording’ were being sold  on shellac 78 rpm records.[11]

The Second World War put a temporary halt to this lucrative Ghanaian record trade as the production of records almost ceased in most countries due to the raw materials (shellac) being used in the war effort. However the war did hasten the movement towards independence: especially after 1948 with the independence of India and the shooting in Accra of Ghanaian ex-servicemen marching for back-pay and the subsequent lootings of European and Lebanese shops. This wartime impact was reflected in the Ghanaian popular arts and one example actually involves Ghanaian servicemen; these being Bob Vans (personal communication 1974) and six other Ghanaians who were members of the West African Frontier Force fighting with the British in Burma and India against the Japanese.[12] In Burma and India between 1943 and 1946 these Ghanaians and other West African soldiers established a West African Theatre to entertain the troops, and on returning to Ghana after the war Bob Vans and his colleagues set up the Burma Jokers concert party. However, in the critical year of 1948 they changed this to the name ‘Ghana Trio’: nine years before ‘Ghana’ became the countries official name at independence.[13]

Other concert parties were also involved in the nationalist struggle, for instance from the late 1940s to early 1950s the Axim Trio concert party staged a number of pro-independence plays such as `Nkrumah Will Never Die', `Nkrumah Is A Mighty Man [14] and  `Nkrumah Is Greater Than Before' [15], whilst Bob Ansah's concert group staged `We Shall Overcome', `The Achievement of Independence' and `The Creation of Ghana'. Ansah also told me that he was twice arrested by the British authorities and questioned about his plays. This censorship of popular theatre was also occurring around the same at the time in the nearby British colony of Nigeria where there had been a general strike after the war. There the pioneer of Yoruba travelling theatre, Hubert Ogunde, had some of his anti-British plays banned. [16]

Many Ghanaian highlife and other popular musicians also supported the early nationalist cause[17] and what  Ensenburger called the anti-hegemonic  ‘emancipatory’ mode In one particular case concerning a song called ‘Freedom For Ghana' dedicated to the `Honourable Kwame Nkrumah'   the British became so worried as to whether the lyrics were subversive or not, that Colonial Office minutes were written on the matter.[18] This song was a calypso recorded by HMV in London in 1952 by the Trinidadian George Brown and a mixed group of Ghanaian and West Indian musicians and   twenty thousand copies of it were ordered by Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party  (the C.P.P.). The West Indian black nationalist, George Padmore, was the correspondent for the Ghanaian newspaper at the time and wrote on the matter and provided the lyrics of the contentious song.  The chorus goes ‘Freedom is in the land, friends let us shout long live the CPP, which now controls Africa’s destiny’. The song text also refers to CPP leaders such as Nkrumah ‘from his Ussher Fort cell’ and continues  ‘they called us veranda boys, they thought we were just a bunch of toys, but we won the vote at midnight hour, came out of jail and took power…the British M.P.  Gammans was rude by his dog-in-the-mangerish attitude, but like an ostrich we know this man can go and bury his head in the sand.’ [19]

 

 

TWO: THE CENSORSHIP OF POPULAR AND NEO-TRADITIONAL MUSIC AND DANCE BY AFRICAN TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES.

While the British and colonialists and missionaries were concerned in establishing and maintaining their hegemony and were hostile to emergent local popular performance, traditional ethnic authorities were concerned with preserving their control in the face of western influences. So there are also cases of chiefs, elders and other traditional authorities being antipathetic to both acculturated popular music and dance and even to some neo-traditional performance genres: these being traditional type drum-dances created in the 20th century but influenced by popular performance.

For example, guitar highlife that began to spread from the coast into southern Ghana in the 1920’swas often disliked by local traditionalists. Veit Arlt mentions (2002, f/n 49) [20] this to be the case in the Krobo area of south-eastern Ghana whose paramount chief, Mata Kole, believed this music caused  ‘bad habits’,  ‘disobedience’ ‘laziness’ and ‘even songs of reproach against chiefs’. Similarly, Akyeampong (1996:62) refers to an attempt by elders to de-stool (i.e. de-throne) a young Omanhene (chief) of Bekwai Ashanti in 1920 for drunkenness, holding a guitar in the hands and wearing western clothes.  

It was because the highlife guitarists of the early 20th century played their instrument in low-class dockside bars and in rural palm-wine drinking bars this instrument became associated with drunkenness and was held in particularly low esteem. This negative attitude also applied to Ghana’s pioneering highlife or ‘palmwine’ guitar group, the Kumasi Trio, that in 1928 made some of the earliest highlife recordings (for the British Zonophone label). The leader of this group was Kwame Asare (Jacob Sam) who had to run away from his home in Cape Coast to play guitar, as his father thought only ‘ruffians’ played guitar (Collins, 1996:3).  According to Beattie Casely-Hayford (1987) this group was originally comprised of young Fanti cocoa brokers working for a British trading firm that stationed them in the small inland Akan farming-town of Apedwua.

 The low repute of this guitar band was compounded by two other factors that made both traditional and western educated Ghanaians disapprove. Firstly, Yaa Amponsah, the sister of one of the musicians, taught the men of Apedwua to dance the highlife in western ballroom style where men and women hold each other. In traditional Akan dancing it is not considered decent for men and women to touch each other in public. Furthermore, Yaa Amponsah was collecting coins from the men she taught ballroom dancing, which led to assertions by the town elders that she was a wayward ‘good-time girl’ or prostitute.

                The second factor that lowered the repute of the Kumasi Trio was that the lyrics of their most famous highlife song dedicated to and named after ‘Yaa Amponsah’ was itself considered to be indecent by many Ghanaians as it contains the lines translated from Akan ‘even though we are married let’s remain lovers….nothing can stop my love for you, not even if your mother threatens to douche me with pepper and your father with an enema of boiling water’(Ghana Copyright News, 1990:5). Indeed, the Ghanaian art/choral composer, Ephraim Amu, who was training at the Presbyterian Training College at Akropong in 1927 was shocked when the British principal wanted Yaa Amponsah to be sung by the students, as Amu who considered it to be  ‘a vulgar street-song usually sung by drunkard, labourers, lorry drivers and low-class people: a song never to be sung by a Christian or educated person’. As a result Amu composed English words acceptable to local students that go ‘half-past four is a good time to go home and play, too much learning is boring, we all want some time to play’. (Ghana Copyright News,1990:5).

Despite all this moral indignation over the 1928 Yaa Amponsah record, it was an enormous hit in Ghana, especially with the rural communities and urban poor. This song was subsequently recorded by many other bands (even in Nigeria), and its melodo-rhythmic structure has become the template for many highlife compositions right up to the present day.

As noted above, the newly emerging twentieth century new traditional music styles influenced by westernised popular music were also often frowned upon by elders. These new or neo-traditional genres were usually created from pre-existing ‘recreational’ forms of traditional drum music associated with youngsters and youthful age-sets. These recreational styles of traditional music, being linked to generational change and identity, were therefore faster changing and more open to foreign influences than the more slow-moving ritual, ceremonial and court music, consequently, these new forms of traditional music were often ostracized by the more conservative traditional leaders and village elders.

Two early examples, both from the 1930’s, of such ‘modernised’ recreational genres were konkoma music of the Akans of southern Ghana and simpa music of the people of Dagbon in northern Ghana. Konkoma was a ‘poor-man’s’ version of the local Akan  ‘adaha’ brass bands that did away with expensive imported brass instruments and made do rather with local drums and voices. It was associated with the youth of the period who were considered by traditional authorities to   be ‘rascals’ (Casely-Hayford 1986), ‘school-drop-outs’ (Sackey 1989) and  ‘ruffian boys’.[21]

Simpa evolved in the Dagbon traditional area when local recreational music became acculturated with imported western and southern Ghanaian performance styles, (gome, concert parties and highlife).  Simpa music has always been associated with the young and since its inception simpa gatherings have been considered by older people as improper places for young boys and girls to meet (Collins 1986:36)

A later example of a youthful recreational reviled by the elders is the Ga kpanlogo drums-dance of the 1960s – which became the focus of youthful identity and protest.  It was created in 1962 by Ga youth from the fishermen's Bukom area of Accra who were both influenced by local music and imported western    rock ‘n’ roll and the twist. Because of the exaggerated pelvic movements that the kpanlogo dance borrowed from “Elvis the Pelvis” and Chubby Checker, the older generation (and executives of the National Arts Council) initially opposed this new traditional genre, claiming that the dance was too sexually suggestive. On some occasions kpanlogo performers were even caned by the police, with their drums being seized and sometimes the musicians being put in the cells for a few days. This inter-generation dispute was only resolved in 1965 when   Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party (CPP) organised a display of fifty such groups, and the kpanlogo drum-dance was officially endorsed.

 

 

THREE: POLITICAL CENSORSHIP SINCE INDEPENDENCE

As discussed previously, many highlife musicians supported Nkrumah’s early nationalist cause, which is why this leader put such an emphasis on fostering the popular (as well as traditional Ghanaian performance) through setting up numerous state and para-statal dance bands and concert parties.

However after independence in 1957 there were some highlife compositions that were critical of, or were considered to be critical of the CPP government in power. A very famous example is E.T Mensah’s ‘Ghana Freedom Highlife’ that was recorded at the Decca Studio in Accra in 1957. In celebrating Ghana’s independence this song mentioned Nkrumah and some of the non-CPP nationalist leaders (J. B. Danquah and Dr. Busia).  After the song’s publicity release E.T. Mensah was told by two enraged CPP Ministers, Kofi Baako and Krobo Edusei, that Nkrumah was annoyed with having his name linked with what he called ‘ detractors’. As a result and on the ‘repressive’ hegemonic instructions of the CPP government, Decca Records  in London had to blot out the offending names on the master tape, destroy 10,000 copies of the record and reprint new ones (Collins 1986:27).

Towards the end of the Nkrumah era (that ended in 1966) initially staunch supporters of the CPP released songs critical of the government. One was `Ne Aye Dinn' (Hold It Well) by E.T. Mensah and his Tempos band and another was  `Aban Nkaba' (Government Handcuffs) by the concert party leader Bob Cole. (Dadson,1991). However it should be noted that the songs that were critical of Nkrumah and his CPP government were not usually in the form of direct political protest but were rather oblique, disguised or wrapped up in some way as a parable, proverb or allusion. For instance, E.K. Nyame   recorded several such highlife songs in the latter period of Nkrumah’s rule.  One was `Nsu Bota Mframa Dzi Kan' which includes the lines `if the rain falls the wind will blow first... so I'm warning you like the wind'.  This became the slogan of the anti-CPP National Liberation Movement that opposed Nkrumah's socialist policies. E. K Nyame followed this up with `Ponko Abo Dam A, Ne Wura No Dze Ommbuo Dam Bi’   which is based on the Akan proverb that translates as `if the horse is mad it does not mean the owner is mad’.[22] Another well-known concert party highlife musician, K. Gyasi (of the Noble Kings) released the record `Agyimah Mansah' in 1964 about a ghost mother lamenting the plight of her children.  President Nkrumah personally questioned Gyasi about the lyrics, and the composer claimed these were based on a dream he had had and were not a political reflection by `Mother Ghana' on the state of the nation, Nevertheless the song was banned from the radio that was then a government monopoly.[23]

After the 1966 military coup by the National Liberation Council (NLC) that ousted Nkrumah’s CPP government the two performance unions, the Ghana Musicians Union and National Association of Entertainers, were dissolved due to their links with the CPP. Furthermore the musical entertainer Ajax Bukana, a staunch supporter of Nkrumah, infact his ‘court jester’, was actually arrested by the police C.I.D.  immediately after the coup  and questioned for several days (Collins 1996:chapt. 6)

After the 1966 coup anti-Nkrumah songs continued to appear for a while. One that Bame (1969) mentions is the African Brothers highlife record `Okwanduo' (Wild Ox) that includes a refrain by a hunter that goes  `you are gone but woe to your brethren'. This, Bame believes, refers to the general public desire that although Nkrumah and many of his supporters had escaped, those who remained in the country should be punished. An even more well known highlife of the prolific African Bothers famous guitar band is the 1966 song `Ebe Te Yie' (Some Sit Well) about big animals pushing smaller ones into the cold. Although this song was considered to be a general attack against the political and economic elites that had emerged after independence, when Ampadu was officially questioned on the matter he claimed the lyrics were based on a fable his father had told him.  This song, like the one earlier discussed, K. Gyasi’s ‘Agyeman Mansah’, suggests that the public may change the meaning of a song to fit current views and retrospectively give a highlife song what Van der Geest and Asante-Darko (1982:33) call a `secret political meaning.' 

The regimes that followed Nkrumah's also had their share of highlife songs that were critical of them.   Following a brief period of civilian rule from 1969 led by Dr. Kofi Busia, another military coup took place on January 13th 1971 led by Colonel Acheampong.   The highlife record by Kofi Sammy's Okukuseku’s concert band entitled  `To Wo Bo Ase, Efidie Wura Beba' (Be Careful The Owner Will Come) was continuously played on the day of the coup, and in fact became the slogan for it.  By the mid 1970s, however, this same highlife song was banned from radio and television as its message, which contains the lines `be careful enemy, the one who will beat you has not yet come', also began to be applied to the increasingly unpopular Acheampong regime that became notorious for its `kalabule' or corruption [24].

A song by the prolific African Brothers released in the early 1970s called `Afe Bi Ye Nhyira, Afe Be Ye Asan' was also interpreted as an attack on this military regime, as the title means `some years are a blessing whilst some years are full of trouble'.  More openly critical was the Konadu's concert party band record `Yedo Wo' (You Are Born With It) that reproved Colonel Acheampong for his failed `Operation Feed Yourself’ project and this highlife song was consequently banned from the (Van der Geest and Asanti-Darko 1982:31/2).

There are also cases of neo-traditional music forms also being censored or banned by the government authorities for political reasons, including the previously discussed simpa music of the Dagbon traditional area in northern Ghana. In the post-colonial the genre became politicised when simpa groups began supporting either of two sides of a long-standing dispute over chiefly succession. In 1969 major violence erupted in the Dagbon traditional area and as a result the Ghanaian army moved in and a six-month ban was imposed by the police on what they believed was inflammatory performances of simpa music (Collins 1985: ch. 5).   Government hegemonic control was, therefore in this case, being utilised in what Carey calls a  ‘centripetal’ way.  Chernoff  (1979:212-3) mentions another acculturated recreational percussion genre that swept though the youth of Dagbon in the 1970’s called ‘atikatika’ which was periodically banned by the local and national authorities as the children sang witty songs related to the Dagbon chieftaincy dispute, as well as criticising local school-masters and businessmen.

Another example of political censorship concerns the previously discussed neo-traditional recreational kpanlogo drum-dance music of the Ga youth in Accra that in the early 1960s was criticized by Ga elders and by executives of that National Arts Council and its performers even caned and arrested by the police. This harassment was not only due to the previously mentioned generational gap between the Ga elders and youth, but also because early kpanlogo was popular with the fashionably dressed young ‘Tokyo Joes’.[25] These were the rough political Ga activists and supporters of Dr. Busia's United Party who sometimes used kpanlogo rhythms in their anti-Nkrumah and anti-CPP songs.  Another factor contributing to this official harassment of  kpanlogo groups may have been the fact that the content of the short dance-dramas that were often part of a  kpanlogo session, were  sometimes anti-establishment and critical of such government officials as health inspectors  (see Collins 1994)

In short and despite popular performers throwing their weight behind the early nationalist struggle, within a few years of Ghana gaining independence (in 1957) performers of highlife bands and of neo-traditional genres (influenced by highlife) started to become critical of the various governments. In other words their anti-hegemonic messages were directed away from the colonial authorities towards  their own Ghanaian governments

 

 

FOUR: MORAL CENSORSHIP IN RECENT YEARS

Here I will turn to what might be called the hegemonic attitude of the older generation towards the popular music styles create by the youth, usually expressed as moral indignation over the lyrics of the songs that dwell on the them of sexual love.  Although the lyrics of the older (pre-1980’s) styles of highlife were not generally on the topic of romantic love[26] some popular highlife love songs of the past were considered immoral.  These songs were generally composed by people who were in the twenties or thirties and an early example is the previously discussed ‘vulgar street song’ song ‘Yaa Amponsah’ composed by a group of young cocoa-brokers in the 1920’s, the lyrics of which were cleaned up by the school-teacher Ephraim Amu.  Another that was banned by state radio was 1950s song  ‘Se Wo Ko Na Anny Eyie A San Bra (If You Go And It Doesn’t Work Out, Come Back) by the then youthful E. K. Nyame which was frowned upon (but not banned) by older Ghanaians as it explicitly mentions a wife’s desire for her husband to kiss her on the mouth, a foreign custom that at that time was not considered something to be mentioned openly. A few years after the prolific highlife composer King Bruce formed his Black Beats band in 1952 two of his Ga songs banned from state radio. One was ‘Telephone Lobi (Sweethearts)’ which Bruce explains is ‘a bit risque, especially where the man says he wants to see the women in the flesh’. Another was   his highlife ‘Srotoi Ye Mli’ (There Are Varieties In Everything) about differences in things like wine, vegetables and fruits. Although it was not Bruce’s intention, when the general public people heard words in the song like  ‘sweet’ and ‘ not so sweet’, ‘heavy’ and ‘ light’ they thought the song was about sex – and thus the song was censored from the state airwaves. [27]

  A more recent examples of a popular song banned from the airwaves include the 1980s   highlife by A.B. Crentsil with its obvious sexual innuendo about   ‘Moses’ using his rod to open the  ‘Red Sea’ that is bordered by a ‘black bush’. Another is the 1999 hit  ‘Abiba Yeah, Wa Donkoto Ye Fre Me’, (Abiba, your lovely motions sweet me) by the up-and-coming highlife star Rex Omar which mentions (in Akan) the word ‘vagina’. This was even banned by some of the private FM radio stations that had begun to spring up in the country during the mid 1990s. 

Since the mid 1980s two ‘techno’ varieties of highlife have been created by young people: namely a disco/drum machine style known as  ‘burgher’ highlife [28], followed in the mid 1990s by a vernacular rap known as ‘hiplife’ (i.e. ‘hip-hop highlife’).  The lyrics of both these genres are predominantly on the topic of romantic love and often involve sexual innuendo. It is largely the older generation of Ghanaians that dislike these new styles of highlife, with its imported hairstyles, baggy clothes and ‘gangsta-rap’ attitudes. As a result and from pressure from older members of the public some burgher highlife and hiplife songs have been being banned from radio, both the governmental and privately owned ones.  An example of a banned burgher highlife was the immensely popular 2000 release by Daddy Lumba called Aben Wo Ha (It is Cooked) which is a thinly disguised song about women being sexually excited. In the case of hiplife music the lyrics are not only sexually explicit but also often misogynist[29]. Some examples of this includes ‘Police Aba’ in which Nsiah Piese raps on the topic of women being sexually attracted to a policeman’s baton, and ‘Abuskeleke’ by Sydney which deals with the latest female fashion of baring the waist.[30] Yet another recent example is Tic Tac’s hiplife song ‘Philomena’ which criticises the current imported female fashion of allowing genital and under-arm hair to grow. The song was associated with a dance in which the dancer scratches his or her pubic area.

 

PHILOMENA KPINTINGE (Ladies name)

Philomena change your ways, even though you look fly,

Let me say this as our grandparents have been saying it – bushy hair is threatening and fearful,

Excuse me I am afraid, when it is shown we will definitely fall down

When we inhale we will vomit, when it’s shown to white-man they will go crazy

I have been told there is something under cover, hidden in a cloth

It is hair isn’t it? It is fearful unless a caterpillar road-grader levels (i.e. shaves) it

CHORUS Philomena Kintinge yeye, hair hear, hair there, hair everywhere.

(Extracts translated from the Twi by Emmanuel Gyan)

 

Not only are some hiplife songs occasionally banned from FM radio stations but there have been a number of newspaper reports commenting on them. A few mention that these local rap songs give the youth a voice, but most accuse hiplife of being ‘ lewd’, ‘profane’ and ‘degrading’ to women.[31]  Indeed, in December 2002 the Executive Director of the Ghana branch of the International Federation of the Women Lawyers (FIDA) stated that some hiplife lyrics ‘debase femininity and the bodies of women ….(and) constitutes violence against women on the airwaves’[32]. FIDA threatened high court actions against some radio stations and disc jockeys. Both FIDA and the Musicians Union of Ghana  (MUSIGA) have also asked the Ministry of Information and the Ghana Media Commission to closely monitor the local FM stations for indecent lyrics. But as the journalist William Asiedu commented [33] hiplife songs that are banned or ‘come under fire for spawning immorality amongst the youth…make good sales throughout the country… and become instant hits and chart busters’

 

CONCLUSION

From this paper it can be appreciated that censorship in Ghana over the last hundred years has involved popular artists being censored by various hegemonic institutions that include colonial administrators and police, Christian mission houses, post-independence governments, modern bureaucracies and the Ghanaian national army.

A more continuous and cyclical generational form of hegemonic control over youthful popular (and neo-traditional music) has emanated over the years from both the traditional authorities and the older and more conventional layers of the general public at any particular moment of time. Such as the suppression of young highife musicians by some traditional rulers   in the early 20^th century, the traditional elders disdain for youthful simpa, konkoma and kpanlogo in the 1930s, 40s and 60s, the moral indignation of the older generation of urban Ghanaians over some of the highlife records of E. K. Nyame and King Bruce in the 1950s and 60s, right up to the current dislike of hiplife and its associated youth sub-culture by the parents of today

The sanctions used by these hegemonic agencies and conservative generational groupings have been varied.

Performances have been censored, such as the curbs put on ‘obstructive’ and ‘objectionable’ brass bands in 1900 Cape Coast by the colonial District Commissioners, followed by the ban on the  ‘indecent’ and ‘obscene’ osibisaaba dance requested by missionaries. Then in the late 1940s came the questioning of concert party leaders by colonial authorities for their anti-British plays. After independence there was the police harassment and caning of kpanlogo groups linked to the anti-Nkrumah political opposition during the early sixties and the six-month government ban on northern simpa music during the 1969 Dagbon Chieftaincy dispute.

There have also actual arrests of artists over the years. These range from the jailing of guitar players by the colonial police during the 1920s, to the harassment of young kpanlogo drummers by the Ghana police of the late Nkrumah period and to the police detention of Nkrumah’s personal musical ‘jester’ Ajax Bukana after the anti-Nkrumah coup of 1966.

Forms of political censorship have been imposed on recorded music:  such as the ‘subversive’ Independence Highlife commented on by Padmore in 1952 that so worried the British Colonial Office in Accra, or the ten thousand copies of E.T. Mensah’s Ghana Freedom Highlife destroyed on the order of Nkrumah in 1957.

Songs have also been banned on radio and television by the various post-independence governments that totally controlled the airwaves until the mid 1990’s. These included political songs by both guitar band and dance band highlife musicians, as well as supposedly political highlife songs that the general public re-interpreted and gave a political meaning to. Likewise songs containing lyrics with a strong sexual innuendo or content, like today’s burgher highlife and hiplife have, in more recent years, been criticised in the newspapers and banned by state radio as well as by some of the new commercial FM radio that have appeared over the last ten years or so.

Another form of censorship that may appear in Ghana in the near future is a result of a new Copyright Bill that is going before the Ghanaian Parliament that, if passed, will oblige Ghanaian performers (and painters, writers, film-makers, designers, etc) who wish to commercially utilise their own indigenous folklore, to pay advance fees or taxes to the government [34] and also seek permission from it before proceeding with their creative enterprise. The hegemonic ‘repressive’ and ‘centripetal’ implications of this idea are too frightful to imagine –  but that is a topic for another paper.

 

 

 

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