GHANAIAN CHRISTIANITY AND POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT: FULL CIRCLE

 

Paper by ]ohn Collins for Birgit Meyer and Dutch Ghana Studies Group, Tropical Institute  Amsterdam June 2002

 

Published by : History in Africa, (ed. David Henige, Wisconsin University) Number 31,  2004,  pp. 389-391.

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

Imported Christianity is  one of the factors that led to the emergence  of  local popular music and drama in Ghana around the turn of the 20^th century. Furthermore, by  the mid 20^th century  local popular entertainment had, in turn, begun to effect the African Christianity of the separatist  churches.

 

This circular relationship between the secular and the sacred became stronger from the 1970’s. This was partly because both domains became increasingly concerned with supernatural  explanations for the problems created by modern life, such as material inequality, broken homes, prostitution,  xenophobia, alcoholism and urban crime. It was also partly  a result of government policies that mitigated against live popular entertainment groups, which consequently found patronage under the untaxed churches.

 

Indeed, from being a creative circular relationship one could say that in recent years there has been a convergence between popular entertainment and the local Christian churches: leading to what might be called the emergence of ‘popular’ Christianity. Like popular entertainment, ‘popular’ Christianity is an transcultural urban phenomenon that caters for the ‘intermediate’ and aspiring upwardly mobile populations, that taps traditional resources,  is concerned with the  anxieties of modernisation and utilizes the commercial music, dance and drama of the  masses.

 

 

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I will look at the relationship between Christianity and popular entertainment  in Ghana over the last hundred years or so. Imported Christianity was one of the seminal influences on the emergence local   popular music, dance and drama. But Christianity in turn  later became influenced by popular entertainment, especially  in the case of the local African separatist churches that began to  incorporate popular dance music and in some cases popular theatre. At the same time  unemployed Ghanaian commercial performing artists  have, since the 1980’,  found a home in the churches

 

To begin this examination  of this circular relationship in Ghana between popular entertainment and Christianity we first turn to the late 19^th century.

 

 

THE MISSIONARY INFLUENCE ON EARLY GHANAIAN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT

The appearance  of trans-cultural popular performance genres in southern and coastal  Ghana in the late 19^th century resulted from a fusion  of local music and dance elements with imported ones introduced by Europeans. Very important was the role of the Protestant missionaries who settled in southern Ghana during the 19^th century establishing  churches, schools, trading post and artisan training centres[1]. Through protestant hymns and school songs  local Africans  were taught to play  the harmonium, piano and brass  band instruments and were introduced to part harmony, the diatonic scale, western I- IV- V harmonic progressions, the sol-fa notation and four-bar phrasing[2].

 

There were two consequences of these new musical ideas. Firstly a tradition of vernacular hymns was established from the 1880’s and 90’s [3] when separatist African churches (such as the native Baptist Church)  were formed in the period of institutional racism that followed the Berlin Conference of 1884/5 [4].

 

Secondly and of more important to this paper, these new missionary ideas helped establish early local popular highlife dance-music idioms such as asiko/ashiko, osibisaaba, local brass band  ‘adaha’ music and ‘palmwine’ guitar music

 

Robert Sprigge (1967:89) refers too the use  of church harmonies and suspended thirds in the early guitar band highlife composition Yaa Amponsah whilst David Coplan (1978:98/9) talks of the ‘hybridization;’ of church influences with  Akan  vocal  phrasing and the preference of singing in parallel thirds and sixths in the creation of highlife.

 

Asiko or ashiko was another and indeed Pan West African [5] popular music style played on guitars, accordions, musical saw and frame drums. According to Waterman (1990:39-42) it was the use  of the tambourine like frame-drum, rather than  pagan carved drums, that made asiko acceptable to the local Christians of Lagos in the early 1900’s.  Veit Arlt (unpublished) also refers to ashiko music being played by the Basel Mission ‘scholars’ of the Krobo area in south-eastern Ghana around the same time. 

 

It should be pointed, however, that the missionary (and colonial)  attitude to these new acculturated Ghanaian dances was  ambivalent and Arlt (ibid) mentions that there was an attempted ban in 1908 on the ‘obscene’ ashiko.  Likewise the governor of Accra objected to ashiko and the osibisaaba dances in 1909 which involved men and women ‘indecently’ entering a dance circle[6]. Then again, in 1910 Father Buergi of the German Bremen Mission  of  Amadzofe (now in Ghana’a Volta Region ) refers to the ‘sibi-saba’ (osibisaaba) of the Gold Coast ‘spreading like wildfire’ [7] which he was condemning in 1923 as a dance that ‘looses the morals of the young’ [8]

 

This ambivalence of the Europeans to early African popular music and dance is well exemplified in the case of local brass band ‘adaha’ music that was created in the 1880’s by Fanti musicians  trained in the British colonial regimental bands of Cape Coast. During the 1890’s the missionaries, seeing the popularity of brass band music in Ghana  and already using Christian marching bands in Europe, began to employ the brass band format for so-called ‘heathen preaching’  and introducing African to the ‘necessities of industrial time’ [9]. However, by the 1920’s and 30’s the missionaries in southern Ghana  became disillusioned  with their planned  ‘uplifting’ intention of brass band music, as local church trained musicians would simply syncopate and dance to this music:  which the missionaries considered a ‘nuisance’[10] or made people  forget their souls [11]. Indeed, in 1923 Father Buergi went as far to say that people who joined such (kainka and sanekoko) bands  should be excluded from Baptism[12].

 

Before turning on the use of dance and popular music by the African separatist ‘spiritual’ churches of the early-mid  20^th century it should be first pointed out  that the early European missionaries  not only influenced  local Ghanaian  popular music but also popular theatre as well, known locally as the ‘concert party’. It is generally recognized that the main external stimulus to the creation of the concert party in the early 20^th century was British  and American and vaudeville, music-hall, ragtime music, tap dancing and silent movies[13]. However, western stagecraft  and the separation of the audience and performers by a raised platform was also introduced in Ghana (and Togo and Nigeria[14]) via the ‘cantata’ bible plays of the missionaries.

 

 

THE SPIRITUAL CHURCHES AND THEIR MUSIC

After the separatist churches that began to appear in Ghana  during the late 19^th century  as a result of the local coastal elite’s disillusion with  the British ‘indirect rule’ policy, a second wave of separatist ‘spiritual’ churches  began to emerge from the 1920’s that were more proletarian and African in nature[15]. The congregations of these churches mainly consisted  of poor new urban migrants and the church  ceremonies included African type features such as  spiritual healing, exorcism, divination (i.e.  prophecy) and possession (i.e. by the Holy Ghost) [16].

 

Unlike the elitist separatist churches with the vernacular hymns and swaying bodies the ‘spiritual’ ones also included incorporated drumming and dancing for worship. For instance during the 1920’s the Church of the Twelve Apostles not only clapped and swayed but also danced to the rhythms of gourd rattles, whilst the Musama Disco Christo Church  employed traditional Fanti  ‘asafo’ (warrior) drums[17] . Furthermore the ‘praises’ and ‘choruses’ of the independent churches  were influenced by local popular music such as highlife[18],  as were their ‘singing bands’ that began to record in the late 1930’s[19]. Moreover, as early as the 1950’s some of the spiritual churches were using dance band instruments (such as bongos, double bass and guitar)[20], brass band  instruments[21] and playing in ‘dance-club’ style[22].

 

No doubt and partly helped  by their Africanised format and the cathartic release of dancing, drumming and popular music, the spiritual churches began to proliferate: so that by 1955 their were seventeen denominations in Accra alone (Acquah,1955:145-51). Another reason for their proliferation is that the spiritual churches augmented the role of

the various anti-witchcraft cults that sprang up from around 1900 as a response to what the social-psychologist, Margaret Field (1960), called  a ‘neurotic response’ to modernisation, the cash economy, the growth of possessive individualism and a general weakening of traditional kinship ties  and  authority[23]: including, ironically, the very indigenous mechanisms  for combating witchcraft, banned in southern Ghana by the British colonialists. [24]

 

 

RELIGIOUS MOTIFS IN POPULAR TEXT: 1940’s TO 1970’s

Whilst the spiritual churches began to utilise local dance and popular music from  the 1940’s,  commercial popular entertainment also continued to be influenced by religious music: not only the instrumental and technical ones mentioned earlier, but in the lyrics of highlife songs  and texts of concert plays. Some musicians composed highlife hymns that  praised God [25], were moralistic or condemned evil. An early example of the latter is an ‘Akan blues’ [26] recording of the mid 1940’s that laments the ritual murder of a young girl in an Elmina chieftaincy dispute[27].  During the 1950 and 60’s many highlife recordings dwelt on the topic of witchcraft and the machinations of evil people[28].

 

Religious motifs and characters also appeared in the concert parties of the period and indeed one of it three principal  stage characters, the ‘Gentleman’ [29],  invariably closed the comic plays with   sermon-like moral message. The play text also contained religious and supernatural themes and an early[30] example was the Axim Trio’s 1940’s play ‘The Kyibi Murder Trial’, concerning a ritual murder that occurred around the same time as the El Mina one mentioned earlier. It should also be noted that a sub-genre of the concert party appeared in the 1950’s that specialised in stage conjuring by  “Professors’: such as Kobina Segoe who went onto become President of the concert party union (Ghana National Entertainment Association) in 1960 [31].

 

However, it was when the small ‘trio’ format concert parties  becoming expanded  (both number of personal and length of performances) in the late 1950’s and 60’s [32] that the melodramatic struggle  between ‘evil’ traditional figures (witches, dwarfs and ‘fetish’ or ‘juju’ priests[33]) and ‘good’ Christian ones (priests and hymn singing angels)  became a standard stage practice[34]. Furthermore, during the late 1960’s concert parties began using large advertising boards or ‘cartoons’[35] depicting scenes form the night’s play which often contained images of witches in battle with Christian priests[36].

 

To summarise,  we can see that by the 1950’s and 60’ their were strong cross-currents between  popular entertainment  and Christianity, especially  that of the separatist churches which occasionally used popular band instruments and often sang hymns with highlife melodies and clave rhythms. Conversely, Many highlife  songs appealed to God or condemned witches,   whilst concert party plays invariably began to include dramatic sketches and use ‘cartoons’ depicting the clashes between Christian and traditional spiritual forces: the ‘osofo’ church priest versus the ‘bayifo’ witch, the pious ‘adjanka’ orphan versus the evil-stepmother.

 

To further examine this overlap of popular entertainment and local Christianity the next section of this paper will extend the discussion to other, non-artistic, areas of similarity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

OTHER NON-ARTISTIC LINKS BETWEEN  LOCAL POPULAR  ENTERTAINMENT AND CHRISTIANITY: 1940’s to 70’s

The cross connections that were created between the separatist churches and local popular entertainment between the 1940’s and 1970’s can  be more fully appreciated if one takes into consideration other similarities between these two domains .

 

Firstly and whether sacred or secular, both are twentieth century transcultural phenomena that blend imported western elements with local indigenous ones: or to put it another way, both have partially de-colonised and Africanised the religion and performing arts introduced by western traders, missionaries and colonialists.

 

Secondly, both the congregations of the spiritual-type separatist churches and the audiences (and indeed performers)  of local popular entertainment belong to the ‘intermediate’ class that emerged  between the westernised African elites and subsistence peasant farmers: these being cash crop farmers, newly urbanised rural migrants, semi-skilled workers, artisans, petty traders, clerks, messengers, teachers, seamen, drivers. etc[37]. Furthermore,  the local churches with their urban self-help networks and highlife music (i.e. ‘high-class’ music[38]) were avenues or symbols for upward social mobility.

 

The third similarity between popular performance and the spiritual churches of the mid-twentieth century was that they both provided  inexpensive emotional cathartic release for the ‘intermediates’ and poor urban masses. In the churches the congregations danced, became possessed whilst charismatic preachers, pastors  and prophets made dramatic divinations, miracles and exorcisms. For  popular music such as highlife, cathartic energy was released on the dance floor. For the concert party with its comic humour, melodrama and high degree of audience participation[39],  catharsis  was expressed  through the weeping, applauding and   jeering audiences: which made Bame claim that the concert party was a ‘social tranquillizer’[40] and Ricard (1974:1978) that it fills ‘an emotional vacuum’ for the newly urbanized..

 

A fourth connection between local popular entertainment and Christianity is that both concern themselves with the anxieties and  tensions of modern urban life, whether trying to spiritually[41] resolve them, or in the case of popular text depict and comment on  the ‘chaos’ (Brempong, 1984:260 ) and ‘horrors’ (Barber, 1987:50) ) of city life: which

includes the negative aspects of rapid urban migration such as prostitution and alcoholism, modern class stratification  and the break-up of the extended family

 

At this point it is worth dwelling in some detail on how popular entertainment text of the 1950’s to 1970’s dwelt on these three urban problems of  urbanization.

 

Urban migration that markedly increased after independence in 1957 with the expansion of the education system and creation of new jobs[42] led to an  initial influx of mainly male migrants, which in turn  led to an increase  in alcoholism and prostitution[43]. Some popular highlife songs that discuss  the topics of migration and drink are as follows. The Modernaires  1959 record ‘Ankwankwaa Hiani’ (Decca WA 1944) concerns a young man forced by poverty  to the big city, where he meets  worse problems than the ones he left behind. Yamoah’s  1950’s song ‘Osigyani’ (Senofone FAO 1520) is about a batchelor turning to  drink because he has no girlfriend; a common plight  for the poor new urban migrant. Onyina’s 1956 “Ewiase Ye Me’ (The World is Affecting Me) has the similar  topic of turning to drink, but in this case due to economic hardship. Okukuseku’s  song ‘Robert Mensah’ is dedicated to the Ghanaian football hero stabbed to death in an akpeteshie (local gin) bar in 1972.. Two highlifes that discuss prostitution are the Black Beats 1957 release (Decca WA 841) about a women flirting from man to man ‘As Regular as a Record Changer’  and Pat Thomas’s 1970 song ‘Mmesiafo Yi’ (Those Girls) that go with men with money[44].

 

Rural-urban migration, prostitution and alcoholism  also feature  in the plays of many concert parties during the 1950’s to 1970’s[45]. One, for instance, is Kwaa Mensah’s late 1950’s concert party play involving a taxi driver being lured and ruined by a’ high-time’ women called Owurama[46]. Another example is the Jaguar Jokers play ‘Onipa Hia Mmoa‘ (Man Needs Help) in which the unemployed alcoholic, Tawia, accuses  his own mother  of making him a drunk by putting a ‘grawa’ (large water can, i.e. evil magic) in his stomach[47].

 

The introduction of modern social stratification based on the cash nexus, competition open social mobility and individual achievement has resulted in enormous disparities in wealth and sudden changes of fortune. Although the plight of the  poor and the opulence of the nouveau riche are  common themes in popular text[48] these are not usually depicted in terms of class struggle but rather as a consequence of moral behaviour  or the use of magical powers. Numerous concert party plays include humble and hardworking character who ‘suffers to gain’, in contrast to lazy, immoral spend-thrifts who end up destitute[49]. Traditional medicine and witchcraft as the cause of poverty or riches is also a common theme of popular text[50] . An example of a  highlife song  is the African Brothers 1970’s hit  record about a man  called ‘Yaw Beku’ who complains that because of witchcraft  and although he is forty years old he does not even have forty pounds to his name. An example from a concert party play is the Jaguar Jokers ‘Onipa Hia Mmoa’ (Man Needs Help) during which  the comedian Opia,  in long soliloquy to the audience, talks of economic hardships (and barrenness, sickness and death) being caused by witchcraft (Collins 1994:40-42).

 

The consequences of the break-up of the  traditional  polygynous and extended family system  are also dealt with in popular entertainment text. These include co-wife rivalry and inheritance disputes, increasing numbers of broken homes and plight  neglected child or orphan[51]. Examples of the theme of the jealous co-wife are highlife songs by Eddie Donkor’s, the African Brothers and Konadu’s guitar bands[52]  and a concert party play called the ‘Jealous Rival’(Bame 1985:102-28). The neglected orphan and evil stepmother is another common theme in highlife songs[53] and concert plays[54]. The prevalence of the orphan state in the popular entertainment text of the 1950’s to 70’s  may also be a result of this representing a metaphor for describing the acute sense of loneliness and anomie that many newcomers feel in the big city.

 

 

THE RISE OF THE PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES

Since the 1970’s literally hundreds of Ghanaian separatist churches have been added to the score or so that existed in the 1950’s [55] mainly of charismatic and ‘born again’ pentecostal denominations which, as will be discussed shortly, have utilised both local popular dance-music and drama for worship and outreach purposes. Many of these new pentecostal churches  are of a ‘prosperity’ nature. Like the older spiritual churches they focus on  self-help, spiritual protection and the achievement of material prosperity  but put more emphasis on creating  business opportunities and attracting the upwardly mobile. Unlike the older local churches, however, the newer Pentecostal ones often have strong international affiliations; especially with the USA .Following in the wake of the ‘prosperity’ pentecostal churches have come the  ‘deliverance’[56]  ones that consider any lack of  prosperity amongst members of their congregations as caused by ‘witches in workplaces’ and other demonic forces which have to be counter-acted or exorcised[57]. In other words, as prayer and other forms of affirmation have not  led the bulk of pentecostal members to success and wealth there has been a recent shift to finding a supernatural scape-goat.

 

This growing sensitivity to supposedly  growing satanic influences is also reflected in a number of urban panics that have swept Ghana since the 1970’s. These include of forest creatures (such as the Sasabonsum forest devil) stalking the big cities, handshakes from strangers and foreigners (from other African countries)   that cause the genitals to wither, the sale of body parts for  money-making magic and the mysterious ritual death’s of over thirty women  in Accra since 1998[58].

 

Not surprisingly this concern with  the demonic is also reflected in popular entertainment, which over the years has grown noticeably. The stage appearance of so-called ‘juju’ priests, witches, and evil step-mothers has already been referred to, However since the late 1960’s  sand particularly the 1970’s stage demons have become more important and more sensational for concert party shows and the ‘cartoons’ that depict scenes from them For example the concert party plays  of both Kakaiku’s and the Jaguar Jokers included  the Sasabonsum forest devil,   whilst F. Micah’s group placed a large  stuffed animal monster  on top of its pre-show ‘campaign’ bus.[59] By the 1990’s it was obligatory for the few surviving concert parties to include garish monsters painted  on ‘cartoons’ or depicted onstage as fabulous creatures  in ‘day-glo’ colours bathed in ultra-violet light[60]. Usually these were presented in some sort of battle with Christian angels or priests. Likewise, many of the  local low-budget video productions that have proliferated since the late 1980’s and which to some extent utilise concert party themes and actors,[61] have a focus on Christian heroes and heroines in battle with ‘juju’ men, witches, evil snakes and so on.(see Meyer 1997:6) .

 

With the converging  of  by both the separatist churches and popular theatre on the melodramatic struggle against satanic forces it is not surprising that some churches began from the 1980’s  to run and sponsor their own concert parties and actors[62].

 

Let us turn from the relationship between the separatist  churches and  local popular theatre to their relationship (i.e. use of) with local popular music, which as already noted began as early as the 1950’s.  However, since the late 1970’s and particularly in association with the  rise of the pentecostal movement, there was a significant increase in the use of  local popular dance music for both worship and outreach purposes. During the 1980’s there was a ‘gospel music’ explosion in Ghana with the separatist churches establishing recording studios and  commercial cassette production facilities[63] and even organising/endorsing  gospel music unions and gospel award shows[64]. By 1990 it was estimated that local ‘gospel- highlife’  represented between fifty and seventy percent of the  local air-play and local cassette production of Ghana [65].

 

The reasons for this sudden efflorescence of ‘gospel-highlife’ dance music in the 1980’s and 90’s are several. One already mentioned is that the European taboo on dancing in church had already been broken by the early wave of separatist  spiritual churches in Ghana. Another reason  is because of the quasi commercial business orientation (including musical enterprises) of the new ‘prosperity’ churches[66] which filled an entrepreneurship function in the early revolutionary period of the Flight Lieutenant Rawling’s PNDC government during the early to mid-eighties. Yet another influence on the rise of local Ghanaian gospel was the growing popularity of imported ‘hot’ gospel of the American pentecostal churches[67]. Finally there was the economic impact  of governmental policies from the late 1970’s: a topic I would like to dwell on in more detail.

 

During the corrupt or ‘kalabule’ period of the late 1970’s  Acheampong-Akufo regime Ghana’s fledgling music industry collapsed[68] and there was a ‘brain drain’ of Ghanaian musicians overseas and to neighbouring African countries like Nigeria[69]. Then after the December 31^st military coup by J.J. Rawlings there was two-and-a-half years of night curfew, which adversely affected the nightlife scene, and the music and industry was given such a low priority by the revolutionary government that imported musical band equipment was treated and attracted the duty of a luxury item[70].  This combination of the curfew and  high import duties effectively destroyed the live performances of commercial concert parties and dance bands[71].

 

The impossibility of running a live band led to two results during the 1980’s. One was an accelerated move to new technologies. One was the ‘spinners’, or  cheap to run mobile discos that  took over the commercial dance venues from the  large and expensive live bands. Another was the appearance of video filming and editing that  resulted in the growth  of a local video industry that gradually replaced live popular theatre. Finally there was the drum-machines, synthesisers and music-computer technology that led to the appearance of new local ‘techno-pop’ genres that did away with the numerous musicians of earlier highlife bands. First came the  ‘burgher highlife’[72]  of the 1980’s followed by the vernacular rap or ‘hip-life’ that has became  the craze of urban youth since the late 1990’s. Hiplife singers mime onstage to  pre-recorded backing tracks and their shows  have practically done away with dancing audiences as well, who rather prefer to watch the onstage  gyrations ands  antics of the  ‘macho’[73] rapper pop-star and his dancers[74].

 

Besides the switch from live to canned and lip-synched performance, the second result of adverse politico-economic government policies on live entertainment was the movement of live popular music and musicians[75] into the free and untaxed spaces of the churches.  I actually observed this shift from secular to sacred through running my own Bokoor Studio that I established in Accra in 1982. At that time  practically all the artists were  secular highlife musicians, but by the late 1980’s they were mainly  gospel groups; although in most cases the same artists playing the same  instruments and same highlife dance music, but with religious lyrics rather than profane ones. Another difference  I noticed was the growing number of women who came with the gospel bands as singers, for whereas families would forbid their daughters becoming professional musicians  they could hardly stop them singing and dancing to gospel music.

 

This situation is very similar to what happened in the United States after the Great Crash of 1929 when the American commercial music industry collapsed and many African-American jazz and blues musicians[76] moved into the black storefront churches that had multiplied in the working-class areas of growing cities like Chicago in the early 20^th century. This resulted  in a fusion of religious and popular music that created ‘hot gospel’ and its swaying choirs which in turn played a seminal role in the growth of postwar ‘soul’ dance-music. In both the American hot-gospel case and the Ghanaian gospel-highlife one,  the black churches provided an avenue for professional female performers and recording artists. Indeed, in Ghana it would be true to say that local gospel music singing is e now dominated by women .[77]

 

Besides the Ghanaian  gender split between feminised gospel-highlife  and ‘macho’ hiplife rappers,  another ironical twist in the current popular music scene concerns the matter of  dance.  Whereas the local churches have  introduced dance into Christian worship[78], Ghana’s latest hiplife pop-music style has, as previously mentioned,  almost excluded actively dancing audiences.  Therefore if a persons wants to go to a popular dance music session in Ghana today then it is better to go to a church service than to a  commercial  hiplife show. In short, the local churches have reclaimed the cathartic release of communal  dance found in traditional African worship, whereas commercial hiplife is moving towards western artistic consumerism and individual  ‘superstars’.

 

The  local Ghanaian  churches have, therefore, become a repository for live local pop bands,  a nexus for the creation of a new popular music gospel-highlife genre,  a ritual space for collective popular-dance sessions and an avenue for professional female singers.  As exemplified by the impact of African-American  ‘hot gospel’ on soul and other subsequent American popular dance-music styles, local gospel-highlife is also likely to have a significant effect on the future of the Ghanaian commercial music development. For, as this papers has demonstrated, the popular music of Ghana is continually moving between the sacred and secular domains and there is not reason to suppose this should not continue.

 

 

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have seen that imported Christianity was one of the factors that led to the emergence  of popular music and drama in Ghana around the turn of the 20^th century: and that during the mid 20^th century  strong cross-connections between popular entertainment and the local African separatist churches were forged.

 

This circular relationship between the secular and the sacred became stronger from the 1970’s. This was partly because both domains became increasingly concerned with demonic explanation for the problems created by modern life, such as material inequality, broken homes, prostitution, the xenophobic fear of strangers, drunkeness and urban crime. It was also partly  a result of government policies that mitigated against live popular entertainment groups which consequently found patronage under the untaxed churches.

 

Indeed, from being a creative circular relationship one could say that in recent years there has been a convergence between popular entertainment and the local Christian churches: leading to what might be called the emergence of ‘popular’ Christianity. Like popular entertainment, ‘popular’ Christianity is an transcultural urban phenomenon that caters for the ‘intermediate’ and aspiring upwardly mobile populations, that taps traditional resources,  is concerned with the  anxieties of modernisation and utilizes the commercial music, dance and drama of the  masses.

 

 

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