THE GHANAIAN CONCERT PARTY: AFRICAN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT AT THE CROSSROADS

Ph.D Dissertation presented by E.John Collins to the Department of American Studies, SUNY at Buffalo in 1994

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ABSTRACT

            This thesis is a comparative social history of acculturated sub-Saharan African popular entertainment. It is divided into two sections.  Part One concerns two linked syncretic Ghanaian popular performing art-forms, the concert party (comic opera) and highlife music, the information  primarily being obtained from the author's work in Ghana since 1969 as a practicing musician, music journalist, record engineer/producer and archivist.  Focusing largely on one particular group (the Jaguar Jokers or J.J.'s concert party), Part One looks at the actual performance of the group, the band's daily life and organisation, reflections on the concert party profession by members and the changes the J.J.'s and similar ensembles have undergone over the years.

            Ghanaian popular entertainment stands at an intersection or `cross-roads' of multiple socio-cultural, historical and aesthetic realms and the author has grouped these into twelve themes that provide the basis for Part Two of the thesis.  They are explored with the aid of documented evidence and comparative information from the acculturated popular performing arts of other areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

            The first theme addressed is the continuity between the traditional and modern performing arts, both traditional retentions in contemporary genres and the way the modern ones have become retrospectively indigenised.  The impact of western contact since the colonial times on local performing arts in terms of syncretic compatability or incompatability is then discussed.  The enormous influence on Africa of black diasporic popular performance from the New World is then treated in some detail in terms of a `black cultural feedback' phenomenon.  Next comes an examination of African popular entertainment's relevance to urbanisation and class stratification, followed by a study of its mediating role in generational and gender matters. The final chapter deals with the anti-hegemonic nature of African popular performance in terms of both its role in the anti-colonial struggle and in present day social protest.