GHANAIAN WOMEN  ENTER  INTO POPULAR

ENTERTAINMENT

 

Published . Humanities Review Journal, (ed)  Dr. Foluke M. Ogunleye, Vol. 3, No.1, (ISSN 1596-0749).  Published by the  Humanities Research Forum,  University of Ibadan and Obefemi Awolowo University, Nigeria,  June 2003, pp.1-10.

 

 

 

This article discuses  the problems faced by West African and particularly Ghanaian female popular performers and the various factors that have, since the 1960’s led to increasing numbers of women entering the professional theatre and the commercial entertainment industry.

 

Until the 1960’s there were few West African women popular stage artists.  Up to this time Ghanaian highlife was ‘mainly a male affair’ as Asante Darko and Van der Geest put it, (1983:135), whilst the Nigerian musicologist Omibiye-Obidike says her country’s popular music was ‘dominated by men’, with women popular musicians being generally portrayed by the public as ‘immoral and sexually loose (1987: 4 and 25/6).  This disapproval is also commented upon by Aicha Kone, one of the Cote d’Ivoire’s top stars who says ‘not all families will accept a woman to be an artist and embrace her as a bride .... they think an artist cannot be a serious person, that she is never at home, traveling all the time’.  (Harrev, 1992: 237).

 

The low regard for women performers by Ghanaian concert parties and highlife band practitioners is manifested in their reluctance to allow women to join their groups.  This is why up to recently, female parts have practically always been performed by men.  Mr. Bampoe (Opia), the leader of the Jaguar Jokers concert party told me in 1974 (Collins, 1994: 461) that women had approached him for a job as actress-singer, but he had never hired any because women members of the audience would be annoyed to see their husbands admire a real woman on stage.  The pioneer concert comic, Bob Johnson, said that ‘a girl on stage would be branded as a girl without morals’.  (Sutherland, 1970: 15).

 

Vida Hynes (nee Oparabea), who worked as a teenager in the 1960s with concert parties says that there was a similar reluctance to accept women into Okutieku’s concert group (Collins, 1994: 166-170 and 1994: 461/2).  The band manager thought it would create bad luck for women to move with men, especially, as Vida Oparabea explains, ‘when females have menstruated and they touch band instruments - as the band may then not succeed.’  She continues, ‘ a lot of men in Ghana think that if a female is having  menstruation she should not cook dinner for her husband, nor sleep with him - but just keep low’.  Oparabea also had problems with some of the people in the towns she played in who called her ‘ashao’ (prostitute).  Her parents even once had her locked up in the police cells to prevent her traveling with Okutieku’s group.

 

Adelaide Buabeng is another  concert woman who told me[1] that she had had family problems,  as  in 1965 she had to run away from home at sixteen to join the worker’s Brigade  Concert Party.  Her relatives were particularly annoyed as she belonged to a royal Akan family who considered the concert profession as ‘hopeless’.  Her mother, however supported Adelaide and each year gave a bottle of schnapps to the chief to allow her daughter to continue her acting career.

 

There are various reasons why African women entertainers have been and still are to a certain extent belittled.  One reason is that the status of all professional popular performers, men and women,  is ambiguous as a result of their itinerant life, their youthfulness, their low to intermediate class position and the association between the guitar, palmwine drinking and drunkenness.[2]  This is compounded by imported, Western elitist attitudes to ‘popular’  music and culture which  (cf. ‘art’ and ‘sacred’) is considered ephemeral, trivial and low-brow.  Women popular  artists, however, are held in particularly low esteem, and some of the reasons for this stem from some traditional African attitudes.

 

The menstrual taboo that Vida Oparebea mentions is one.  Although traditionally women are not forbidden to sing and dance there is also a widespread limitations on women using instruments which are reserved for men. Amongst the Akan’s of Ghana for instance, women are not allowed to play horns and drums (except the donno pressure drum) but are allowed to play light percussive instruments such as bamboo stamping tubes, adenkum gourds and rattles (see Nketia 1968). There is also a long tradition in African dramatic performance for women’s roles being played by men. This is found in the female impersonators associated with both certain festivals like the Ga Homowo (see Zuesse, 1979:116) and indigenous theatre such as that of the Mande people and the Ibo ‘okorakpo’ theatre with its ‘drag’ parades (see Finnegan, 1970 and Ottenberg, 1971)

 

These traditional  carry-overs that have lowered the status of contemporary female popular artists have been exacerbated by some aspects of the modernization/urbanization process. These include tensions within the extended and polygamous family, an increase in prostitution resulting from the high ratio of urban male migrants, the  formal education of women and the introduction of new individualistic sexual norms. All these have combined together to threaten traditional male authority: which xplains why popular texts so often dwell on the subject of sexual tension, marriage treachery, ‘good-time’ girls, witchcraft accusations and the ‘duplicity’ of city women (see Yankah, 1984:572 and Waterman, 1986:135)

 

Before turning to the changes that began from the 1960’s that created openings for increasing numbers of women in the popular entertainment field, it should be pointed that there have been exceptions and that in Ghana, for instance there was a handful of well- known popular artists in the pre-1960 era. One of the earliest references to such a pioneer is in the 1929 Zonophone West African Record Catalogue that mentions the singer Akosia Bonsu who accompanied George William Aingo’s Fanti guitar and accordion recordings. Kofi Ghanaba (1975:730) talks about Squire Addo’s discovery in the late 1930’s of Aku Tawia who had ‘ a voice like a nightingale.’ The Ga pianist, Addo, subsequently took Aku Tawia to London to record popular Ga songs including one called ‘Tiitaa Nmaa Wele’ (Sweet Canary Write a Letter) for Zonphone. About this time the early Axim Trio concert party featured an actress called ‘Lady Wilmot’; but she was later replaced by the female impersonator, E.K. Dadson. (Braun and Cole, 1995). It should be noted that the konkoma highlife groups of the 1930’s and 40’s also contained women members as singers and dancers but, although not instrumentalists.[3]  There were also a few female names in the 1950’s, particularly Julie Okine and Agnes Aryitey who sang with Tempos dance band, and Perpetual Hammond who acted with Bob Vans Ghana Trio concert party.

 

The situation changed during the sixties however when women began to join popular groups in some numbers. In the early part of that decade some of the concert female impersonators began to be replaced by professional actresses. These included Asha of Arebela’s group, Margaret Quainoo (Araba Stamp), Adelaide Buaben, Comfort Akua Dampo and Esi Kom of the Workers Brigade Concert Party and Madame Kenya of the Riches Big Sound. They were followed by the guitarists Vida Rose and dramatist Efua Sutherland who both set up their own concert parties in the late 1960’s. Efua Sutherland wasparticularly important as she a university lecturer, was the inspiration behind the National Drama Studio built in the the1960’s and wrote  books  on traditional anansesem stories and the early concert party (see  for instance  Sutherland 1970).[4]

 

It was also in the sixties that the local female ‘pop’ stars made a significant impact on Ghanaian show business. The first were Lola Everett and Charlotte Dada, the latter starring in the 1972 musical film ‘Doing Their Thing’ about a young girl who, against her father’s wishes, becomes a soul singer. During the seventies more and more women moved into the commercial music and recording scene. There was Efua Dokonu who, like the late Bella Bello of neighbouring Togo, sang Ewe pop songs; Naa Amanua who performed Ga ‘cultural’ songs and highlifes: and Joanna Okang who sang with the Uhurus Dance Band. Important Akan recording artists who also began their careers in the seventies included Mumbea, Janet Osei and Awura Ama. They were followed in the eighties by Abena Nyarteh (daughter of the late Senior Eddie Donkor) and Akosua Amoam, Akosua Agyepong and Yaa Oforiwa who, like Mumbea, worked with Nana Ampadu and his African Brothers guitar band. More recent pop star are  Talata Heidi from Northern Ghana, Nana Yaa, Lady Burger, Lady Lartey, Philo Selassie and an ever increasing number of local ‘gospel’ singers (see below).

 

 I will now examine the upsurge of female popular artists since the 1960’s by focusing on four major causes. The impact of black and white foreign stars; the effect of post independence government policies; aspects of the traditional ethos that have helped rather than hindered women; and the importance of the churches as an avenue for musical women.

 

ONE:  THE INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN FEMALE STARS

The solo singers that emerged in the 1930’s in association with jazz and swing music, (Ethel Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Judy Garland and Peggy Lee) led to the first layer of African female stars. One of the first was the Zimbabwean singer Dorothy Mazuka whose career goes back to the thirties and who, according to Makwenda (1990:5/6) ‘specialised in African versions of American jazz favorites.’ She was to followed by (and also influenced) the most famous popular music star to come out of Africa, Miriam Makeba who joined the South African Manhattan Brothers close-harmony group in 1952 and later formed the all-female Skylarks modeled on the American Andrew Sisters (Coplan, 1985:178). The Skylarks in turn paved the way for the simanje-manje (now-now) popular music of 1960’s/70’s South Africa, performed by groups such as the Dark City Sisters and Mahotella Queens. (see Makeba and Hall, 1987).

 

In West Africa, jazz and swing became part of the local night-life scene during the Second World period. Ghanaba (1975:60) refers to a local woman, Dinah Attah, who had visited the United States and returned to sing jazz numbers in a ‘wild bar’ Accra to entertain American G.I’s.  E.T. Mensah told me (Collins, 1986) that his Tempos highlife dance band, although formed as an all-male group towards the end of the war was, by  1953 featuring the women maraccas player Agnes Ayitey and the singer Julie Okine. A year later the Rhythm Aces dance band included  a Nigerian singer called Cathy[5] . A stimulus to local dance band women came from the 1956 visit to Ghana by Louis Armstrong and his All Stars that featured the famous blues singer Velma Middleton. (Collins, 1986:23)

 

Nigerian swing and jazz was pioneered by the late Bobby Benson who in 1948 and together with his English wife, Cassandra[6], began their Modern Theatrical Troupe in Lagos.  The pair danced the jitterbug to jazz and boogie-woogie music played by female saxophone and trumpet players. They were often accompanied by the local Aikin Sisters singing group and later by the Nigerian/Sierra Leonian jazz vocalist, Maude Meyer. Benson’s dance band was also the first Nigerian popular music group to introduce on stage ‘dancing girls- cabaret type’. (see Clark 1979 and Omibiye-Obidike 1987)

 

In more recent years it has been soul, pop, ‘hot’ gospel and reggae singing foreign women who have provided a model for African artists. Kazadi (1973; 276) comments on the importance of Aretha Franklin as well as James Brown for the ‘kiri-kiri style of Congo-jazz ( i.e. soukous), whilst Nigeria’s top reggae artists Peggy Umanah and Evi Edna Ogoli-Ogosi take their inspiration from Afro-Caribbean women.

 

Since the 1960’s many world acclaimed black American, Latin and Caribbean women stars have visited Africa. Millicent Small (Millie) made an African tour in the late 1960’s, the Brazilian Omo Alakyta performed at Nigeria’s FESTAC’ 77 and Bob Marley’s ‘I Three’ female singers sang at Zimbabwe’s independence celebration in 1980. In Ghana, a number of African-American women (including Tina Turner, the Staple Singers, Roberta Flack and the women members of the Voices of East Harlem.) appeared at the ‘Soul to Soul’ concert. In 1974, there was a performance by the jazz pianist Patti Bown and more recently Jermaine Jackson, Dionne Warwick and Nina Simone visited Ghana. In the early nineties Rita Marley decided to settle in Ghana and currently (2003) runs a recording studio in Aburi ten miles north of Accra.

 

TWO : THE EFFECT OF AFRICAN GOVERNMENT POLICIES

The cultural educational policies of the newly independent African states contributed to women’s entrance into popular entertainment. These policies includes the establishment of state and para-statal bands and theatre’s, the projection of local performing arts through the mass media, and government endorsed local and Pan-African festivals.

 

 In 1961, the Guinea government set up the Les Amazons dance band within the female gendarmerie. This launched the singing career of Sona Diabete. One year later the Nigerian government formed Maggie Aghumo’s all-female Armed forces Band, whilst Liberia’s Fatu Gayflor rose to fame through her country’s National Cultural Troupe. For examples of women playing at a state sponsored festival we can take the example of Nigeria’s FESTAC ‘77 at which M’Pongo Love, Miriam Makeba, Yatta Zoe, Les Amazons and Dinah Reindorf’s Dwenesie Choir represented Zaire, black South Africa, Liberia, Guinea and Ghana respectively.

 

Dr. Omibiye-Obidike (1987:5) claims that the opening-up of Nigerian education to women in her country’s post-independence era led them to ‘venture into area that were otherwise dominated by men, ‘and she refers to the university background of pop-singers Dora Ifudu and Onyeku Onwenu. The Yoruba Lijadu Sisters also had a ‘substantial educational background’ (Grass, 1988) as did Liberia’s Miatta Fahnbulleh (Adih, 1989) and Yatta Zoe (Collins, 1992)

 

The Ghanaian government created a major avenue for concert party actresses when, in the early sixties, President Nkrumah formed the Workers Brigade Concert Party and insisted on the introduction of female performers. Such actresses included Esi Kom, Adelaide Buabeng, Margaret Quainoo (Araba Stamp)and Comfort Akua Dompo. When the Brigade group broke-up in the mid sixties some of its actresses joined the Kusum Agoromba concert party, founded in 1969 by Efua Sutherland and linked with the National Drama Studio.

 

Since then a large number of concert actresses have risen to fame, many being members of a new brand of mixed-cast television concert party series that began in the early seventies. The first was the Osofo Dadzie series starring Beatrice Kissi and Florence Mensah - and after it was recontinued in 1986 - the actresses Joyce Agyman and Mary Adjei. The Obra Concert Party formed in 1982, also has a mixed cast that has included Esi Kom, Cecilia Adjei and the group’s lead character Grace Omaboe. Her stage name is ‘Mammy Dokonu’ and she is director of the group. Both Omaboe and Adjei have had varied careers in the theatre : Omaboe was at one time the schools drama organizer for Greater Accra and Cecilia Adjei is a university lecturer. Omaboe, incidentally, in thelate 1990’s then moved into hosting the most popular of Ghana’s  TV phone-in chat-shows (on metro TV)  called  ‘Odo Ni Asumdwe’ (Where there is Love there is Peace)

 

THREE: TRADITIONAL FACTORS THAT HAVE ABETTED POPULAR ARTISTS

In spite of the customary restrictions on musical women mentioned earlier, there are aspects of African culture that have facilitated the appearance of women on the popular stage. The most obvious is that there are African societies that have a tradition of female professional performers; which has simply been continued into the present. An example is the ‘djely mouso’ or West Africa female hereditary jali (jeli) or griot. They customarily sing, clap, dance and play the small percussion instruments that accompany the kora harp-lute, xylophone (and today guitar) that are played by men. Many of Mali’s current top singing stars, such as Fanta Damba, Fanta Sacko, Tata Bambo, Koutay Kouyate and Ami Koita fall into this category. (see Duran, 1989)

 

Another important feature of pre-colonial Africa was that women were not excluded from the musical sphere altogether; indeed the hunter-gather societies of the Kung ‘bushmen’ of South Africa and the Mbuti pygmies of Zaire were completely egalitarian in the music making (see Frisbie, 1971:274 and Turnbull, 1962:206). In agricultural communities too, women played and still play a major role in art production, although women’s and men’s art often constitute very different spheres of activity (see Drinker, 1948:15). Roberts (1974, 50/1) claims there is a widespread African tendency to regard certain sorts of music and instruments as being for men and other for women. Nketia (1961) refers to the organization of African music into feminine domestic and maiden songs on one hand and masculine hunting and warrior songs on the other. Let us take a few West African examples.

 

Omibiye-Obidike (1987:5) says that Yoruba women have a special realm of music reserved for them, and the members of Sande secret age-set societies of Mende women of Sierra Leone[7] have their own specific ‘bundu’ instruments and songs (see Van Oven 1981:21/3 and 46/7). The Tiv of Nigeria have exclusively female wedding songs to welcome a new bride and Keil (1979:155) notes there is a marked difference in the way Tiv men and women dance. In northern Ghana there is a twirling dance for Dagomba men called ‘takai’ and one for a women called ‘tora’ (see Haydon and Marks, 1985:117). The coastal Fantis of Ghana have the male ‘kununku’ and female ‘akrodo’ recreational dance/music [8] . Similarly, the neighbouring coastal Ga people have the male music of the ‘asafo’ warrior companies and what Hampton (1978:2) calls their ‘auxiliary’ and mainly female ‘adowa’ performance groups. The Ga’s borrowed both these asafo and adowa age-set ensembles from the Akans.

 

Because Ghanaian women have not traditionally been excluded from music, they have become deeply involved with the emergence of neo-traditional forms including Akan konkoma, akweya and osoode, Ewe borborbor, Ga kpanlogo and  Dagomba simpa; albeit as dancers and singers rather than instrumentalists. Some of these neo-traditional forms in turn (like Koo Nimo’s ‘up and up’ music and Ga ‘cultural’ music) have become commercialized on record and stage and so have provided women with an access to incomes from popular entertainment.

 

Let us take the case of Ga’ cultural’ groups that consciously go back to roots by drawing on Ga folk music. Indeed, the name of the pioneering such group of the early seventies, Wulomei (formed by Nii Ashitey and Saka Acquaye) is the Ga word for both indigenous priests and priestesses. This popular genre has subsequently introduced a large numbers of Ga women to the stage and recording studies. The women sing, dance and play small percussion instruments, whilst the men sing and play local drums and guitar. Both sexes play the atenteben flute. In fact, one of the most well known of these Ga ‘cultural’ groups’ Suku Troupe, is actually run by the  women Naa Amanua, an ex-vocalist of Wulomei.

 

Another Ghanaian form of music that is  exclusively female is Akan ‘nnwonkoron’ that was traditionaly performed a capella by a group of women singing and clapping in a circle. In the last few years a number of local cassettes of this music  has been released, with instruments such as drums and premprensua (giant hand-piano) also  added  to increase the commerncial appeal.

 

FOUR:  THE CHURCH AS ROUTE FOR WOMEN POPULAR PERFORMERS

Just as the churches especially, the Protestant denominations have provided American and European women with a road to music making, so too have they facilitated the entrance of African women into the popular entertainment field. For example, the African separatists churches continue the indigenous traditions of dancing and clapping during worship and the membership of these churches and their choirs contain a high proportion of women.

 

In Ghana these churches became particularly important for popular music during the country’s economic depression of the 1970’s, when the music industry partially collapsed and a considerable number of musicians had go abroad to continue their careers. At this time many other guitar band musicians began to join the choirs that were run and financed by the local churches. Moreover, the government imposed heavy taxes on the commercial music sector ( high import duty on imported instruments, entertainment tex, etc) but not to the churches. All these factors contributed from the early eighties to the growth of gospel and ‘gospel-highlife’ groups that are guitar bands fronted by sexually mixed four-part harmony choirs singing danceable Christian songs. Prior to this guitarists and guitar-bands had been associated with drunkenness and the footloose life of itinerant bands - so few women were associated with them. However, when the guitar-bands and even some concert parties went under the patronage of the church, Christian families found it difficult to forbid their daughters from joining them. As a result, since the 1980’s a whole new generation of women singers has risen to fame. These include Mary-Ghansah Ansong, the Tagoe Sisters, Stella Dugan, Josephine Dzodzegbe, Mavis Sackey, Evelyn Boatse, Ester Nyamekye, Suzzy and Matt, Diana Akiwumi, Cindy Thompson,  the Daughters of Glorious Jesus, Helena Rhabbles, Hannah Marfio,  Juliet Antwi,  Amy Newman, Esther Quartey and   Juliana Acheampong.. Confirming this feminisaton trend is that Cindy Thompson and the Daughters of Glorious Jesus won the Ghana National Gospel Awards in 2003 and Thompson went on to represent Ghana at the Gospel and Roots  Festival held in the Republic of Benin in August 2003. Bender (1991:109) mentions a similar situations in Nigeria where there are a great number mixed and even all-female choirs, maintained by the various independent and aladura churches. He cites the example of the Good Women’s choir of the Christian Apostolic Church of Ibadan that has released many records.

 

This move secular to sacred that happened during Ghana’s economic problems of the seventies has parallels with the United States; for with the Great Depression of the 1930’s and consequent collapse of the record industry. Thomas Dorsey,[9] Ethel Waters and many other American blues and jazz artists moved away from the secular ‘devil’s music and began to play gospel music. This infusion of popular into the black church explains the blues and jazz influence on pre-war hot-gospel artists like Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe - and ultimately, in the post-war era, on Diana Ross, Nina Simone, Dina Washington, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers and the other gospel trained soul and pop stars who, as mentioned earlier,  have also contributed to the feminisation of African popular music by acting as role models..

 

Although the process of the sacralisation of popular entertainment has happened much more recently in Ghana than it did in the states, there is now the beginning of a corresponding sacred-to-secular trend. Today some Ghanaian men and women gospel artists are moving into the area of commercial dance-music recording. Indeed, trained female gospel singers are now a major resource for the women session-musicians required in the Ghanaian recording studios for local ‘pop’ releases.

 

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OMIBIYI-OBIDIKE M. A.  1987.  “Women and Popular Music in Nigeria. Paper read at the 4th international Conference of IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) held in Accra between 12th-19th of August.

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ROBERTS John Storm, 1974.  Black Music of Two Worlds.  New York: William Morrow and Company.

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Prof  John Collins Sept 2003