DANIEL APPIAH-ADJEI
Because
Gold Coast, now Ghana had little performance that resembled the theatrical
forms they knew, Europeans, when they began to colonize Africa were convinced
that it was devoid of theatre. Nevertheless, the country was teeming with
performance activities—ceremonies, festivals, religious rites, storytelling and
various kinds of celebrations, all interwoven into daily life of the various
cultures. The Europeans brought with them their own form of theatre and sought
to naturalize it throughout much of the country. The tension between this
colonialist heritage and indigenous forms has created a vigorous and dynamic
spectrum of performance in cotemporary Ghana. Ghanaian ritual and performance
are not rigidly fixed, for although the function of a ritual or ceremony may be
constant, in its execution, there is almost always room for improvisation and
adaptation.
Anansesem Tradition
Storytelling
(Anansesem-Spider story) which may take many forms is an important Ghanaian
performance mode. In part because when they arrived most African cultures and
for that matter those of the Gold Coast, had no written language. Europeans
declared that Africa had no history. They failed to recognize that much of what
Africans considered to be of historical importance was embodied and preserved
in their performances. Especially important in several cultures was the griot, the storyteller, the praise
singer and sometimes “living archives” of society, who committed to memory and
passed on to successor a record of the community. In many societies,
storytellers were primarily entertainers, but almost every Ghanaian society had
some form of storytelling as a cultural tradition. Storytellers usually
accompanied themselves on musical instrument, such as lute, harp-guitar, but
might be accompanied by one or more musicians or singers. Storytellers told
stories both as education and entertainment, in a tradition analogous to
Homeric epics of ancient Greece and scop’s
tales of Teutonic Europe, both of which in oral form precede written
records of them. Storytelling remains a vital form and a major influence of
much Ghanaian drama, in which the storyteller often appears as narrator or
character.
Concert Party
One
major type of theatre in Ghana is the Concert Party. The Concert Party
tradition is sometimes traced from the work of Mr. Yalley, the Headmaster of an
elementary school in Sekondi who began in 1918 to give concerts (a mixture of
jokes, singing, and dancing for which he wore various disguises, including
fancy dress, wig, moustache and makeup of American black-and white-minstrel)
for Empire Day celebrations. His three hour shows opened with a hired
brass-band that marched and campaigned around town and ended up outside the
theatre. In the theatre, Yalley performed his comedy sketches assisted by a
trap-drummer and a harmonium player who provided a cross-section of the then
popular ballroom dance tunes: ragtimes, quicksteps and waltzes. His shows were
in English and tickets very expensive. His audience consisted mainly of the
educated black elite. But it is Ishmael (Bob) Johnson; a pupil of Yalley’s who
is credited with giving the Concert Party its distinctive form by intermingling
elements from many sources, including Yalley’s performances, American Black
Vaudeville, silent films, and spider story telling conventions. His first group
was school boys’ affair called the Versatile Eight, which nevertheless
included the three principal stock characters the Gentleman, the joker and the
Lady impersonator.
By
the late 1920s the concert party tradition had therefore begun to separate into
two distinct varieties: the Upper-class shows of Yalley and the ‘Accra
Vaudeville’ on one hand, and the Bob Johnson’s schoolboy sixpenny shows on the
other.
In
1930, Johnson created the first of his “Trios”, The
Two Bobs and Their Carolina Girl
(consisting of Johnson, J, “Bob” Ansah and C.B. Hutton) that staged for
villagers and the urban poor. As developed by Johnson, the Concert Party began
with an opening section which included among other things: a musical number
sung and danced by the Trio; a ragtime song by one of the Bobs; and a joking
duet between the two Bobs. This was followed by a comic play about one hour
length. The play’s parts of which were always improvised and always used music
and dance were sometimes giving in English, sometimes in a local language and
sometimes in Pidgin English. In addition to being entertaining, most Concert
Parties dealt with contemporary topics and sought to provoke their audiences to
think about them.
In
1935, Bob Johnson became the joker or ‘Bob’ for the Axim Trio concert party
that became the prototype for all succeeding ones. A man called E.K Dadson
played Susana and Charlie Turpin played the role of the Gentleman. With one of
the famous highlife guitarist by name Kwame Asare, popularly known as Jacob
Sam, they toured many places like Liberia, La Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Loene.
Their
first international engagement was a tour to Nigeria for which they were joined
by the twenty-two strong Cape coast Sugar Babies dance-orchestra. They also
engaged the local brass band or ‘Konkoma’ for the evening performances in the
Gold coast. (Ghana)
Their
shows consisted of an ‘Opening Chorus’ (Duet) followed by a two our play. The
titles of some of the plays they staged before the group dissolved in the 1950s
include:
·
The coronation
of King George the Sixth
·
The Bond of 1844
(about the Fanti-British alliance)
·
The Tenfoot man
·
The Downfall of
Adolph Hitler
·
Kwame Nkrumah
will Never Die
Names of Some Concert Party Groups
·
Bob Cole’s Happy
Trio
·
The Jovial
Jokers (JJs)
·
The Dix Covian
Jokers
·
The West End
Trio (All from Western Region)
·
The Saltpond
Trio
·
Sam (i.e Kwame
Asare)and His Party Trio from Central Region
·
Y.B Bampoe’s
Schoolboy Yanky Trio from the Eastern region
·
The Keta Trio
from the Volta Region
In
1952, a major contribution to the concert party profession was made by the
great guitarist called E.K Nyame. He was the leader of the E.K’s Guitar-band.
His concert party was called Akan Trio. It was the first concert party to use
the Akan language to stage plays. His synthesis of guitar-band highlife music
and concert acting in the Akan language made his group and instance success.
His band made four hundred records which were not only popular in Ghana but in
Nigeria as well.
Some of the most important Ghanaian
concert party groups during the latter part of the fifties and the sixties
were:
·
Kaikaiku’s Band
(K.K’s)
·
Jaguar Jokers
·
The Ghana Trio
·
Onyina’s Royal
Trio
·
Kwaa Mensah’s
Band
·
The happy Stars
from Nsawam
·
I.E Mason’s
Group
·
Yamoah’s Band
·
‘Doctor K.
Gyasi’s Noble Kings
·
Brigade concert
Party
·
Nana Kwame Ampadu’s
African Brothers Band
By
1960, when Johnson formed the Musician’s Union of Ghana, there were about
twenty eight Trios but the number has declined tremendously of late. The
Concert Party was the first fully professional theatre in Ghana. It became a
popular form of theatre in the neighboring Republic of Togo. Johnson’s success
was partially a result of his fusing together the character of the imported
blackface minstrel with that of the mischievous Ananse-the Spider hero of the
Akan folklore. That was an important early step in the Africanisation of the
Concert Party tradition.
Television Drama
There
were film versions of the concert party plays such as I told you so by Bob
Cole, Araba Stamp etc. television concert party series began in the 1970s and
these tended to have a strong moral and didactic tone as well as providing an
avenue for many concert actresses. The two most popular were the Osofo Dazie
and Obra groups.
Recent
times many concert groups like Santo and Judas recorded their plays on
cassettes for sale. Now, many films like those of Agya koo have also emerged.
Guitar Bands and Concert Party
"Ghanaian concert parties are professional groups of itinerant
artists who stage vernacular shows for the rural and urban audiences that
combine slapstick musical comedies, folk stories, acrobatics, moral sermons,
magical displays and dance-music sessions. They appeared just after the First
World War and since then have acted as a cultural vortex in Ghana, for besides
drawing on the indigenous and imported, old and new, they have accredited to
themselves local highlife music and dance, sign painting (large adverts called
concert 'cartoons'), comic literature and the film/video format. Furthermore,
since the 1960's a concert party and its associated guitar band has been one of
Ghana's most important influences on and avenues for contemporary popular
performers."
Some
Guitar Bands and Titles of their Concert Performances
1.
Akwasi Ampofo Adjei and Kumapim Royals –
If you do good, Time Changes
2.
Nana Kwame Ampadu – Suro Obaa, Ntwatosoo
3.
Obuoba J A Adofo and his City Boys –
Owuo Mpaso, Akonobie
4.
Ewura Ama Badu – Me dofo adaadaa me
5.
Kwabena Akwaboah’s Band – Woni mea hwe
me bi na ko
6.
Abirekyie Ba Kofi Sammy – Yellow Ceci
Dey for Corner
7.
Dr. Paa Bobo – Wo Nyame som mpo ni?
8.
Alex Kwabena Konadu – Asaase asa, Awieye
9.
F. Mica –Odu yefoo
1.
Paapa Yankson – Woyere anaa wo maame?
1.
Prince Osei Kofi, and His African Heroes
– Fine Boy Enye mea
1 Jewel Ackah and his Butterfly Six – Ayefroo,
wedding
Abrantee Amakye dede and His Apollo High
Kings – Sansankromma
1.
C. K Mann and his Carousels – Asafo Bensua
1.
A.B. Crentsil – Moses
1.
Akonoba J.K – Obaa yaa Anane
1.
Osei Vasco and the Ashanti Brothers Band
– Ao Love, Ao odo
1.
Atakora Manu – Odefe defe ne dee emaa
beye me defee
1.
B.B. Collins – Adwoa Bene
2.
Asebu Amanfi – Nsemfo Ahi. Kana wu
2.
Snr. Eddie Donkor – Ode Nkwanpa Regye
2.
Kaakyire Kwame Appiah – 24th Ko
Wo Krom
2.
Nana Akyeampong – Anka ebeyeden na aye
wo ya
2.
Daddy Lumba – Aben Waha etc
S Some
Institutional Concert Parties
1.
Kristo Asafo Concert Party
2.
Anokyekrom Concert Party – Kumasi
3.
Agro Ciltad Concert party – Cape Coast
4.
Kusum Agoromma Concert Party – Art
Centre, Accra
Literary Drama
A
more literary drama can be traced through Kobina Sekyi’s The Blinkards (1915) and J B Danquah’s (1895-1965) The Third Woman (1943), both of which
dealt with the relationship of native and colonial influences and The Fifth Landing Stage (1943) by Rev. F
Kwasi Fiawoo. Written drama did not begin to flourish, however, until after
independence in 1957.
Two
of Ghana’s major playwrights Efua T. Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo emerged. Efua
Sutherland, (1924-1996) was the most important figure in Ghanaian theatre after
independence. Associated with the first President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr
Kwame Nkrumah until his overthrow in 1966, she sought to create a theatre that
would embody the social ideals of the state. She founded an open-air theatre,
the Ghana Drama Studio in Accra in 1957, and helped to establish the School of
Music and Drama at the University of Ghana, Legon, where she encouraged
research about traditional performances. She also sought to strengthen the
storytelling tradition through the establishment of the Kodzidan (story house)
in Ekumfi-Atwia and by organizing its space to fit storytelling tradition
rather than using the colonialist proscenium-arch structure. She helped to
encourage children’s theatre through some of her own plays, such as Vulture!, Vulture!, and Tahinta. She was
also an acclaimed director who directed many of her plays. Sutherland’s
best-known plays are Edufa (1962), Foriwa (1962), and The Marriage of
Anansewa (1975).
In
Edufa, the title character seeks
through divination and ceremonies to manipulate his wife into the death
predicted for him by oracles. Foriwa concerns
the attempt to bring change to a backward village (Kyerefaso) in which the
elders refuse to consider new ways. It illustrates the need for cooperation
among rival groups and openness to ideas favored by the new ruler. The Marriage of Anansewa draws on anansesem, spider tales tradition to
create a structure that Sutherland called Anansegro.
It shows how Ananse schemes to get money by setting off a bidding war among
four chiefs for the hand of his daughter, Anansewa.
Ama
Ata Aidoo (1942- ) is noted for two plays. The
Dilemma of a Ghost (1964) concerns a man who returns from America with a
black American wife and the tensions this create within the man’s family, which
has deep-rooted prejudices about slavery and slave ancestry. Anowa (1970) is set in the nineteenth
century and concerns the conflict that develops between husband and wife after
the husband decides against the objection of the wife to buy slaves. The
husband becomes impotent, which the wife believes is connected with slave ownership.
Eventually, both husband and wife commit suicide. Like her first play, Aidoo is
concerned with the lack of positive male-female communication.
J.C.
de Graft (1924-1978) was another major playwright in Ghana. His play Sons and Daughters (1964) is about a
self-made African who seeks to force his youngest son and daughter to follow
the path of their older siblings into professions other than art and dance,
which the younger ones have chosen. In Through
a Film Darkly, (1966), an educated young African man rejects his black
fiancée to go away with a white English woman, who only later to be rejected by
her, (she considers him merely an anthropological specimen) He returns home, now bitterly anti-white. Muntu (1975), commissioned by the All Africa Council of Churches,
uses mythology to comment on present-day Africa and the dictatorial tendencies
of governments.
Other Playwrights and their works
1. Mohammed Ben Abdallah
·
The Trial of
Mallam Ilya
·
The Alien King
·
The Verdict of
The Cobra
·
The Witch of
Mopti
2. Martin Owusu
·
The Story Ananse
Told
·
The Sudden
Return
·
The Mightier
Sword
·
The Offending
Corpses
·
The Legend of
Aku Sika
3. Asiedu Yirenkyi
·
Kivuli
·
Ama Pranaa
·
Blood and Tears
·
Kantinka
4. Efo Kodjo Mawugbe
·
In the Chest of
a woman
·
The Prisoners
Brigade
·
Cinderama
·
Aluta Continua
·
Upstairs and
Downstairs
·
Ananse Kweku
Ananse
5. Yaw Asare
·
Sodom and
Gommora
·
The Leopard’s
Choice
·
Ananse in the
land of Idiots
·
A treasure in
the Well
6. Mensah Bonsu
·
The Trial of
Kwame Nkrumah
7. Saint Abdulai Alhassan
·
The Magic
Padlock
·
When She is Dead
·
A Bird in Hand
8. Nana Sarfo Kantanka
·
Yaa Asantewaa
(Ahi Koo)
·
The Royal Pride
9. Daniel Appiah-Adjei
·
Atobra
·
The Tears of
Lucifer
·
Death on Trial
·
The Final Touch
·
A Child Once
Again
·
The Bleeding
Flower
·
The Fools’
Paradise
·
The Slave-ship
·
Instant Justice
·
Mathew Chapter
Four
·
Aids is no
respecter of Persons
·
From Mother To
Son
·
Funeral Ahead of
Time
10. Nana Adansi Pipim
·
Ur-Kaffena
·
The Afterlife
·
The Cauldron
11. Osei Kwadwo
·
Feyiase
·
Owuo Apakan
·
Siaw Anim
12. David Asomaning
·
The Brutal
Robbery in Inzugura
·
Pinaman Aviods
H.I.V Aids
·
Maggie and
Purple on Campus
·
Brefo
·
Dromadeur Obama
·
Muraana
·
Samanme
13. Ebo Whyte
·
Run for Your
Wife
·
The Patient
·
Terms of Divorce
14. Faustina Brew
·
Murder of the Surgical Bone
I presume there are many other playwrights whose
names have not been mentioned but are contributing to the development of
theatre in Ghana. I say bravo to you all. Keep theatre alive.
By His Grace, I shall be back
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