Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-06T08:03:25.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Music and Ritual Symbolism in the Ga Funeral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Barbara L. Hampton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay will attempt an interpretation of the symbolic phenomena of YaraƐƐmɔ which assume the form of sounds perceived as song (lala) and gestures, inextricably linked with the songs, that are considered to be part of the dance (dzoo). YaraƐƐmɔ, performed by the Ga of southeastern Ghana,1 is a ritual in that it is both a practice through which participants relate to the sacred (Durkheim 1968:52) and “a form of religious behavior associated with (the) social transitions” of humans (Turner 1964:4–6). As a transformative, contingent ritual, being occasioned by death, it belongs to a particular class of ritual; it is a rite of passage. Like other funerary rites, those of the Ga are characterized by preliminal, liminal and postliminal phases (van Gennep 1975:148). YaraƐƐmɔ falls within the liminal phase but makes reference to the separation and incorporation phases of the passage. The music and dance of YaraƐƐmɔ, called Adowa, do not merely articulate the defining features of the ritual, but, in fact, shape it; for, as I hope to demonstrate, they constitute ritual action that is both expressive—a communication system stating the relationships among humans and those among humans, their natural environment and the supernatural—and manipulative, an encoded moral system performed to achieve certain effects in these relationships (c.f. Geertz's models of and for reality 1966:7–9). Adowa is performed at the wake the night before the burial and on the day of the burial immediately before and during the processional to the site of interment.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 14 , 1982 , pp. 75 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acquah, Ione 1956 Accra survey. London: University of London Press, Ltd.Google Scholar
Ayandele, E.A. 1966 The missionary impact on modern Nigeria 1842–1914. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile 1968 The elementary forms of the religious life, translated by Joseph Ward Swain. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1915. New York: The Free Press. Fifth Printing.Google Scholar
Field, M.J. 1940 Social organization of the Ga people. London: Crown Agents for the Colonies.Google Scholar
Field, M.J. 1961 Religion and medicine of the Ga people. London: Oxford University Press, 1937. Revised edition.Google Scholar
Firth, Raymond 1963 “Offering and sacrifice: problem of organization”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. XCIII. Pp. 12–24.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford 1965 “Religion as a cultural system” in Banton, Michael, ed., Anthropological approaches to the study of religion. Association of Social Anthropologists Monographs no. 3. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Government, Ghana 1964 Special report “E” tribes in Ghana. 1960 population census of Ghana. Accra: Census Office.Google Scholar
Hampton, Barbara L. 1977 Transformation in the recruitment and training practices of musicians in Accra: the case of Kpehe Gome. Paper presented to the 24th conference of the International Folk Music Council. Honolulu, Hawaii.Google Scholar
Hampton, Barbara L. 1978a Music of the Ga people of Ghana, volume I. Adowa: FE4291. New York: Ethnic Folkways Records and Service Corporation.Google Scholar
Hampton, Barbara L. 1978b “The contiguity factor in Ga music”, The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 6, No. 2. Fall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Marvin 1980 Culture, people, nature. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. 2nd edition.Google Scholar
Hood, Mantle 1971 The ethnomusicologist. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.Google Scholar
Horton, Robin 1964 “Ritual man in Africa”, Africa, vol. XXXIV. Pp. 85–104.Google Scholar
Johnson, G. Wesley 1967 The emergence of modern African politics in Senegal 1848–1920. Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
Kilson, Marion 1969 “Libation in Ga ritual”, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 161–178.Google Scholar
Kilson, Marion 1971 Kpele lala: Ga religious songs and symbols. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kilson, Marion 1974 African urban kinsmen. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Koetting, J.T. 1970 “Analysis and notation of West African drum ensemble music”, Selected Reports, I, no. 3. pp. 115–146.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw 1931 “Culture”, in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Seligman, and Johnson, , eds., vol. IV. New York: The Macmillan Company. Revised 1959.Google Scholar
Needham, Rodney 1967 “Right and left in Nyoro symbolic classification”, Africa XXXVII, pp. 425–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nketia, J.H. 1955 Funeral dirges of the Akan people. Achimoto: University College of the Gold Coast.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott 1952 “Sociology and social psychology”, in Fairchild, Hoxie N., ed., Religious perspectives in college teaching. New York: Ronald Press, pp. 286–305.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1964 “Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage”, The proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, Symposium on new approaches to the study of religion. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 4–20.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor W. 1973 “Symbols in African ritual”, Science, vol. 179. January-March. pp. 1100–1105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Gennep, Arnold 1975 The rites of passage, translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 7th impression.Google Scholar
Yinger, Milton 1957 Religion, society and the individual: an introduction to the sociology of religion. New York: Macmillan Press.Google Scholar