Akan Civilization and History

African Musicological Inquiry and Positions

Abstract

Like most African societies, there is ample evidence that the Akan in West Africa developed sophisticated methods in the visual and musical arts (or expressive arts) for recording and storing historical experience, to express religious worldview and philosophy, and created societies with unique social values. The historicized texts of ivory trumpets, flutes, drums, songs, poetry of Kwadwomfoɔ (Chronicle Singers), and referential poetry of Abrafoɔ (the Constabulary), and Adinkra pictographic writing bear ample testimony to the undeniable presence of expressive arts in Akan socio-political and economic sophistication. In this paper, I use one of the texts of Fontomfrom Akantam (Oath Swearing) dance suite as a launching pad to respond to Kwasi Konadu’s (2015) disagreement with late nineteenth and twentieth century historians for not considering expressive arts as foundational to Akan civilization. To address the above questions and to complement the larger discourse in the socio-political and economic history of the Akan, I speculate on the formative processes of Akan musical development and the construction of sound producing as well as musical instruments, and the emergence of court music and verbal art forms, community-based vocal ensembles, drumming and dance genres from the Stone Age to the present. My assessment takes into account, the Stone Age from approximately 2000 BCE-500 BCE proposed by James Anquandah (1982), and Kenya Shujaa’s (2015) three broad chronological phases of Akan historical and cultural development namely, the Early Iron Age from 500 BCE-500 CE; the Middle Iron Age from 500 CE-1500 CE; and the Late Iron Age from 1500-1900.