Cultural Day

Last spring there was a cultural performance in the neighboring village. Different schools from the district were chosen to participate and compete in the various events. My school wasn't chosen, presumably because it's so small, but we were all invited to come watch the activities.



There were a number of events that the schools competed in. These included drum talking, group dancing, group singing, dramatic poetry recitations, speeches, and skits. The drum talking consisted of a speaker and a drummer. The speaker read a sentence, and the drummer reproduced the sounds with the drums. The local language, Twi, is a tonal language consisting of high and low tones. The drummer used two drums, obviously with high and low tones, to "speak" using the drums. It was interesting because I'm not accustomed to listening to different tones as English is a vowel language. Many times I would hear the speaker read the phrase, and the drummer repeat the phrase, and the entire audience would either cheerly wildly, or remain quiet. All the while though, I really had no idea on what made a good response and a poor response. It was as though I was deaf to what was happening.



The singing was also an interesting activity. There is a lot of singing in Ghana, but it's really not the type of singing that I typically would listen to. It's also not quite the type of traditional African singing that everyone has heard. However, several schools did an outstanding job with their singing performances. I'm really not that familiar with singing group, or choirs as they can called, but they did have the different sections of people singing the different parts of the...song. Some schools actually had specific uniforms for the choir and really made quite the entrance as they came in.



The dancing performance was quite an experience. They began with a large group of students forming a sort of core, and setting up drums and benches. A large group of students remained around this core and sang and drummed away. During the beginning of the dance, a small group of dancers came out to perform a more difficult, technical type of dancing. After this, a larger group came out and danced out a skit, if you will. These dances actually took quite a long time - up to 15 minutes actually. The singers and drummers from the core were using a microphone, and continually moved the microphone around from one singer to the next during the performance. As the dance progressed, the singers and drummers seemed to get much more earnest and serious about what was happening. It seemed as though it was no longer about a performance, and more about something they simply wanted to be doing. A light rain started falling during the end of the performances, but the dancing continued. Seeing the intensity that everyone had even during the light rain really changed the dancing from a performance to something that I actually experienced. I started imagining people doing those dances many years ago, and realized that this is really part of the cultural background of the people. It really would something to be able to see these dances 200 years ago.



The speeches the students gave seemed as though they were written by teachers, and simply performed by the students. One speech in particular focused on the topic of foreigners coming into Ghana and exploiting the natural resources that are here. As the only foreigner there, I got a lot of attention during that speech. It really wasn't completely fair though, because they were reciting the speech in the local language, and I'm not proficient in it enough to understand everything that's being said. So I had to adopt a neutral expression and just acknowledge the attention. It's true that some foreigners may be exploiting the natural resources in Ghana, but I really don't know enough about the topic to support or defend all foreign business involvement here. It's a unique experience being the only white person in large groups of Ghanaians, but for the most part I get used to it and it really doesn't bother me.



During the performances, most of the participants were dressed in traditional Ghanaian clothes. I was comparing the traditional clothes to the clothes they typically wear, and really prefer the traditional style. Nearly all people wear second-hand Western clothes for everyday activities. While this doesn't always look bad, I'd really like to see a lot more of the traditional clothes. Occasionally I'll see people wearing more traditional clothes, but these are typically more expensive than the second-hand Western clothes, so they really aren't quite as common. Maybe I should suggest having a cultural Friday at the school where all the students would wear traditional clothes instead of their uniforms. Some school uniforms look rather stuffy and like long-spent carry-overs from the mission schools that were started many years ago.