A Negotiated Tradition: Learning “Traditional” Ewe Drumming

Abstract

Although [college] world music ensembles provide at best a pale simulacrum of "the real thing," the implicit goal is still to maximize authenticity by performing near exact replicas of musical models from other cultures. --Gage Averill (2004,100) In traditional African societies the force of tradition is naturally very strong, although it does not stifle creativity. --J. H. Kwabena Nketia (2005, 334) That which is enshrined in a sound recording, for example, is only one among several possible renditions. --Kofi Agawu (2003, 19) For six days Tim Feeney and I had been acutely focused on learning traditional Ewe drumming, sheltered in the shade of a tree outside the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana at Legon (a suburb of the capital city of Accra). On day seven, a July afternoon in 2008, we were taken to Dzodze, a few miles from Ghana's Atlantic coast near the Volta River delta, to attend the funeral celebration for a local Ewe woman. Here was a chance to experience firsthand the music we had so recently studied and memorized in an academic setting. However, Feeney and I bumped hard against our own neophyte assumptions; talking it over later that evening, we berated our naivete. The traditional agbadza funeral music we'd heard today in Dzodze didn't match the agbadza music we had immersed ourselves in for the past week. (Pond 2008) (1) The previous summer, preparing to begin his position as director of percussion at Cornell University, Feeney had studied privately with ethnomusicologist and Ewe music and culture specialist David Locke, of Tufts University, and Torgbui Midawu Gideon Foli Alorwoyie, the African ensemble director at the University of North Texas, (2) both educators of international reputation. Feeney had supplemented these studies throughout the year with ongoing lessons from James Burns, another specialist in Ewe music, and Pierrette Aboadji, a dance instructor (and former member of the Ghana Dance Ensemble), both of nearby Binghamton University. Burns provided us with the logistical support, accommodations, and access to key Ghanaian musicians for our joint trip in 2008. An ethnomusicology and musicology professor at Cornell, my own prior exposure to Ewe drumming dated back to my undergraduate (and some graduate) study with Ewe master drummer C. K. Ladzekpo at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s and early 1990s and to my doctoral study and subsequent research in the African diaspora, particularly as it relates to jazz. In our intensive week at the University of Ghana, Feeney and I, joined by James Gardner, a student from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, had been attempting to learn a half-semester's worth of drumming patterns and playing techniques in six days of lessons with Johnson Kemeh, one of the leading expert instructors in ritual and dance drumming at the university. Now, the ubiquitous trotro taxi minibus had deposited us four hours away (only 197 kilometers, or 122 miles, as the crow flies), and we were ready to learn more of what we had understood as "The Tradition" from Kodzo Tagborlo, a leading drummer in the Volta region and the reigning master drummer in the medium-sized town of Dzodze, a commercial hub and county seat. (3) As cultural outsiders, active musicians, and music academics, Feeney and I were anxious to "get it right"--to learn Ewe ritual and dance drumming techniques, repertoire, and contexts as authentically as possible. Feeney, a recent doctor of musical arts graduate in percussion from Yale, was intent on building his skills, and I was keen to build my own. Now we were taking lessons together, intending to learn the same material in three weeks of concentrated field research and lessons in Ghana, so that his World Drumming and Dance Ensemble and my music survey course, The African Diaspora, could build upon and reinforce each other. …