Ghanaian palmwine music: revitalizing a tradition and maintaining a community.

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines the tradition of Ghanaian palmwine music, exploring strategies for its revitalization and sustenance. Framed within the context of applied ethnomusicology and through the theoretical lens of adaptive management (Titon, 2015), music revitalization (Levine, 1993), and recontextualization (Mundundu, 2005), the study investigates how revitalizing palmwine music can enhance its sustenance within contemporary contexts amid societal changes. Since the 1980s, the preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage has attracted the attention of policymakers, cultural workers, and scholars because of the rapid rate at which cultural practices and traditions are being lost, abandoned, or radically transformed. UNESCO's policies on safeguarding cultural heritage – the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001) and the Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) - are recent strategies established to protect and safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage. In Ghana, one such tradition is palmwine music (nsadwase nnwom), which emerged along the coast of West Africa in the early 20th century as a result of a fusion of guitar traditions and indigenous musical resources. A unique and rich musical tradition, which in recent years has been facing a decline in practice, and as a result, has been less studied. The methodology embraced was action research, introducing curated performance circles and festival events as part of a local intervention to document the performance praxis of the palmwine music tradition in Accra, Ghana, and investigate how the music currently resonates with this community. The study further explored how these recent events form the basis of a contemporary local music rooted in local experiences and histories. The study brings new perspectives on ways in which applied ethnomusicology facilitates the revitalization and sustenance of hybrid tradition in an African context.