My musical life has exploded with opportunity since my week of balafon study in Winneba. During the past few weeks, I have been learning to play a wealth of instruments—atenteben (bamboo flute), gomme (box drum), ngoni/kora (pentatonic harp), djembe, kalimba, and even a bit of korogo (2-stringed guitar). The majority of these musical activities have been centered around Teshie-Nungua and the Accra Arts Center.
Teshie-Nungua is an oceanfront town on the far east side of Accra (not terribly far from where I was skipping stones with children on the beach in my last blog post). In addition to hosting one of the largest street festivals in the city every year, Teshie-Nungua is home to one of the most talented musical groups I have seen in Africa to date: the Kusun Ensemble. Founded by Nii Tettey Tetteh, the ensemble includes past and present members of The National Ballet and The Pan-African Orchestra. I was introduced to Mr. Tetteh by one Jane Pentland, who organizes month-long study tours with the ensemble for visiting musicians across the world.
Teshie-Nungua is an oceanfront town on the far east side of Accra (not terribly far from where I was skipping stones with children on the beach in my last blog post). In addition to hosting one of the largest street festivals in the city every year, Teshie-Nungua is home to one of the most talented musical groups I have seen in Africa to date: the Kusun Ensemble. Founded by Nii Tettey Tetteh, the ensemble includes past and present members of The National Ballet and The Pan-African Orchestra. I was introduced to Mr. Tetteh by one Jane Pentland, who organizes month-long study tours with the ensemble for visiting musicians across the world.
Although the Kusun Study Tour had to be canceled this year, many of the musicians in the group were still available to give lessons, and the band (and accompanying dance troupe!) continued to meet daily for rehearsals. Mr. Tetteh is a talent to behold. He has taught music for nearly 40 years and is studied in kpanlogo, atumpan, ashiwa, and atenteben. (He is also a star on the musical instrument—or is it a juggling prop?—called the kashaka: see for yourself). (I'm pretty sure a Reedie could practice kashaka for two hours a week at juggling and get PE credit.)
I called up Tetteh and arranged several atenteben (bamboo flute) lessons. Before our first lesson, we dropped by the Arts Center so that I could buy a flute to practice with. Tetteh has one craftsman from whom he likes to buy all of his instruments (not unlike Jiro when it comes to rice in the mouthwatering documentary film "Jiro Dreams of Sushi"). Luckily, this one craftsman happened to be available when we arrived, and luckily we were able to find him among the mountains of people at the arts center that day. The process of finding the correct flute was not easy. After Tettey tried 30-40 flutes and rejected each one, I was actually beginning to doubt that we would find a suitable instrument. Most flutes he would put his mouth up to, blow one note, and then toss it aside. Finally, on the next-to-last flute that was available, he started playing more than just a few notes. After playing the full two-and-a-half octave range and showing off a bit (I can't blame him!), we bought the flute and moved on.
The atenteben is the first wind instrument (not counting voice) that I have studied, and learning has not been easy. Before my first lesson, there were all sorts of techniques (controlling wind pressure, playing chromatic scales by half-covering holes, breathing non-conspicuously, and even just holding the flute) that I wasn't used to. That said, I picked up the basic scales (C major, D major, E major) and wind pressures (allowing the notes C4, C5, G5, and C6 to all be played with the same hand position) during my first lesson, and began learning songs during my second lesson. Here is a recording of me playing an original composition by Nii Tetteh called "Apostolic Jazz" (after practicing it a boatload of times):
I'm even learning "Fly Me to the Moon" (okay, so it's not traditional African music, but it was too fun to resist!):
The band rehearsals were a real pleasure to watch. The Kusun Ensemble has a really nice groove that they create by combining traditional rhythms (balongo, otofo, jibowaka, etc.) with a combination of traditional and modern instruments (bell, shakers, drums, acoustic guitar, ...) and original songs (like the "apostolic jazz" that I learned above). Here's a video from part of one of their songs during practice. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture the dancers and players at the same time, but you can see YouTube for that, or come to Africa yourself!
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The other main area where I have been playing music is the Accra Arts Center, where I have been taking intensive lessons in kora, a pentatonic harp from Mali and Burkina Faso. Actually, I have been playing the ngoni, an older version of the kora, the main differences from the modern kora being the number of strings (16 vs. 21) and the shape of the instrument body (full gourd vs. half gourd).
Kora is one of those instruments, like guitar, that can have "heroes." My current teacher, Ablo, is one of those heroes. Here's a short clip of him playing a song he wrote called "Numusa" from one of our lessons:
These lessons have been extraordinarily fun, and the learning environment (sitting on the sand—with sunscreen—watching the waves crash on the beach) could hardly be better. As with my other lessons, I am compiling a series of videos from my lessons with the names of pieces and different melodies and variations to keep all of my learning straight. I can only learn 3-4 pieces per day with lots of variations for so long before needing to do some review!
The Arts Center is an interesting place in Accra. When I first visited, I noticed that, for the first time since arriving in Ghana, I was not the only white person around. Actually, there were quite a few obroni walking about. This is for good reason—the Arts Center is home to some of the most talented artists and craftsmen in the city. But the fact that the center is a tourist destination also means that upon stepping out of the trotro at the Arts Center gate, I am usually accosted by many shop vendors, each one wanting to sell me the wares they have for sale. That's okay the first time (there are, indeed, a vast number of beautiful art pieces for sale there), but it does grow tiring on the fifth or sixth visit.
Behind this screen of tourism and vending, there is an incredibly talented group of musicians and craftsmen that call the Arts Center their home. Many of them have been living at the center most of their lives, and producing music (through both craft and performance) is what they do. Sometimes for 14+ hours a day. Sometimes on one meal a day.
I am having a wonderful experience meeting and playing music with people at the Arts Center. Everyone I have met at the center has some specialized musical talent that they know an immense amount about. Spontaneous outbursts of music are common, such as the one below:
Behind this screen of tourism and vending, there is an incredibly talented group of musicians and craftsmen that call the Arts Center their home. Many of them have been living at the center most of their lives, and producing music (through both craft and performance) is what they do. Sometimes for 14+ hours a day. Sometimes on one meal a day.
I am having a wonderful experience meeting and playing music with people at the Arts Center. Everyone I have met at the center has some specialized musical talent that they know an immense amount about. Spontaneous outbursts of music are common, such as the one below:
The time between music sessions is just as enjoyable as the sessions themselves. For whatever reason, last week I found myself sitting in a shanty house with a group of Rastafari. One of them had given me some money to buy something starchy on my way to an earlier lesson, so I bought a box of cornflakes and brought it back. We were sitting around sharing this box of cornflakes (which they had never tasted before, but LOVED), listening to highlife pumping through the thin plywood wall from a nearby "spot" (a common name for a bar), and sharing life stories about weird foods. We all agreed that kpeple (undercooked fermented cornmeal served with pine nut soup as a festival food in the town of kokomlemle) is pretty disgusting. This is just one of many experiences I could never really have predicted when planning my Watson project last year.
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Tomorrow, I depart on a 12-hour bus ride for the Northern region of Ghana with a trusted friend from the Arts Center who will be showing me his home and some of the surrounding area. I return next Wednesday, giving me just a couple finals days in Ghana before saying farewell and boarding a plane for Zimbabwe on September 21.
My time here in Ghana continues to be truly wonderful. I learn so many amazing new things here every day. I have also been finding good time to read (I just finished David Byrne's How Music Works and Masanobu Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution), study physics (I am working my way through Klimov's Nanocrystal Quantum Dots and Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics), and juggle (check out my 6-ball juggling stats!). All is well!
Cole out.
My time here in Ghana continues to be truly wonderful. I learn so many amazing new things here every day. I have also been finding good time to read (I just finished David Byrne's How Music Works and Masanobu Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution), study physics (I am working my way through Klimov's Nanocrystal Quantum Dots and Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics), and juggle (check out my 6-ball juggling stats!). All is well!
Cole out.