Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Interrelations of African Music and Dance

1965; Akadémiai Kiadó; Volume: 7; Issue: 1/4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/901416

1588-2888

J. H. Kwabena Nketia,

Music History and Culture

In many parts of Africa, music and dancing are generally activities of 'social' occasions, that is, occasions on which the members of a community or a social group meet for recreation or for the performance of a ceremony or a rite. The dance arena may, therefore, be the village square, the street, the courtyard, the town plaza or sacred places where particular rites are observed. There are dances which may be performed any day, as well as others which are performed only on specific 'social' occasions or on specific days of the ritual calendar. They may be dances for general enjoyment or dances designed for limited participation, such as royal dances, dances of heroic and occupational associations and dances of cult groups. The diversity which characterises cultural usages in Africa shows itself in the organisation of these dances, for the same set of movement sequences is not used everywhere. In Ghana, for example, Akan dances are very different in form from the dances of the Anlo Ewe and those of the peoples of Northern Ghana. There is a characteristic way in which the Akan use the feet and more particularly the hands in their dances, which is either altogether absent from the dances of other Ghanaians or much less pronounced. Among the Akan group one may in this respect also distinguish between Fante style with its emphasis on rapid footwork, and Ashanti style with its emphasis on hand and arm movements. Different elaborations of the basic movements selected in a given society may be used in particular dances. Thus in the Akan area of Ghana, adowa, asaadua, kete, sikyi, ntan and so forth, are regarded as different dances because of the different elaborations of the basic Akan dance movements employed in each of them. The forms in which the dances are expressed may be prescribed by tradition. There are 'free' dances in which individuals participate as they wish, without very much regard to others, as well as organised St. Musicologica VII. (1965)