Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the manifold possibilities in African traditional music and how composers have begun to utilize these in orchestral compositions using Ghana as a case study. It also asks why art music has lagged popular music and jazz in adoption of African elements and why this is now changing.

Paper long abstract:

A century ago, Africa was virtually unknown in art music circles except via a handful of pioneering Afro-European composers. The vast wellspring contained in the diverse musical traditions of the African continent was all but absent from the canon of Western Art music which by then had incorporated significant input from European folk music and increasingly looked to the Near East, Asia, and the Americas for inspiration.

The past century has however seen a flourishing of indigenous African composers who have sought to embody the “Sankofa” ideal – an ideal symbolized in Ghanaian Adinkra tradition by a backwards-looking bird with an egg in its beak – signifying that the past could hold important lessons for the future. In this paper I examine diverse approaches composers take to reflect African traditional music elements in modern art music using Ghana as a case study, and specifically in relation to four seminal orchestral composers: Nayo, Kafui, Abiam, and Labi. Looking towards the future, I utilize an original “African Symphonism” theoretical framework to discuss how composers can seek new sources of inspiration from the thousands of years of innovation and cultural evolution embodied in African musical traditions.

Finally, I make a cursory tour of the parallel evolution of jazz and popular music and its use of Africanisms. I explore possible reasons why the adoption of African traditional music elements in art music has lagged that of popular music and jazz, and why, due to a variety of factors, this trend is set to change.