A Handbook of Eweland

A Handbook of Eweland
Author: Benjamin Nicholas Lawrance
Publisher:
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

Coordinated by the West African Organisation for Research on Eweland, this publication constitutes a first and much needed English language survey of the history and cultures of the Ewe peoples in the former French colonies, Benin and Togo.

Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-drumming Community in Ghana

Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-drumming Community in Ghana
Author: James Burns
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351567152

Ewe dance-drumming has been extensively studied throughout the history of ethnomusicology, but up to now there has not been a single study that addresses Ewe female musicians. James Burns redresses this deficiency through a detailed ethnography of a group of female musicians from the Dzigbordi community dance-drumming club from the rural town of Dzodze, located in South-Eastern Ghana. Dzigbordi was specifically chosen because of the author's long association with the group members, and because it is part of a genre known as adekede, or female songs of redress, where women musicians critique gender relations in society. Burns uses audio and video interviews, recordings of rehearsals and performances and detailed collaborative analyses of song texts, dance routines and performance practice to address important methodological shifts in ethnomusicology that outline a more humanistic perspective of music cultures. This perspective encompasses the inter-linkages between history, social processes and individual creative artists. The voices of Dzigbordi women provide us not only with a more complete picture of Ewe music-making, they further allow us to better understand the relationship between culture, social life and individual creativity. The book will therefore appeal to those interested in African Studies, Gender Studies and Oral Literature, as well as ethnomusicology. Includes a DVD documentary.

Remains of Ritual

Remains of Ritual
Author: Steven M. Friedson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-07-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226265064

Remains of Ritual, Steven M. Friedson’s second book on musical experience in African ritual, focuses on the Brekete/Gorovodu religion of the Ewe people. Friedson presents a multifaceted understanding of religious practice through a historical and ethnographic study of one of the dominant ritual sites on the southern coast of Ghana: a medicine shrine whose origins lie in the northern region of the country. Each chapter of this fascinating book considers a different aspect of ritual life, demonstrating throughout that none of them can be conceived of separately from their musicality—in the Brekete world, music functions as ritual and ritual as music. Dance and possession, chanted calls to prayer, animal sacrifice, the sounds and movements of wake keeping, the play of the drums all come under Friedson’s careful scrutiny, as does his own position and experience within this ritual-dominated society.

Africa and the African Diaspora

Africa and the African Diaspora
Author: E. Kofi Agorsah and G. Tucker Childs
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2005-12-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452040141

Africa and the African Diaspora is the outcome of a symposium held atPortland State University in Portland, Oregon (February 2002), entitled “Symposium on Freedom in Black History,” designed to celebrate Black History Month. The major themes of the conference were how Africans both at home on the continent and dispersed abroad, often by forces beyond their control, reacted to oppression and subjugation in seeking freedom from slavery, colonialism, and discrimination. The volume documents the many forms that oppression has taken, the many forms that resistance has taken, and the cultural developments that have allowed Africans to adapt to the new and changing economic, social and environmental conditions to win back their freedom. Oppressive strategies as divide-and-rule could be based on any one of a number of features, such as skin color, place of origin, culture, or social or economic status. People drawn into the vortex of the Atlantic trade and funneled into the sugar fields, the swampy rice lands or the cotton, coffee or tobacco plantations of the new world and elsewhere, had no alternative but to risk their lives for freedom. The plantation provided the context for the dehumanization of disadvantaged groups subjected to exhausting work, frequent punishment and personal injustice of every kind, This book demonstrates that the history and interpretation of these struggles of the oppressed peoples to free themselves have not received proportionate attention and analysis, as have other aspects of that history.

Revelations of Dominance and Resilience

Revelations of Dominance and Resilience
Author: Apoh, Wazi
Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9988883048

Chinua Achebe ("The art of fiction”) famously observed that until lions have their own historians “the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” In this volume chronicling the complex imperial and colonial entanglements of the Kpando region in eastern Ghana over recent centuries, the lions have found their proverbial historian. Drawing on an array of sources—archaeological, oral historical and documentary—Wazi Apoh brings locally nuanced perspective to the complex social political economic entanglements among Akpini, German and British actors. His illumination of previously silenced histories provides a rich platform from which to provoke us to imagine and act on the possibilities for restorative repatriation in the present. Its novel combination of historical study with analysis of ongoing dialogues over repatriation is a unique contribution to African studies.

Vulnerable Children

Vulnerable Children
Author: Deborah J. Johnson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1461467802

They are laborers, soldiers, refugees, and orphans. In areas of the world torn by poverty, disease, and war, millions of children are invisible victims, deprived of home, family, and basic human rights. Their chances for a stable adult life are extremely slim. The powerful interdisciplinary volume Vulnerable Children brings a global child-rights perspective to the lives of indigenous, refugee, and minority children in and from crisis-prone regions. Focusing on self-determination, education, security, health, and related issues, an international panel of scholars examines the structural and political sources of children's vulnerabilities and their effects on development. The book analyzes intervention programs currently in place and identifies challenges that must be met at both the community and larger policy levels. These chapters also go a long way to explain the often-blurred line between vulnerability and resilience. Included in the coverage: Dilemmas of rights-based approaches to child well-being in an African cultural context. Poverty and minority children’s education in the U.S.: case study of a Sudanese refugee family. The heterogeneity of young children’s experiences in Kenya and Brazil. A world tour of interventions for children of a parent with a psychiatric illness. An exploration of fosterage of Owambo orphans in Namibia. UNICEF in Colombia: defending and nurturing childhood in media, public, and policy discourses. Vulnerable Children is a must-have volume for researchers, graduate students, and clinicians/professionals/practitioners across a range of fields, including child and school psychology, social work, maternal and child health, developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, social policy, and public health.

African Theology

African Theology
Author: Kɔdzo Mawusi
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2015-09-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1460256069

This book is a theological research done as a comparative study of African Traditional Religion in comparison to Christianity. Since Africans in most part, are seen around the world as pagans without any concept of the true God until white missionaries got to the continent, this study is an effort to change that mentality. This book is a result of my research as a theology student to find out what both the Traditional and Christian religions have in common. Those who will approach this book with an open mind will realise that, Africans when it comes to their spirituality, are more spiritual and prayerful than the average Christian in the West. Readers will find to their surprise that there are some similarities or commonalities within these religions, which most Christians are not even aware of. Since the people who brought the notion of this ONE God Christians hold on to so dearly, — the Hebrews, were originally Africans, readers should not be surprised when they come across the facts that, most of the traditional religious sacrificial traditions are in the Christian book of life we call the Bible. Yes, this may come as a surprise to most Christians; but the truth is, we cannot deny their similarities and probably their origin in the Christian tradition because of their African background. Hopefully this book will open the door for dialogue between Christians and non–Christians about God's presence in every culture.