Obrunis and the next steps

Hello again!

The following was written over the course of a few days… hence the length. Enjoy!

Everything is still going really well here despite the waiting game that I am in the midst of. I am having to be very patient as I wait for more interviews to be set up. Waiting has never been my forte. I always want to get up and go and be doing something useful and productive at all times. But I think that there is an important lesson there. I am a visitor with an agenda and have to play by other peoples’ rules since they don’t necessarily share the same agenda. I need to be patiently assertive and things will get going when it is time.

It is an interesting challenge finding the commonalities between myself and certain people here, things that form the basis of my interactions and relationships with them. This is immediately complicated by the fact that here I am given a very specific identity due to my status as a North American and the color of my skin. This is something that I can never get around and something that I am reminded of dozens of times a day. I would like to draw attention to the “Obruni factor” in Ghana. Obruni (not sure about spelling) is the Twi word for white person and is often used to get my attention and for people to point out that they just saw a white person. There is absolutely no malicious intent in the use of the word and sometimes it can be quite fun, especially when you learn the word for black person, obrabini. The kids yell it at the top of their lungs when they see a white (or even Asian) person and wave wildly when they are acknowledged. Adults use it too to get my attention, often in the context of trying to sell something to me or just to say hi. It can be quite fun if dealt with in the right manner. Frankly though, it can be exhausting having this yelled at you all day long. And it’s an interesting experience watching a mother teach her daughter in her arms what my name (obruni) is.

Now, just a couple more thoughts on this. It would be a fruitless (and impossible) goal to try to blend in completely and set aside my identity as an outsider here. There are plenty of worldly travelers out there seeing the world to escape themselves and their lives in search of something better than what they know at home. Perhaps there are certain things on distant corners of the earth that are better than in one’s home country. However, I firmly believe that a person should never set their home aside. Travel should ever be used as an escape. The “obruni factor” can be exhausting even if it is hidden below the surface in an interaction with a person and is not immediately verbalized. However, it can be used to open a window into new interactions with people who initially seem distant. I think that the trick is to bring the commonalities to the surface as soon as possible. I am here to learn about music that I find interesting for the numerous ways that it is perceived by people here, for what it has done and is doing in Ghana and just simply because I like it. In this case art music is one of the commonalities. Conversations about Handel, Puccini and other composers, European or Ghanaian, allow me to make this connection despite my obruni status.

One more thing that I’d like to share. It’s funny coming back to a distant place where you have been before. Things seem normal after a while. Daily life here feels normal and does not feel as exotic as it once did. I am pretty sure that this is a good thing. Exoticism builds boundaries and quite frankly I am convinced that nothing good comes out of it. Just to hammer this point in a little more I’d like to share a little something. While here I have been fortunate enough to have lengthy conversations with friends and family in North America. What kind of world do we live in where somebody 6000 miles away can speak instantaneously with a friend or family member back home? The world is not very distant any more. I do not have service in some of the more rural areas in Ghana, but when I get back to the cities I can call somebody back home and share the experiences that I had at a funeral in the middle of nowhere Ghana just a couple of hours earlier. What a fascinating and “un-exotic” world we live in.

Thanks for letting me preach. Hopefully I can hash these ideas out a little more over the next couple posts. Now on to some more basic stuff. I just arrived back in Madina after a short trip to Cape Coast on Friday and Saturday. While there I was able to conduct a few more interviews and have already made plans to return sometime next week. My next trip involves a concert!! It is also likely that I will stop off in Winneba for an interview on my way to Cape Coast. I now have a much better idea of where my research is going and have begun to put more of a boundary around my topic.

Cape Coast is just about one of my favorite areas in Ghana. The drive along the coast is absolutely incredible… rolling hills, rocky beaches and massive trees. I did my first highway driving in Ghana and lived to talk about it! Thank God. It’s kind of interesting trying figuring out how to drive here. Apparently, constant honking and aggression are key as well as knowing exactly when to pass the semi as traffic speeds towards you! We spent a night there and I was able to speak with some really interesting people whom I will meet with again soon. The next day we attended a funeral in a small town called Abura Dunkwa not too far north of Cape Coast. The service took place in a Methodist church and included some really incredible singing and dancing. I couldn’t understand a word of the service as it was all in Fanti, but just watching people and taking part in it was tremendously moving. For some reason I really like the style of worship in many churches here. I attended the Ghana Police Church (an interdenominational Presbyterian/Methodist/Anglican church) on Sunday with the man and his family whom I am staying with (he is an old “army man” at the army base not too far from the church). Much of both of these services were very similar to home with many hymns and organ playing. However, at some points, specifically during the offering, the aisles turn into a giant dance party with drumming and electric guitar amplified over huge speakers. Pretty cool if you ask me. And no, this is not the shy and awkward back and forth swaying that so many North Americans practice during singing in worship. This is all out full contact dance till it hurts dancing. Who says that worship needs to take place with both feet on the ground. I like it. Oh, another cool moment in the village where this funeral took place. Some of the kids had never seen a white person before and so it was quite an interesting experience walking through town. One kid in particular nearly lost his lunch when he shook my hand. All joking aside, it is a very cool experience interacting with somebody who has never seen a white person.

Yesterday I began exploring a new route in my project, compositions for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. We’ll see what happens. Frankly, I am not sure how much this will be connected with my final topic but you never know. I’m in the process of defining the boundaries and making sure that the boundaries that I set are defined by reality here, not the reality that I want to exist. On tap for the next couple of weeks besides my work here in Legon: a trip to Ho (hopefully… keep your fingers crossed) to look into drum/choral music compositions, a trip back to Cape Coast and my first attempts to learn more about the National Symphony Orchestra. It’s a hard life but somebody has to do it.

Okay, today was probably one of my best in Ghana thus far. I was introduced to Professor Kwabena Nketia and have an interview with him next week. This is the professor who is often referred to as the father of modern art music in Ghana and is quite likely the most reputable scholar on African music. Our short interaction was an incredible experience to say the least. After that I wandered over to the library on campus, curious what kinds of music might be housed there. I ended up in a small, sweaty and dusty room/closet and spent what must have been about two hours inside. I came across numerous scores of Bach, Schubert and Beethoven, but my most incredible find was a number of copies of the Grove Encyclopedia of Music from the 1930s and 40s. I’m not much for historical document worship, but it made me wonder about the history of such books that ended up in Ghana pre-Independence. They were stamped as belonging to the Library of Gold Coast University, the old name of what we know today as Ghana. I will definitely have to make my way back there again. Anyways, I trust that everybody is well.

Patrick