[Author’s Note: This essay in two parts on sacred music vs sacred silence also deals with colonialism and Christianization in Ghana.]
Music has been an integral part of people’s religious rites and rituals, perhaps since the dawn of humanity. Paintings on temples and writings by historians create for us a vast catalog of music, ritual, and instruments performed around the world in conjunction with sacred feasts and festivals. Sacred music and drumming are found most often in traditional and pagan religious practices. From the Celts of Ireland to the Voodoo practitioners of New Orleans, from the Native North Americans of Canada to the healers of Tibet, the soul of the people moves to the beat of the drums.[1] Sacred music has been a tool of liberation for many people, but, can this music also be used as a weapon of colonial oppression and wielded against those who follow the people’s traditional spiritual practices?
The Christian Church has historically been very aggressively opposed to people’s traditional beliefs and practices. As the Holy Roman Empire was formed, the early church leaders banned drumming and explicitly prohibited women from playing drums. This was because the drums were associated with pagan religious practices and rituals. Centuries later, in America, the songs and rhythms of captured slaves were outlawed until the slaves began singing in English and praising the Christian God.
However, musicians could not be silenced and songs and music continued to be an integral part of people’s lives, from spirituals sung during the Civil Rights Movement to the protest songs of the Vietnam War. Even as music became a more crucial organizing tool for activists, it remained antithetical to certain religious groups. In America, churches often protest singers or genres of music as being against God.
In Africa while governments are supporting the traditional religious practices to move on from colonialism some churches stand in strict opposition to traditional practices. Here I explore how the sacred music tradition of the Pentecostal Christian church has brought it into conflict with the traditional beliefs of the people. And I question how this music can be viewed as a tool of colonialism.
Sacred Music versus Sacred Silence
The leaders of Ghana have tried to develop a kind of national heritage for the former colonial state that encourage of a kind of “enculturation,” and their attempts that have been supported by many mainstream Christian churches. Conversely, the reaction of the Pentecostal churches have ranged from ambivalent to outright hostile. The attempts by political leaders to embrace a revived traditionalism is contested by Pentecostal church leaders who argue that “…a nation’s and citizen’s progress and prosperity can only be achieved if one is prepared to ‘make a complete break with the past.’”[2] The symbol of this conflict between traditional and Pentecostal is the Homowo festival.
The Pentecostal Church service includes much shouting, singing, and drumming both inside the church and out on the street. However, church leaders believe that this sacred music is reserved for Christian church services and festivals. During the month-long Homowo festival, a festival celebrated by the Ga Adangbe people, drumming and noise is forbidden by local edicts. However, the Pentecostal Church has chosen to ignore these edicts and has made the claim that they must be allowed to practice their religion as they wish, or Ghana will never be able to develop as a society.
In his article “Contesting the Silence,” Rijk van Dijk explains the importance of the festival. Around May, the Ga Mantse (paramount chief) announces the beginning of the cultural festival Homowo. The Ga Adangbe inhabitant of Accra and the wider region occupy the coastal areas in this part of Ghana. They maintain in this area and are involved in ensuring its fertility through his relationship with territorial spirits and their worship. The Homowo season starts with the ritual sowing of corn and yams with the coming of the first rains in early May. After the ritual sowing, the people observe more than a month of quiet and servitude, when the spirits’ benevolence concerning the growth and harvest of agricultural produce and fish is respected. The season ends with the harvest in late September.[3]
This silence involves a ban on drumming, dancing, and other loud noises to leave the spirits undisturbed so they can watch over the crops. Since the Ga language and people are the majority in Accra and the other inhabitants are in a way immigrants, there is a strong popular belief that all residents of Accra should observe this “law” The local government agencies support this call for silence as a way of preserving the local culture. However, the Pentecostal church whose leaders push for the Christianization of Ghana has taken a strong stance against the “law.” Dijk writes that “Occasional clashes between so-called ‘traditionalists’ and members of different Pentecostal groups have emerged which should be interpreted in the context of a post-colonial state seeking to preserve elements of its varied, multicultural heritage.”[4] One such incident which occurred during a Homowo time of silence highlights this divide between the traditionalists and the Pentacostals.
On Sunday, May 31, 1998, 50 people stormed onto the premises of the Lighthouse Chapel International church in the Ga neighborhood of Korle Bu in Accra and confiscated the church’s expensive musical instruments. Several church members were injured in what was at the time the most violent clash between the traditionalists and the Pentecostals.[5] During the month that followed each side accused the other of infringing on their religious liberties, the Pentecostals because they violated the ban on drumming, which was in effect, and the traditionalists because they took the instruments which were used in the church services.
With the support of the Pentecostal Council, the church asserted that religious freedom needed to be upheld and that these freedoms allowed the congregants to have music during church services all year round. In addition, the church claimed that “…true Christianity could not be involved in obeying ‘animalistic’ rituals” such as the Homowo festival.[6] The public statements made by Pentecostal leaders display their disrespect and ridicule towards traditional ceremonies that they label as backward and “serving to keep people trapped in the bonds of tradition.”[7] Conversely, the traditionalists pointed out that the loud music played by Pentecostals during their night worship typically went on all night and that in many parts of Accra, residents had complained about the noise to their local officials. The traditionalists believed that the Pentecostals should observe at least one month of silence as a gesture of goodwill to their neighbors.[8]
(To be continued)
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[1] Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women: A spiritual history of rhythm( New York, NY: Three Rivers Press).
[2] Rijk van Dijk, “Contesting Silence: The Ban on Drumming and the Musical Politics of Pentecostalism in Ghana,” Ghana Studies 4 (2001): 31.
[3] Ibid., 32-33.
[4] Ibid., 33.
[5] Ibid., 34.
[6] Ibid., 34.
[7] Ibid., 56.
[8] Ibid., 34.