Ga people enforce one-month ritual ban on noise-making

Accra, Ghana’s capital, is a loud cosmopolitan metropolis of virtually three million folks. Its energetic nightlife, business markets and factories create a deafening mixture of sound trails day and night time. These artificial sounds have virtually drowned out the pure on a regular basis sounds of Accra. And a very powerful of those is the regular drone sound of the ocean, now often subdued to a mere background hush.

Because the native Ga folks say, Ga efee hoo (“Accra has turn out to be noisy”). The Ga, who’re made up of Ga Mashie, Osu, La, Teshie, Nungua, Tema, and Kpone folks, belong to the Ga-Dangme group of individuals discovered within the Larger Accra area of Ghana.

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As soon as yearly, between Might and September, the Ga impose a ritual ban on noise-making and funeral rites in Ga cities for a interval of 1 month in order to commemorate their annual harvest pageant generally known as Hↄmↄwↄ (pr. hor-mor-wor). By activating the ban, Ga cities implement the suspension of mundane sound sources, notably these blaring from radios, public tackle methods, vehicles, church buildings, mosques, megaphones and factories. All artificial sounds presently should cease and make room for the sounds of the ocean through the one month of communal reflection and renewal. Even fishing in lagoons should cease throughout this era, to permit aquatic life to recuperate.

Ga oral custom

In response to Ga oral custom, the celebration of Hↄmↄwↄ dates again centuries. It’s the finest recognized and celebrated Ga pageant and an important a part of conventional Ga tradition. The title Hɔmɔwɔ interprets as “to hoot at starvation” (hↄmↄ means starvation and wↄ means hoot). The pageant marks the shift from the lean season of shortage to the season of bounty, a second of introspection, and promotes sociality. Its intention is to revitalise the social, political, and spiritual lives of Ga cities in Accra.

Regardless of its historic heritage, Hɔmɔwɔ’s custom of a peaceable interlude within the metropolis has turn out to be more and more related to clashes between the Ga Conventional Council and Christian church buildings that need to proceed worshipping of their normal “noisy” approach.

I’m conducting analysis into some components of the Hɔmɔwɔ pageant as a part of my doctoral research. I’ve additionally beforehand revealed on the pageant. My findings recommend that the Ga code is about greater than frightening battle or settling scores. I argue that the ritual code of silence presents Ga communities with the chance for introspection as a result of it invitations them to concentrate on their indigenous notions of sound, silence, noise, and even dying.

It’s, to borrow from anthropologist Victor Turner , a body inside which Ga society is ready to examine itself.

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The Sea and Hɔmɔwɔ

“In Ga metaphor”, because the outstanding sociolinguist Kropp Dakubu notes

the Ga persons are continuously linked with the ocean.

Certainly, because the background of Ga each day life and contemplation, the ocean’s on a regular basis drone sound serves as a psycho-social hedge in opposition to the socioeconomic and political pressures from uptown. Anyone who’s accustomed to life on the beachfront is aware of that one of many taken-for-granted on a regular basis sonic experiences is the regular drone sound from the ocean waves.

In present-day cosmopolitan Accra nonetheless, listening to the ocean has assumed the standing of a once-in-a-year sonic deal with for the seven Ga residential areas on town’s shoreline. Banning artificial sounds and foregrounding the ocean due to this fact paves the way in which for Ga cities to revive the prominence of the sounds of the ocean. It additionally permits Ga cities comparable to La, Teshie, and Tema to broaden their musical boundaries and invoke hardly ever heard Hↄmↄwↄ music genres comparable to kpa and/or kpashimↄ that elevate foot stomping and thumping over acquainted musical devices.

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Performances

Kpashimↄ performances and songs as an example, are completely vocal, unaccompanied by any musical instrument, and in a call-and-response format. Textually and musically, the songs are made up of repeated phrases which have iconic relationships with present points, making it simpler for the listener to comply with the story strains.

By invoking Kpashimↄ, Ga communities comparable to Teshie additionally rework their alleys and streets into efficiency grounds, and automobiles transfer with nice problem as a result of performers have taken over the area. In some instances, Ga cities block streets from car use in order that Hɔmɔwɔ music teams can carry out their songs freely.

Hↄmↄwↄ helps Ga folks to relive the sonic relationship that existed between them and the ocean. Its celebrations function a metaphor to critique the cosmopolitan metropolis’s emergent tradition of noise-making, give consideration to speech and songs produced for the festive season, and finally heal the group.

Certainly, Hↄmↄwↄ makes life within the metropolis entire in that for eleven months of residing in a jarring milieu of metropolis sounds, there’s all of the sudden a symbolic quiet – the type that enables for ritually applicable sounds to thrive. However a month later, Accra returns to its atypical on a regular basis lifetime of unbridled noise-making, of individualism, nervousness, workaholism, and materialism.

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By means of conclusion I recommend that, opposite to the overall notion that the ban on noise-making is a hassle to be endured relatively than to be loved, making approach for the ocean through the one-month Ga Hↄmↄwↄ pageant within the cosmopolitan, nationwide capital of Ghana, restores folks to psycho-social sanity.

Article by: Laryea Akwetteh. Assistant lecturer, College of Ghana

This text is republished from The Dialog underneath a Artistic Commons License. Learn the unique article.

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