Articles / Reviews
2019
Co-authored with N Laryea Akwetteh. “Bridging Art and Traditional Music at the University of Ghana: Intellectual Legacies of JH Kwabena Nketia and Akin Euba,” South African Music Studies 39, pp. 213-238.
The intellectual legacies of J.H. Kwabena Nketia (1921-2019) and Akin Euba (b. 1935) continue to shape how African art music is taught and composed at the University of Ghana’s (UG) Department of Music. This paper outlines the historical formation of their approaches to composition and research as a context for examining the 82 Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) theses completed in the department between 1992 and 2017. Our survey reveals that African art music, which centers on the reimagining of traditional music in new compositions, is a dominant research topic alongside ethnomusicological studies of traditional, popular and church music in Ghana. An analysis of three African art music compositions drawn from the M.Phil. theses demonstrates the challenges and possibilities of creatively engaging traditional music as well as the integral role UG has had in providing physical and intellectual contexts for these processes. The authors argue that in spite of a Eurocentric curriculum that focuses on Western art music theory, African art music, as shaped by Nketia and Euba, provides a framework for constructing notions of traditional music, bridging these notions with art music practices, and providing new contexts in which it is taught and performed
Co-authored with Judith Opoku-Boateng. “Renewing Cultural Resources and Sustaining J.H. Kwabena Nketia's Vision for an African Music Archive in Ghana,” International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) Journal, no. 50.
This article examines the processes through which the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archives has struggled to build a sustainable model for audio-visual archiving within an African university and looks to how its contents may serve future students and scholars in an effort to locate African cultural materials and knowledge production in Africa. The archive, operated within the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies, was named in honor of Professor Nketia in 2015 and is the realization of over six decades of gathering audio and visual data, acquiring new collections, conducting research, and preservation efforts. The core collection of quarter-inch reels were recorded by Nketia in the early decades of his extensive career shaping Ghana’s cultural policy, building teaching and research institutions, and studying music, culture, and language in Africa. As a part of the University of Ghana, the Nketia Archives provide a valuable resource for local students and scholars and creates a site in which broader conversations about the country’s cultural legacies are brought into the socio-political discourse. The archive is also a resource for housing and making available new acquisitions including over 300 recently digitized recordings of Ghanaian popular music from professor John Collins’ Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation (BAPMAF). With ongoing challenges in accessibility, the Nketia Archives provides a valuable case study for how an African audio-visual archive is created and sustained.
Review of Highlife Time 3, by John Collins, Contemporary Journal of African Studies (CJAS) 6/2, pp. 124-126.
“Highlife,” The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, Edited by Janet Sturman. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., online.
2018
“Performing Value: The Proverb as Analytical Framework in West African Music,” African Performance Review 10/2 (2018), pp. 28-46.
“The Paradox of Progress: Jazz, Resistance, and Black Musical Labor in Pittsburgh (1955–1974),” Jazz Perspectives (Fall, 2018), pp. 1-33.
This article examines jazz musicians as Black musical laborers in the context of urban redevelopment and the Civil Rights era. I focus specifically on the activities of Local 471: Pittsburgh’s Black Local of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), which was founded in 1908 and merged with its white counterpart, Local 60, in 1966. As labor leaders, Local 471 presidents Carl Arter (1955–1962) and Joseph Westray (1962–1965) used their positions to challenge discriminatory practices in Pittsburgh’s musical workplaces with Westray negotiating the 1965 merger of Locals 471 and 60. I examine how Local 471’s members struggled to both challenge workplace discrimination and maintain autonomy within the union system, actions that were both resultant of and resistant to segregation. When the merged local failed to elect any Black musicians to it executive board in 1970 and again in 1972, the activist group Black Musicians of Pittsburgh (BMOP) was formed to address the lack of Black union representation. The ongoing racial tensions and BMOP’s unsuccessful lawsuit against Local 60-471 presented a central paradox for Black leadership and activism in Pittsburgh’s musical labor as the promises of progress resulted in widespread abandonment of the union by Black musicians in Pittsburgh.
2017
“A Song of and About Time: Osei Korankye and the Seperewa Harp,” Recital: A Place for Musicians to Discuss Music, online.
I was surprised when Ghanaian friends would ask me where the seperewa was from. It goes to show that the instrument, once widely played in Ghana's Ashanti region, has faded from public memory after being replaced by the guitar in the early 20th century. As a fan of the harp traditions of the Sahel and Sahara, the seperewa gave me a way of hearing how these styles had filtered down to the West African coast and been shaped by Akan languages, dances, rhythms, and philosophies. Osei has dedicated his life to carrying this tradition forward as well as sharing it with Ghanaian and Western students. His artistry and humility is readily apparent in the album we produced during my time at the University of Ghana. I hope it will make new fans of the seperewa, both at home and abroad.
Osei: "I call it 'sit down' music. If you look at the way the music is, I'd say most of seperewa music you don't have to stand up and dance because the person is sending a message across, a powerful message about sanitation or the environment... When I composed a song, I didn't want it to be rude but the way things are going it needs to come out. We may not even have time to dance because it's like giving a presentation. The music I love is the one that has a message to tell. I always want to listen to stories. You can't dance, I'm just talking to you and saying, 'The next generation will blame us if you continue doing things in this way'."
2015
“African Guitar Styles,” Music in Africa, online.
The guitar - arguably the most well-traveled and widely played instrument in the world - has played a prominent role in the development of African music over the past century, providing a medium through which African and Western audiences continue to engage. The distinctive approaches to the guitar throughout Africa provide insight into Africa’s musical diversity as well as the great changes it has undergone in the past century.
“Dark Suburb: Rocks Summons its Voice in Ghana,” Music in Africa, online..
The band Dark Suburb is an anomaly in Ghanaian popular music: a creative voice playing with images and sounds that invoke local prejudices to reveal themselves while challenging the region’s music industry to rethink the dominant models for popular music - no small task for a rock band in West Africa.
Since their official launch in February, their goal has been to create an awareness and appreciation for rock in a place where most people either have no exposure to, or hold a negative opinion of, the genre. With only three shows to their name as of June 2015, the attention they have received attests to the appeal of their sound, the intrigue of their stage personas, and the power of marketing and social media.
Review of Experiencing ‘Flow’ in Jazz Performance, by Elina Hytönen-Ng, Popular Music 34/1 (2015), pp. 152-155.
2013
Review of Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense [documentary], directed by Lars Larson, Jazz Perspectives 7/2 (2013).
“What These Hands Have Seen: Guitarist Jimmy Ponder,” Fretboard Journal 28 (Winter), pp. 72-83.
LINK to Fretboard Journal tribute to Guitarist Jimmy Ponder (1946-2013)
I first met Jimmy when he was teaching at a jazz camp for high school students in Pittsburgh. I was 15, recently turned on to Wes Montgomery, and trying to make sense of the music. Ponder was the first guitarist I had heard in person who embodied the music. He poured himself through the instrument. The sound of his thumb on the Gibson Super 400 was rich, warm, lyrical, and immediate. It was as if he had a quartet in the palm of his hand. I made sure to catch his sets around Pittsburgh where he worked regularly with bassists Mike Taylor, Dave Pellow, Dwayne Dolphin, Jeff Grubs, and Tony DePaolis, drummers Roger Humphries, Thomas Wendt, and Alex Peck, and pianist Howie Alexander among many others. I remember his sets with Mike Taylor at the Church Brew Works. The duo, tucked into an apse of the converted church, would link up on a telepathic level. A grin would grow across Mike's face and Ponder would explode into laughter as they delved into "Misty," transforming the song into something neither had heard before.
It was years later that we began to sit down together to talk and play music. I would go up to his apartment in the hills above Pittsburgh's Northside and we would go over solo guitar techniques. He always put emotion at the forefront, "What is your purpose!" He listened very closely to what I had to say and play never shying from criticism or praise. After the lesson, he would cook and we'd listen to Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Lou Donaldson, and many other artists over a beer. Music is more than a structure to be learned, it is something you have to consume.
Jimmy was not protective of the stage or his guitar. Music was always something to be shared, not hoarded away for a few sets. Sitting in on a set was always a transformative experience. Jimmy's Super 400 had absorbed his energy over the decades and listened just as intently as he did. I always felt that my honesty was being tested. Was I really cutting out the bullshit and saying something? Last March we finally arranged to play a gig together. Ponder had cut his finger the day before and the bandage made playing impossible. He laughed off my attempts at putting a silicone wrap on the deep cut and ended up playing the evening with no bandage. It was a great honor sharing the stage with Jimmy and we made plans to do it again. Unfortunately, he fell sick not long after.
Ponder was both a sun and a storm. He carried a great weight on his shoulders from past regrets but also stood defiantly with a smile on his face. It came out in his music where deadly seriousness, jest, and joy met. He lived to express and lift the pain of others using his gift from God. We will miss his laughter, his stories, and his song.
2012
Review Buena Vista in the Club, by Geoffrey Baker Popular Music 31/2, pp. 321-323.
2008
Recording Review Djanbutu Thiossane: Ass, Mass, & Pap, Ethnomusicology 52/3 (Fall), pp. 506-508.
“Life, Death, and Music in West Africa.” Contexts, A Publication of the American Sociological Association (Winter), pp. 44-51.
LINK to Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Exhibit review
My introduction to West African funeral music was at the University of Ghana in the fall of 2000. Prof John Collins had organized a performance with the gyil (xylophone) masters Valerie Dee Naranjo and her teacher Kakraba Lobi. I became completely lost in the sound of their instruments and the interplay of the two musicians. I didn't know it at the time but this music was an important part of funerals and festivals in Ghana's Northwest region. As I took on teachers from various regions of Ghana, I found that many of the songs and instruments were an integral part of the process of mourning and celebrating life. This led me to question how it was that West Africans could dedicate so much time and cultural expression to the passing of life while much of the Western world was so busy hiding from death. In the states, death smacks of failure. The failure of medical science to stop what we have come to view as unnatural. The failure to remember how to mourn. The failure of our collective nature. The failure to live.
2006
Jazz Guitarist Jimmy Ponder: A Case Study of Creative Processes and Identity Formation in American Popular Music, Masters Thesis, University of Pittsburgh
Download the thesis here, which includes a discography LINK
Review of Bright Balkan Morning: Romani Lives and the Power of Music in Greek Macedonia, by Charles and Angeliki Keil, Visual Studies 21/1, pp. 96-97.