Asante traditional music, dance (adowa) and funeral

Check out this video on Asante Traditional Music and Dance http://bit.ly/NenM0

Nana Yaw Opoku Mensah was once a flutist in the courts of the Asantehenes Nana Prempeh I & Nana Prempeh II and possibly Nana Opoku Ware II early in his reign. He was 102 in this video and I was told that he was still in good health in 2006. Nana didn't know his birthdate but he told me that he was born a few months before the Yaa Asantewaa War of 1900.

He is playing the 'odurugya' which is the traditional cane flute of the Akan. The song he's playing i believe is one in the tradition called 'Sikabewuepere'(money's death pangs' which was popularized during the 1920's economic boom in Asante & the Gold Coast Colony.

The flute is often used in songs of lamenting or grief. This piece is more of a recitation than

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a song really, for the odurugya is a 'talking' instrument, which means that the Akan of antiquity developed a system of encoding their language into the range of sounds/tones the odurugya makes. One must be immeresed in the 'deep structures' of Akan society in order to learn the method of 'decoding' the flute language.

Mixed with this video is footage from the funeral of the Bantamahene Baffour Awuah V, an event that was both solemn and celebratory.