By Kodjo Adams
Accra, June 7, GNA- Professor Kwasi Ampene, Senior Lecturer, Tufts University, USA, has underscored the immense contributions of women in preserving the culture and values of the Ashanti Kingdom.
Prof Ampene argued that in matrilineal societies, the critical role of women in lineage, kinship, and governance conferred counselling and advisory roles to female leadership in the matriclan.
He said the women, in their privileged position as members of the exclusive Kete chorus, used their artistic immunity to negotiate communication strategies in formal spaces to present the contrapuntal voices of the masses directly to the Asantehene.
The Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University said this in Accra at a lecture organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The lecture was on the topic: “Performing Petition: Kete Songs, Lineage, and Kingship in Akan.”
He said the women implored the Asantehene, through songs, to not only choose the most qualified member of the ‘Ɔyoko’ lineage to succeed the late Asantehemaa, but also to remind him of his obligation to his forebears, who made untold sacrifices to establish a state with enduring socio-political, economic, and cultural institutions.
Prof Ampene said the Asante, like all their Akan cousins in Ghana, La Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo, practised the dual male-female system of governance to ensure complementarity, equilibrium, and harmony.
He said the male chief (ɔhene) and his female counterpart (ɔhemaa) have separate courts with functionaries and corresponding regalia.
The dual leadership role, he stressed, had its functional equivalence in the organisation of musical ensembles such as the “twenenini ne twenebedeɛ” (male and female Atumpan drums).
The Professor said the dual male-female leadership role was possible because the Akan societies were fundamentally based on a matrilineal system where one’s lineage, inheritance, succession to political office, land ownership, and property were validated through the maternal line.
He said the seven or eight Akan families traced their founding to a female ancestress and made the position of Asantehemaa critical with numerous responsibilities.
“She presides over her own court and overseas issues affecting women in the kingdom.
“She is the traditional mother of the king, but occasionally she can be the uterine mother, as was the case with the late Asantehemaa who was the biological mother of the reigning Asantehene,” he said.
He said another crucial element that made it possible for members of the chorus to navigate formal communication protocols was the artistic immunity that comes with their membership in the exclusive Kete Chorus.
Prof Ampene said the relationship between musical performance and spirituality in Akan conferred artistic immunity for instrumentalists, singers, and verbal artists when performing in ceremonies and rituals.
The Professor highlighted the first song unit, “Aka Wo Deɛ,” which means “It Is Now Your Turn,” performed by the Kete chorus for formal analysis, poetic and rhetorical devices, gesture, and rhetoric as artistic enablers for the performed petition.
He concluded the lecture with a discussion on the implications of the petition performed by members of the Kete chorus for democratic dispensation and protest movements in Ghana.
GNA