More Cowbell
Saturday Night Live has nothing on Ghana. For three weeks we are studying drumming, dance, and gyil with the ever-present and dulcet tones of cowbell as the “motor” of life in musical Ghana. Polyrhythms are everywhere. I hear them in the birds chirping, the bleats of baby goats, and the pounding of fufu. (Good rhythm is necessary to keep your hands from getting crushed as you adjust the fufu in the bowl in between the rhythmical pounding…) Evening cowbell lessons served as a replacement celebration for the Fourth of July fireworks the students missed out on this season. The soundworld is an endless, complex ocean of music and noise with waves of reverberation breaking and receding, sometimes pummeling us like the Atlantic did while we swam at Cape Coast.
Everything, sometimes even the afternoon nap, is outward, communal, and engaged. Bernard describes this in terms of space: “In America, everything is about my space…in Ghana, it is our space.” Sounds are shared and assumed, and silence is rare. (In fact, I’m not sure we have experienced it yet…) When the lessons die down in the evening, something is always ready to take their place.
Last night, after the sounds of daily life subsided and the nightly church broadcast next door concluded, a new noise began. (The evening church service with microphone appeared to have been in competition for “Loudest Religious Broadcast in Medie” with the extended call to prayer from the mosque down the street.) This sound was new, however. Highlife, maybe, pumped through a tinny, outdoor speaker, assailing our ears as we prepared for sleep. Carnival? All-night dance party? Ramadan feast? Last day of school sleepover? At 3am I realized it probably wasn’t going to stop, and earplugs were no match for the cacophony of celebration. At 7am they took a short respite, and I went out to breakfast to inquire as to the source of the noise.
VILLAGE FUNERAL, they said. Then they said, THREE DAYS.
…so we got with the program, and said, “More cowbell!!!”
