ABSTRACT:
National-day celebrations provide a unique window into more general questions of nation-building. As in many African nation-states, Ghana’s national unity was, and is still, potentially challenged by competing ethnic and regional loyalties. Nation-building, which strives to integrate the population, must therefore refer back in some way to these identifications. An important occasion to do so is on any of the annually recurring national holidays that seek to evoke experiences of community. The national-day ceremonies stage images of the nation and provide an arena to visibly incorporate and subordinate ethnic and regional loyalties to the nation.
Drawing on fieldwork carried out in 2014 and 2017 (and further years), I will analyze how cultural traditions were presented during Independence Day parades. The article analyzes one “ordinary” celebration, where schoolchildren offer a brief display of different “ethnic” dances before the actual march-past begins. This will be compared with an elaborate dance choreography produced for Ghana’s sixtieth independence anniversary celebration in 2017, which featured adult dance troupes from all the country’s (then) ten regions and incorporated their performance into a story centered on “Mother Ghana.” Taken together, the two events reveal different artistic strategies of staging and, at the same time, containing ethnic and regional diversity on the national stage.
Introduction
One of the highlights of Ghana’s sixtieth independence anniversary celebration, staged on Independence Square in Accra on March 7, 2017, was an elaborate choreography displaying the country’s cultural diversity. Organized by the Ghana Dance Ensemble and the National Dance Company, the event featured dance troupes from all the country’s (then) ten regions. After paying respect to “Mother Ghana,” performed by a female dancer clad in the national colors, each of these troupes presented traditional dances and music and, at the culmination of the performance, handed over an artifact or agricultural product typical of their home territories. “Mother Ghana,” in turn, concluded the choreography by lighting a giant lamp that was to signify the country’s bright future, in keeping with the anniversary’s overall motto—“60 years on: Mobilising for Ghana’s future.” The celebration then continued with a special military performance of trooping the colors, the annual march-past by the Ghana Armed Forces (the schoolchildren had paraded before the dance piece), the presidential address, and the national salute.1
Under Kwame Nkrumah, the head of Ghana’s first independent government (1957–66), and then again since the regime of J. J. Rawlings, from the mid-1980s onwards, national-day ceremonies have been making room for a short “cultural pageant,” as it is usually called, either offering a display of gymnastics or staging traditional dances from a few of the country’s numerous ethnic groups. The sixtieth anniversary, however, aimed at representing all major cultural traditions in a more extensive and elaborate display. In this article, I will explore how the choreographers of the 2017 event went about staging “unity in diversity,” Ghana’s dominant cultural-policy motto, and how this was received by some of the performers and spectators. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in 2014, I will also analyze how cultural traditions were presented during an ordinary Independence Day parade, where schoolchildren usually offer a brief display of different “ethnic” dances before the actual march-past begins. Taken together, the performances that I observed in 2014 and 2017 reveal different artistic strategies of staging and, at the same time, containing ethnic and regional diversity on the national stage.
What can we learn from studying such performances and, more generally, national-day celebrations? I argue that they provide a unique window into more general questions of nation-building. As in many African nation-states, Ghana’s national unity was, and is still, potentially challenged by competing ethnic and regional loyalties. Many citizens intuitively perceive their membership in larger kinship groups as well as in an ethnic group—regionally anchored, linguistically and culturally distinct, and often also religiously marked—as the most important form of belonging that shapes everyday life and the life course. Successful nation-building, which strives to integrate the population at large, must therefore refer back in some way to these identifications and situate them in relation to the nation. An important occasion to do so is on any of the annually recurring national holidays that seek to evoke such experiences of community. The national-day ceremonies stage images of the nation and make implicit membership in it explicit. They provide an arena to incorporate, and subordinate to the nation, sub-national identifications such as ethnic or regional loyalties. The celebrations offer, to use Don Handelman’s (1990) terms, a “mirror” of society and its relations with the nation-state; at the same time, they propagate “models” of what these relations should look like. The celebrations are instances of representing as well as producing powerful images of the nation and therefore play an important role in the nation-building project (Lentz 2013).
Seen in a comparative perspective, my research in Ghana—and that of my colleagues in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire—suggests that in countries where ethnic conflicts are serious, national-day celebrations feature ethnicity less visibly or not at all. In Ghana, there have been few large-scale open ethnic conflicts with violent confrontations. However, ethnic identifications have been mobilized in political competition, particularly during election periods. State institutions, therefore, downplay ethnic cleavages by focusing on regional rather than ethnic diversity. They promote the staging of folklorized versions of ethnic belonging in cultural performances aimed at conveying an image of a nation-state with a rich heritage of traditional cultures rather than with a legacy of divisive particularism.2
In the following article, I will first discuss some theoretical aspects of the relationship between national and ethnic belonging, and the potential of national-day celebrations to stage images of the nation and propagate national unity. I will then turn to the example of Ghana and ask how the organizers of Independence Day festivities make sub-national loyalties visible (or invisible), harness ethnic-cultural diversity, and underscore the overriding importance of shared nationality. As mentioned above, I will do so by examining the different strategies that the organizers of the Independence Day celebrations of 2014 and 2017 have employed in containing ethnic and regional diversity on the national stage.
Nations and Ethnicities: Imagined Communities
A nation is an “imagined community,” as Benedict Anderson (1983) put it, in which it is impossible for all members to know each other personally, but in which they expect similarities and obligations of solidarity as would be found in a smaller “face-to face” community. Belonging to the national community is usually imagined as superordinate to all other forms of difference. Like churches and communities of faith, emerging nations formulate a missionary claim, not toward other nations but, rather like the Christian “inner mission,” inwardly, toward the loyalties to be subordinated. National missionary work aims to teach the members of the collective that belonging to the nation is, in the event of conflict, more important than loyalties to other collectives. Nation-building programs aim to turn members of ethnic and other “pre”- national communities into patriotic citizens. Even established nation-states continue this missionary work, for example, when dealing with immigrants who are to be integrated into the national community.
Nation-building always takes place with respect to other forms of social belonging and difference. It is an ongoing process, necessitating “nation-work” (Surak 2012), even after a nation-state has been legally and politically established. Conceptions of nation usually presume the fundamental equality of all its citizens; regional, ethnic, or religious memberships, but also profession, social class, gender, and age as well as political orientation should not affect one’s status as a member of the nation. Therefore, nation-builders and nationalist institutions—political elites, bureaucrats, the military, schools, patriotic associations, and many more—develop discourses, symbolic repertoires, and practices that subordinate or inhibit such potentially competing differences. Depending on the type of difference and the field of action (such as bureaucratic structures, educational institutions, or cultural politics) they insist that the nation be strengthened by negating and de-institutionalizing other differences, for example by passing laws prohibiting ethnic-regional political parties. Alternatively, such actors work toward long-term de-differentiation, for example by promoting the “forgetting” of regional identities. Paradoxically, however, such strategies to subordinate, homogenize, or inhibit existing differences can impart on them new relevance or even produce new differences (Williams 1989). Because “nation-work” is a power-laden process, minorities who feel disadvantaged by the dominant nation-state ideology, for example, react by emphasizing their constitutive difference and demanding special rights.
Among these intra-national differences, ethnicity is particularly powerful and suited to constituting communities of solidarity vis-à-vis—or even competing with—the nation-state. Ethnicity, often closely linked to notions of regional affiliation, is organized along the same principles as national belonging. Both are generally considered to be imparted at birth. Like nations, ethnic groups typically assert that they are constituted through a shared history as well as cultural, linguistic, and religious similarities. Ethnic groups always exist in the plural, as a relationship between a “we” and “others.” Their boundaries, as Frederik Barth (1969) has pointed out, are constituted by self- and external attribution, premised on a historically contingent emphasis on specific characteristics and practices that actors consider to be relevant. As in the case of nations, such assertions of similarity by no means need to correspond to actual cultural homogeneity. Moreover, both nations and ethnic groups usually think of themselves as collectives with territorial-regional roots. Nations and ethnic groups differ, first and foremost, in terms of the size of the delimited community and the claim to political sovereignty, which is specific to the nation. Historically, however, the ethnic group is just as much a modern notion of community as the nation is, as the work of historians of Africa on “the colonial invention of tribes” has shown (Lentz 1995). Usually, both appear only in the context of territorial statehood. And if ethnic and/or regionalist movements were to demand their own state apparatus, seceding from a given nation-state, they would become a new nation.3
In Africa, the creation of nation-states is a relatively recent process that takes place against a background of pronounced regional, ethno-linguistic and religious heterogeneity, often in the context of patriarchal and gerontocratic gender orders and a relatively low or at least uneven degree of penetration of society by state institutions. This also holds true for Ghana, which gained its independence from Britain in 1957 and which could not draw on any significant overarching pre-colonial political structures or alliances to further its own nation-building project. However, the country’s North-South divide, which is linked to differences in the natural environment (savanna vs. rainforest), the economy, language, cultural practices, and religion, is relatively un-politicized (Lentz and Nugent 2000). Nevertheless, ethnicity, especially the antagonisms between the Asante who were organized in a powerful pre-colonial kingdom and other, smaller ethnic groups, has been and continues to be mobilized when it comes to accessing political posts and economic resources such as jobs. Particularly influential in shaping the post-colonial relationship between nation and ethnicity were the cultural politics spearheaded by Ghana’s first prime minister, later president, Kwame Nkrumah. His government propagated a national culture based on a relatively small repertoire of regional-ethnic markers. It encouraged the presentation of regional cultural traditions in festive settings that highlighted the diverse and rich cultural heritage of the country, while attempting to strip ethnic identifications of their political implications. Although there were some shifts or rather: periods of neglect of state cultural policies under later governments, the discursive and performative formats established under Nkrumah in the 1950s and early 1960s continue to shape Ghanaian cultural politics until the present (Ahlman 2017; Coe 2005; Schauert 2015; Shipley 2015). Dealing with ethnic loyalties, however, even if they are not explicitly politicized, continues to be a challenge for Ghana’s practical-institutional and symbolic “nation-work.”
National Days: Performing Communities
Creating and reproducing a nation requires material and institutional infrastructures, such as nationwide networks of communication and transportation, laws of citizenship, and other legal stipulations, as well as educative institutions like schools and the military. All these provide members of the nation with a means for interaction, and contribute to the emergence of shared knowledge and norms of behavior. Furthermore, a variety of everyday routines—such as the pledge of allegiance to the flag recited before school classes begin, food packaging in the national colors, or the television weather map that depicts the nation-state’s borders—contribute to making national membership a self-evident non-issue. Michael Billig (1995) refers to such routines as “banal nationalism,” unconscious or implicit manifestations of the nation that turn national membership into a belonging that is usually forgotten in everyday life. To revitalize it requires regular, conscious, performative, and emotionally effective visualization through periodic rituals like national celebrations. As Michael Skey (2006) puts it, “banal” nationalism needs to be regularly complemented with an “ecstatic” one, through community events that allow participants to fill the abstract concept of the nation with personal experiences and emotions. National days—in many countries premised on the achievement of independence—are prominent incidences of such “ecstatic” nationalism.
National days celebrate the successful formation of the nation-state and, once a year, serve to performatively revive the “forgotten” national affiliation (Elgenius 2011; Lentz 2013). The institutional and organizational framework of the established nation is the state; national celebrations are, therefore, state celebrations first and foremost (Fauré 1978; Roy 2007). They fix important events of national history in the annual calendar. Usually associated with a working day off and reinforced by mass media coverage, they synchronize the population’s memory of national founding myths, at least for a time (Zerubavel 2003).4 Moreover, national celebrations stage the national territory—by the choice of the place where the central ceremonies take place, by their nationwide media dissemination, their replication in provincial and district celebrations, and finally by the representation of the country’s different regions in the central celebrations (through delegates or cultural performances) (N’Guessan, Lentz, and Gabriel 2017).
How can national ceremonies make the nation palpable, and how is the uniqueness of a specific nation represented? Nationality is usually made visible and audible by a few conventionalized markers such as the flag, the national colors, the national coat of arms, the national anthem, and a pledge of allegiance. Nations exist within the framework of an imagined global order of many nations, which would have to be called upon to profile one’s own nation. But unlike at the Olympics or other international events, this is only possible to a limited extent at national celebrations, which are organized in a country with national staff and mostly national spectators. The contrast with “other nations” can only be visualized indirectly via internationally conventionalized markers (the Ghanaian celebration does not show the Ivorian flag, for example), via discursive references (the president’s address may reference comparisons with other countries), or via attending foreign state dignitaries. This makes it all the more important to demonstrate the relevance of belonging to the nation by making visible its interplay with intra-national differences. For example, in the organization of the seating arrangements or in the parade during the national-day celebrations, differences such as gender, age, and profession or ethnic and regional affiliation can be invoked so as to visibly subordinate them to an overriding shared nationality (Gabriel, Lentz, and N’Guessan 2016; 2020).
National celebrations stage certain images of the nation in military and civil parades as well as cultural displays. They present “national imaginaries,” as Kelly Askew (2002) termed the normative conceptions of the national collective that state representatives or certain social groups seek to promote. Performances at national days follow a script that the organizers have designed but imply the physical co-presence of and contingent interaction between participants and spectators (Fischer-Lichte 2004, 11f). Despite careful preparation, performances entail risks. Their success, in the eyes of the organizers and participants, but also from the perspective of the spectators and the media, depends on the willingness of all those present to play along. For example, a planned seating arrangement is only achieved if the guests accept the designated seats; a successful, aesthetically pleasing civil parade depends on the willingness of the participants to attend many rehearsals and discipline themselves to play their roles. National-day performances—their preparation, implementation, reception by the public, and media commentary—can thus become arenas in which competing images of the nation are revealed. National celebrations are not only potentially cathartic moments that promote national unity; they can also trigger debates and even be divisive.
Disciplining Ethnicity in National-Day School Performances
“For the information of all watching: this is not the traditional form of the Wuong [a dance from the Nabdam of North-East Ghana, C.L.], but re-arranged as a theatre dance for this occasion.” With this comment, which sounded over the loudspeaker system and was almost louder than the drums accompanying the performance, a spokesman for the Ghana Education Service explained to the audience the meaning of the dance which a group of about forty students presented during the parade on Independence Day, March 2014. Such, mostly short, performances of a selection of music and dances, called “cultural pageants” or “cultural displays,” serve to highlight the country’s cultural diversity and are a typical part of many public events. During the late 1950s, under Kwame Nkrumah, dance ensembles and music groups from different parts of the country were invited to perform at official events. They adapted their traditional dances in a way that made them interesting to a non-local audience, including foreign state dignitaries. While Nkrumah and his government welcomed this folklorization of ethnic traditions and their inclusion in aesthetic registers, any form of political instrumentalization of ethnicity met with fierce criticism and even repression. After Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966, “cultural pageants” no longer played much of a role in the Independence Day parades until during the late 1980s, President Jerry Rawlings revived this tradition. Since then, short performances of “ethnic” dances, usually presented by schoolchildren, are often, though not always, featured as part of the capital’s annual Independence Day program.5
For the national celebration in 2014, Freeman Aguri, the head of the Cultural Education Unit, a department of the Ghana Education Service, entrusted students of a state-recognized private school in Accra with the performance and had his staff and professional dancers train them during long months of rehearsals. Energetic, and with infectious enthusiasm, the students presented two traditional dances, which many Ghanaian spectators would not have been familiar with in detail, but which all would nevertheless associate with specific ethnic groups: the Wuong dance of the Nabdam from North-Eastern Ghana and the Agbekor dance of the Anlo-Ewe from the nation’s Southeast. The performance, which the audience met with great applause, ended with the young dancers calling loudly: “We are one nation, one people, one destiny!”
It was not only this nationalist motto that clearly subordinated the ethnicity invoked in the dance performance to the unity of the nation. A number of other measures also ensured that ethnic traditions were invoked, while at the same time being contained and disciplined. The timing of the performance in the festive ceremony—after the national anthem, the pledge of allegiance, and the Christian and Muslim prayers, but before the president’s inspection of the troops—made the dances a kind of cultural prelude to the actual parade. The military is responsible for the entire parade program and allots the “cultural pageants,” which in some years are replaced by gymnastics or Taekwondo performances, very little program time. In 2014, the dance performance lasted only eight minutes, including the students’ entrance and exit, which was only enough time for a brief intimation of the two selected dances. In contrast, the subsequent troop inspection and parade, in which 1,200 schoolchildren and 900 members of the military and uniformed services, including the police, fire brigade, and customs office, marched past the presidential dais in lockstep to the marching music of the army and police bands, lasted over an hour.
Schoolchildren performing the Wuong dance, 4 March 2014, rehearsal for Independence Parade, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by author.
The representation of ethnicity is further circumscribed by the rotation and quota system applied in the selection of the dances. Over a long cycle of national celebrations, two or three different traditional dances are performed each year at the central ceremony in Accra, but these are not selected with regard to the country’s more than one hundred ethnic-linguistic groups (a number that is mentioned in many descriptions of Ghana), but with reference to the administrative regions. Even the program brochures for the national celebration, which usually contain short sections on the country’s geography, demographics, economy, and history, do not provide information on ethnic groups but on administrative units only. Each of the (then) ten regions is multi-ethnic, and the administrative boundaries in no way coincide with ethnic boundaries. However, over the past six decades of public cultural performances and festivals, “signature” dances have emerged as the trademark of particular ethnic groups, which in turn are seen as representative of particular administrative regions.6 The selection of a dance from the Upper East Region in 2014 paid homage to the origins of the incumbent president, John Mahama, who hails from Northern Ghana. However, no dance from his home region was chosen because this region had already been represented by a dance some years previously. Yet, the dance from the North-East had to be juxtaposed to one from the southern half of the country, with the choice being made for a particularly impressive war dance from the Anlo-Ewe people of the Volta Region, an area that had not been featured in the festivities for a number of years.
Dancers of the Agbekor and Wuong dance joining in for the final patriotic song, 4 March 2014, rehearsal for Independence Parade, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by author.
Not all spectators, however, agreed with this system of rotational representation. Ga traditional chiefs, who represent the indigenous population of Accra and who regard themselves as responsible for the spiritual affairs of all events taking place on Accra territory, complained to me in a conversation that it would be proper to have at least one dance performed by the Ga every year. Because this had not been the case, they asserted, the traditional gods had expressed their displeasure by sending heavy downpours that nearly ended the festivities in 2014 and led to the abrupt end of the students’ parade.
The most important aspect of the management of ethnicity, however, is the selection of the performers. The traditional dances are not presented by adult members of the respective cultural groups, but rather by students, who are introduced to different dances and customs from all around the country during physical education or cultural classes. This can be considered as an example of domesticating ethnicity by focusing on the youth and through folklorization. Especially in Accra, which has seen massive immigration from all parts of the country, schools are always multi-ethnic, meaning that it is purely a matter of coincidence if a student participates in performing a dance from his or her home region.7 Moreover, very few city children or youth are familiar with the traditional dances from rural areas. What is presented during the Independence Day celebrations, then, are not simply carefully selected and regionally balanced excerpts of the nation’s ethnic traditions, but rather the capacity of Ghanaian youth and the commitment of their teachers to learn about the country’s various cultural practices and to learn to perform them, apart from their own ethnic origins. The performances, therefore, also very much represent the nation’s future, with members who are multiculturally proficient and able to respect not only the traditions of their own, but also of their fellow students’ and citizens’ ethnic groups. This is regarded as far more important than the “correct” performance of any given tradition. As it was explained to me, especially because it is youth who are performing the dances during the regular national-day celebrations, spectators are enthusiastic and forgiving; they thus ignore any “mistakes” in the performances, something they would not do if the performers were adults, as we shall see when discussing the 2017 adult dance performance.
Freeman Aguri and his colleagues during a feedback session after the dance rehearsal, 4 March 2014, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by author.
The costumes and choreography, too, are highly stylized and bear only rudimentary resemblance to “authentic” performances of ethnic traditions. Boys and girls, for example, dance in mixed groups, which would not usually be the case in the rural context. The dancers are positioned and move mostly directly toward the dais where the president and the guests of honor are seated, while in village performances spectators form a circle around the dancers, on occasion jumping in to participate in the dance themselves.8 And, as the choreographer Aguri explained, the dances were adapted in such a way as to fit in with the designated Independence Day motto. In 2014, this was “Building a better and prosperous Ghana through patriotism and national unity.” As Aguri went on to explain, the Agbekor dance of the Ewe people was originally a war dance. It had, however, been adapted for the occasion to show how Ghana was not served its independence on a silver platter, but had faced challenges in its struggle for freedom and independence.9 To make quite certain that the audience understood this message, the following commentary was announced over the loudspeakers: “The designs, patterns, and movements have been sequenced and arranged in a manner that depicts that after attaining self-rule, Ghana is now one people, one nation with a common destiny.”
The dance performances during the Independence Day celebrations thus serve an educational function, at least in the eyes of the organizers. They ultimately feature as abstract representations of the national cultural heritage and are not meant to represent specific ethnic groups. Through folklorization, and by having students perform dances from cultural traditions that are not their own, ethnicity is depoliticized. What is staged is a multicultural, but unified nation (“unity in diversity”) in which all citizens are conversant with the country’s rich cultural traditions. The emphasis is on exchange and mutual learning, not on identity and authenticity.
Nsruma, the Black Star of Freedom: Choreographing Ethnic Diversity and National Unity
For the central ceremony of Ghana’s sixtieth independence anniversary, staged at the Independence Square in Accra, the planning committee commissioned Nii-Tete Yartey from the Ghana Dance Ensemble at the National Theatre, together with Kofi Anthonio from the dance ensemble affiliated with the University of Ghana at Legon, to produce a choreography that would feature diverse traditional dances from all the administrative regions.10 In addition, the committee proposed to organize a cultural festival and exhibition, which were to show objects and performances from the (then) ten regions, with delegations “coming with the finest of all their traditional culture,” as the chairman of the Ghana@60 Planning Committee, Ken Amankwah, explained to me. “That is what the president says he wants to see.” Amankwah continued, “He wants this ceremony to be owned by the people and that we should see the people in that spirit of happiness and unity.”11
For the committee and, particularly, the choreographers, this was a tall order, given that they had barely two or three weeks to organize everything. The elections of December 2016 had resulted in a change of government, and Nana Akuffo-Addo, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), had been sworn in as Ghana’s new president only in early January 2017. Most members of the Independence Day planning committee were old hands, relying on their many years of experience in organizing the national-day ceremony. However, introducing new elements into the annual routine, and particularly a cultural display that went beyond the usual short performance by schoolchildren, was a challenge. “It was at very short notice that Nii Tete was contacted by the committee,” Kofi Anthonio related, but “We said: ‘Why not blow Ghanaians’ mind by trying to come out with their traditional dances that represent them?’ … and we decided to come out with a piece where all the regions exist in the choreography, but they produce a common identity.”12
The elaborate choreography that Yartey and Anthonio managed to create was entitled Nsruma (Twi for “star”), referring to the black star of African freedom that emblazons the national flag. While the thirty-minute-long performance unfolded, accompanied by a sizable troupe of professional drummers under the command of the Ghana Dance Ensemble, large loudspeakers broadcast a live commentary. Yartey and Anthonio’s “choreographic piece,” the commentator stated at the beginning, was to tell
the story of the birth of a lodestar (Ghana) who [sic] becomes a symbol of the future of Africa. She goes round to bless the land and gives parts of herself to her children (who are represented as the various regions in Ghana). The regions perform to exhibit the various values of what it means to be Ghanaian: Respect, Courage, Courtesy, Valour, Craftiness, Hygiene, Humility, and Democracy.13
Nsruma, the black star of freedom, opening sequence of the dance performance, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by author.
Mother Ghana, raised and carried towards her throne, opening sequence of the dance performance, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Konstanze N’Guessan.
Close-up of Mother Ghana, opening sequence of the dance performance, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
The performance started with an acrobatic act by schoolchildren dressed in black gym suits, “representing the hope of Africa,” as the commentator explained. Running onto the field, they formed a star out of whose center emerged “Mother Ghana,” a female dancer wearing a short skirt and a bustier in the national colors, extravagant necklaces of gold and beads, numerous golden bangles, and a red-gold-green headdress decorated with golden stars. Carried on the shoulders of the acrobats, she saluted with graceful movements the Ghanaian president, his guest of honor, the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, the former heads of state of Ghana, and the many other dignitaries watching the ceremony from the central grandstand. Then, Mother Ghana was seated on a low chair, or rather, as Anthonio later explained to me, enstooled like a chief. Placed with her back to the audience, diagonally from the president whose line of sight to the national monument at the other end of the square remained unobstructed, she oversaw the unfolding dance piece. Two “bodyguards,” as Anthonio called them, were placed next to her, holding poles crowned by adinkra symbols from the Asante tradition, one signifying strength and the other peace. Mother Ghana was thus cast as a traditional authority and symbolically put “in charge of the country,” according to Anthonio, but, as her position slightly off-center suggested, respectful of the superior power of the president.
Dance troupe from the Upper East Region, performing the Wuong dance, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
For the next twenty or so minutes, one dance group after the other, each clad in colorful uniforms that evoked a regionally distinct style of dress, entered the field and greeted Mother Ghana. She, in turn, rose from her seat each time, joined the dancers for a few movements, awarded the dance group’s leader a white banderol, and then allowed the dancers to show their talents in the performance of what can be called regional signature dances. The group from the Eastern Region, for instance, which opened the sequence, presented a purely female dance, the Klama, which plays a prominent role in the Dipo festival. As the comment detailed, this festival features “traditional rites performed for young girls to initiate them to womanhood,” with the initiates performing the subtle and subdued Klama dance “to show their purity and qualities as good women.” Next came a dance with more vigorous movements, the Wong from the Upper East Region, the same dance that had been part of the schoolchildren’s performance in 2014. As the commentator explained, the dance “dominates the Wong harvest festival … [and] symbolizes the energy, strength, and vitality of the people.”14
Dancers carrying in items that represent the resources of Ghana’s regions, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
The choreographers’ idea behind Mother Ghana bestowing a banderol to each dance group was, as Anthonio explained, that she “gave birth to ten children” and named them “in terms of the regions … She nurtured them, telling them, ‘Go and settle here, this is your place’.” At the end of this dance sequence, the order of giving was reversed: each dance group brought a gift typical of its home region to Mother Ghana. The dancers from the Eastern Region, for instance, presented a mango and beads, while the performers from Upper East gave a woven basket (for the sake of visibility, all objects were enlarged and made from Styrofoam).
Towards the final sequence: dancers pushing in the oil lamp, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
For the grand finale of the choreography, Mother Ghana rose and turned toward the audience, now becoming part of the large ensemble of all the dance groups. All dancers and musicians joined in a loud yell and then in unison sang one of Ghana’s popular patriotic songs which is taught in school and which all adults know by heart: Yaanom Abibiman, a hymn composed by Ephraim Amu in 1931. The lyrics call out to all “fellow Africans” and exhort them to “strive hard” for wisdom, development, and progress.15 After this choral-style song, in which even some of the spectators joined, stilt walkers from the Asafo dance company from the Eastern Region, waving Ghanaian flags, pushed in a huge lamp, decorated with the motto of the anniversary celebration, “Ghana 60 years on: Mobilizing for Ghana’s future.” As the commentator explained, “The various regions present items that are produced through their hard work, with Mother Ghana lighting a giant ‘lamp’ signifying Ghana’s future.” “Our parents have done their duty by giving us a name, taking us to school and so forth,” Anthonio added, “and when they grow, when Mother Ghana is aging, the children will have to feed our parents. So, we bring the resources that we have got from our various regions.” That Ghanaians should value their local resources, and harness them for future development, was the message the choreographers wanted to convey. The dancers then formed a large 60, encircling the lamp, and when they finally exited the scene, the stilt walkers held up a young child, decorated with angel wings—another symbol of the country’s future. In his final announcement, before the military parade began, the commentator asked the audience to put their hands together and celebrate “the rich cultural diversity of our country.”
View from above: dancers forming the number 60 around the oil lamp, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by author.
There were similarities in how this cultural display and the student performance in 2014 disciplined and subordinated ethnicity to national unity. Most importantly, ethnic diversity was aligned along territorial boundaries created by the nation-state. The organizing principle was a modern bureaucratic one, not the messy local dynamics of ethnic identifications which often overlap and are not congruent with state boundaries. Furthermore, the selection of dances to represent the various regions reflected not a pristine reservoir of local traditions, but their long-standing remaking into nationally recognizable tokens of ethnic repertoires, strongly influenced by the state’s cultural politics. The signature dances presented in the choreography were labeled as traditional but, in fact, resulted from intense interactions between local performers and national cultural entrepreneurs. The entire choreography aimed at incorporating regional and ethnic belonging into the national community and visibly harnessing diversity for the common good of the entire nation. The storyline built on an anthropomorphic image of the nation as mother and the sub-national units as her children, suggesting that the very creation of the regions and their cultural treasures was initiated by “Mother Ghana,” to whom all had to pay respect and eventually reciprocate the nurture and care they had received.
All dancers and Mother Ghana singing Yaanom Abibiman for the grand finale, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
There was an important difference from the schoolchildren’s dance performance, however, in the employment of adult dancers from the very regions that they were supposed to represent. As Esi Sutherland-Addy, professor at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and a renowned cultural activist, explained, the Ghanaian president had expressed his desire to incorporate a more extensive performance of the country’s cultural traditions into the independence anniversary ceremony. There had been complaints that leaving the cultural display entirely to dancing schoolchildren under the guidance of the Ghana Education Service was somehow “minimizing” the national day’s significance. The president, therefore, liaised with a group of “young cosmopolitan artists,” as Sutherland put it, whom he had known for a long time and who, like Yartey or Anthonio, were “widely travelled, and embodied traditional culture but with their own interpretations.”16
Final sequence: stick walkers exiting the scene with a baby Mother Ghana, 6 March 2017, Accra, Independence Square. Photo by Marie-Christin Gabriel.
The choreographers wanted to present the “authentic movements” of the regional dances as Anthonio explained, such as they are performed in “the original rural context.”17 Young dancers based in Accra, he felt, “are exposed to videos and other media, and believe that what they see on YouTube are the authentic things.” People are “trying to improvise,” he continued, and “create to suit what they do today … but it is not the ‘right thing’.” Anthonio was well aware, too, that dances in the rural areas are constantly transformed and “modernized” through movements, musical styles, and accoutrements that travel with modern media and returning migrants even to the most distant parts of the country. However, the opposition of urban modernity versus rural authentic traditions is an idea that he shares with many cultural activists in Ghana and beyond (Lentz and Wiggins 2017). For the anniversary performance, in any case, Anthonio wanted to avoid all criticism from traditional authorities, like the Asantehene, that the performance at Independence Square did not “represent” their true cultural heritage.
Yartey and Anthonio thus insisted that the dancers for their choreography should be recruited in the regions, bringing along “the costumes they use in the traditional sector” and relying on their accustomed movements. Because of the short time available for organizing their recruitment, transport, and lodging in the capital, however, the original plan to recruit twenty dancers from each region had to be revised. Instead, only eight were brought in, and their groups complemented by dancers enlisted from among the Accra-based migrants from the respective regions. This, in turn, created aesthetic challenges because the dance styles were not always compatible. There was not much time for rehearsals, so in some cases the choreographers simply allowed the two troupes to perform separately, one after the other, joining only for some final movements. Further, they placed professional dancers from the National Dance Company among the lay ensembles to ensure that the movements had some uniformity and the choreography unfolded according to plan. More generally, aesthetic considerations of creating a “cool and nice performance,” by arranging a sequence of dances that would progress towards a climax, were as important, if not more so, as preserving the “authenticity” of the individual dances.18
The groups thus had to adapt their accustomed movements to the overall choreography. Most importantly, they were not allowed to bring their own musical accompanists, but had to rely on the ensemble of professional drummers that the National Dance Company provided. For some dance groups this was challenging because, although the drum ensemble strove to play the “correct” rhythm, the arrangement nonetheless differed significantly from rural performance conventions. For the group from the Upper West Region (whom I followed more closely), for instance, this meant that, instead of moving to the tune of a xylophone, they had to follow drums typical for Southern Ghana, and the customary interaction between the dancers and the xylophonist in their middle could not take place.19 In the eyes of my interlocutors from the Upper West, the performance was at best tolerable, but many also felt that it was a disgrace and did not adequately represent the richness of their regional cultural traditions. Other spectators may have had similar impressions with regard to their own regions of origin. A scholar of music and traditional arts who wishes to remain anonymous even decried, in an email message sent out to colleagues some days later, a “very despicable, spiraling downward trend in ‘performing/representing’ Ghana at independence celebrations.”20 Others objected to the overall dominance of dress elements, colors, and symbols as well as musical styles from Southern Ghana, or even more narrowly, from Fanti and Asante traditions. They felt that, once again, the groups from the North were presented as more warlike and somewhat “uncivilized” cultures.
In any case, my interest here is not to evaluate the aesthetic qualities of the performance (which in my eyes were rather impressive), but to draw attention to the tensions and contradictions inherent in aiming at performing ethnically marked traditions in an “authentic” manner and the creation of an image of national unity in which regional diversity is subordinated to an overall narrative and performative style. As revealed in many comments that I overheard, much more than the students’ performance in 2014, the adult dance choreography carried the risk of promoting competitive division rather than harmonious plurality.21
Conclusion
This contribution has focused on the strategies employed in the staging of Independence Day celebrations to make ethnicity invisible, subordinate, or otherwise contained. The first strategy that I identified in my analysis is the staging of a multicultural but unified nation (“unity in diversity”) through folkloristic performances enacted by students, who perform a selection of ethnically marked dances from cultural traditions that are not their own but which they studied in school. The second strategy, which I outlined in the discussion of the dance choreography at the Independence Jubilee, visibly (re)presents ethnicity and regional belonging via the participation of adult delegations in attendance from all parts of the country bearing the requisite props and costumes and performing region-specific dances. Here, ethnicity is performed far more explicitly, but as part of an aesthetically and dramaturgically staged artistic event dominated by “Mother Ghana.” The debates that were ignited by the specific choreographies, the selection of dance troupes, and the aesthetic embodied by the Mother Ghana dancers were far more vehement than was the case with the student performances, not least because in the former case it was “real” ethnicity that was being featured on the jubilee stage.
In sum, we can say that ethnicity is a pleasant, but not always welcome guest at national-day celebrations. It is either allotted a limited time slot by placing it in the cultural segment of the opening program, or it is administratively and choreographically disciplined by allowing it to appear only in accordance with state-defined delineations of the national territory. How do these modes of managing ethnicity in national-day celebrations relate to the relevance of these differences in everyday life in Ghana? And what insights can be gained from this example with regard to how ethnicity is highlighted or downplayed in the ceremonial self-representation of nation-states generally?
Although we cannot directly draw conclusions about the relevance and treatment of ethnicity in national-day performances and the social role of ethnic identifications “beyond” the ceremonial context, we can identify a trend when we look to Ghana’s neighbors. In those countries where ethnic conflicts are serious, ethnicity is featured less visibly or not at all. Where ethnicity serves as a means of political mobilization that is more or less under state control and does not fuel conflict, folkorized versions of ethnic belonging are featured as representations of cultural diversity. For example, in Burkina Faso, where ethnic belonging was, until recently, little politicized, ethnicity was presented as part of one of the main ceremonies—the civilian parade—although in a disciplined and administratively subordinate way. In Ghana, where ethnic differences have repeatedly been instrumentalized by political actors, the organizers of national-day celebrations seem to be rather more cautious. However, they have at their disposal a well-established practice of the folklorization of ethnicity in “cultural pageants” that has existed since the 1950s and that stages “unity in diversity” by presenting ethnicity in diminished and aestheticized forms as a separate part of the program scheduled before the celebration’s main nationalist rituals. In Côte d’Ivoire, on the other hand, where during the 2000s the civil war entailed a massive and violent politicization of ethnicity, there are no references to ethnicity or regional loyalties in the main national-day celebrations that are organized in the capital; only with regard to the clothing worn by spectators is there any inkling of diversity (Lentz 2017, 134–9; N’Guessan 2020, 70).
Similar tendencies can be observed outside Africa. In India, where religion seems to be far more conflict-laden than ethnicity, a colorful cultural parade is organized as part of the celebrations on Republic Day. But like in Burkina Faso, the state organizers in India contain ethnic and regional loyalties within the bounds of state administrative territories. In Turkey, on the other hand, all references to ethnicity, especially Kurdish ethnicity, are suppressed on Republic Day and a “unified cultural essence” of Turkish-ness is presented (Roy 2006). At the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, ethnic minorities, whose demands for autonomy pose a certain cause for concern to the government, were featured dressed in colorful costumes and presenting their own musical groups in a massive parade that involved more than 100,000 participants. These minorities, however, paraded under regional banners. Also noteworthy was that the ethnic traditions were represented solely by women, while the men paraded to themes such as harmonious work, progress, and modernity (Kuever 2012). In the US, the organizers of the Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations had greater difficulties in bridging party antagonisms than in integrating ethnic diversity (Travers 1997); the participation of African Americans, however, was controversial and, during the 19th century, they established their own holiday to commemorate the end of slavery (Kachun 2003). In post-unification Germany, the organization and the themes of the festivities commemorating the day of unification on October 3 reflects Germany’s federalist political system (Simon 2010). Considering the challenges posed by regionalist movements, it is remarkable that the United Kingdom has no shared national day, and that Spain declared October 12, the Día de Hispanidad, to be a national holiday, but it is actually celebrated not only by Spain, but the entire Spanish-speaking world to commemorate the “discovery” of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. The Ghanaian example that was analyzed in this contribution can sharpen our perspective with regard to the challenges presented by “nation-work” in other nation-states around the world and provide us insights into how the nation and its intra-national differences are (re)presented.
Footnotes
↵1. Parts of this article, namely the general discussion of national-day celebrations and the analysis of the 2014 Ghanaian Independence Day parade, have been published in German (Lentz 2017); however, these parts have been considerably reworked and augmented by an analysis of the 2017 celebration of Ghana’s sixtieth independence anniversary.
↵2. Fieldwork for this article was conducted in 2014 and 2017, but also during various other Independence Day celebrations since 2007, partly individually and partly within the framework of the research-group project “Un/doing difference” at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (see https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb07-ifeas-eng/performing-the-nation-and-subnational-differences-in-african-national-days/). In the context of this project, I have been working with Marie-Christin Gabriel and Konstanze N’Guessan, conducting a study of national-day celebrations in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire. For results of our comparative studies, see Gabriel, Lentz, and N’Guessan 2016; N’Guessan, Lentz, and Gabriel 2017; and Gabriel, Lentz, and N’Guessan 2020. I thank Marie-Christin Gabriel and Konstanze N’Guessan for the fruitful discussions of our respective case studies as well as for the stimulating shared research stay in Ghana in March 2017 and the constructive feedback on this article.
↵3. There is a huge literature on the complex relation between nation-building, state-making, and ethnic identifications, which I cannot reference here in any detail. For a useful volume on Africa, see Berman, Eyoh and Kumlicka 2004; for a global comparative approach to the dynamics of ethnic boundary-making, see Wimmer 2013.
↵4. That said, dissent over the nation’s history can continue as can competing and/or complementary sub-national communities of remembrance; the symbols and ceremonies deployed in national-day celebrations serve to silence or mute such controversies for the time of the national celebration. See McCrone and McPherson 2009 as well as Lentz 2013.
↵5. On the cultural politics of the Nkrumah and Rawlings governments, see Schauert 2015 and Shipley 2015 as well as Lentz and Wiggins 2017.
↵6. On the role played in this by the performances of two major national dance ensembles and on the controversy concerning the processes of selection and standardisation, see Schauert 2015. On the conflict-laden relationship between ethnic and administrative borders based on the case of Northern Ghana, see Lentz 2006 and N’Guessan 2014.
↵7. See Catie Coe (2005, 53–84) on the history of cultural education in Ghanaian school curricula, and, for a Nigerian example, Andrew Apter’s (2005, 109–18) analysis of the choreographic transformation of traditional dances and their performance by schoolchildren at national art festivals. More generally, on the important role of the youth in Nkrumah’s policies of nation-building and shaping a new understanding of citizenship, see Ahlman 2017, 84–114.
↵8. For an extensive discussion of the changes in traditional performance practices that have taken place as a result of new performance contexts like cultural festivals and other public events, with examples from the Upper West Region, see Lentz and Wiggins 2017.
↵9. Interview with Freeman Aguri, Ghana Education Service, Special Unit Cultural Education, Accra, 12 March 2014.
↵10. On these national dance companies and their history, see Schramm 2000 and Schauert 2015.
↵11. Interview with Ken Amankwah, Chairman of the Ghana@60 Planning Committee, 24 Feb. 2017, Accra.
↵12. Interview with Kofi Anthonio, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, 7 March 2017, Legon.
↵13. Quoted from the write-up for the commentator, an employee of the Ghana Education Service (a copy was kindly given to me by Kofi Anthonio). For a YouTube recording of the March 6, 2017 dance performance (screened from the Ghana Broadcasting Company’s TVGovern live), see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1u7iyQGNiA (last accessed January 30, 2021). Kofi Anthonio complained bitterly about this media coverage, explaining that the film crew had not previously consulted the artistic team about the structure of the choreography and thus filmed rather haphazardly, the cameras often panning out to capture the president and other spectators instead of focusing on the central element of the choreographic narrative.
↵14. In the write-up quoted here, the spelling of Wong differed from the document produced for the 2014 ceremony. The other regions presented in 2017 the following dances (in that order): Upper West: Bawa; Northern: Jera; Volta: Husago, Adzogo, and Bobobo; Greater Accra: Kpanlogo; Western: Abisa Kundum; Brong Ahafo: Nkyera; Ashanti: Kete; and Central: Asafo.
↵15. Some sources give the song’s title as Abibirimma. For a discussion of the lyrics and music, see Dor 2005: 449–53.
↵16. Interview with Professor Esi Sutherland-Addy, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, 2 March 2017.
↵17. Interview with Kofi Anthonio, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. March 7, 2017.
↵18. Interview with Kofi Anthonio, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. March 7, 2017. On the complex politics of cultural authentication within and beyond the Ghana national dance ensembles, see the discussion in Schauert (2015, 78–118). For examples of similar debates and policies, see Castaldi (2006) on Senegal’s national dance ensemble and Edmondson (2007) on the role of performance and dance in Tanzania’s nation-building project. Shay (2002) analyzes examples of “choreographic politics” embodied by state folk dance companies from various European and Latin American countries.
↵19. Furthermore, the Upper West Regional Director of Culture (the regional officer for the National Commission on Culture), who organised the recruitment of the dancers for the occasion, chose a dance troupe from a small town near the regional capital for which the Bawa which was to be presented as the regional “signature” dance, was not in their traditional repertoire. The troupe was chosen for logistical reasons and because the Commissioner felt that, after not having given them the chance to perform at a public occasion, it was now “their turn.” Thus, the recruitment of the regional dancers did not follow considerations of “authenticity,” and the logistical challenges made the regional cultural officers complain bitterly about “those in Accra’; interview with Upper West Regional Director of Culture Mark Dagbeh, by Afra Schmitz, 7 March 2017.
↵20. E-mail message to author, March 9, 2017.
↵21. In terms of media coverage, the dance drama seems to have gone more or less unnoticed; except for one more extended comment in an online journal (https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/captivating-performance-marks-ghana-60/ of 28 March 2017; last access 5 January 2021), newspaper comments focused on the parade and the president’s speech, not the cultural display. On similar earlier debates on the question of keeping ethnic dance styles separate versus fusing them, see Schauert (2017: 64–79).
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