Exploring Indigenous Interpretive Frameworks In African Music Scholarship: Conceptual Metaphors And Indigenous Ewe Knowledge In The Life And Work Of Hesinɔ Vinɔkɔ Akpalu1

Indigenous African knowledge and frameworks are increasingly gaining discursive currency in African studies and its cognate fields. While Indilinga: African Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems has exclusively been devoted to “African indigenous knowledge,” for example, the 2006 book edited by David Millar, Stephen Bugu Kendie, Agnes Atia Apusigah, and Bertus Haverkort consists of thematically related articles on indigenous African knowledge that advocate development in different spheres of Africans’ lives. Yet, closer to the geo-cultural focus of my article is Gbolonyo (2009), a study of forms of indigenous knowledge in Ewe musical practices.

With a strong conviction about the importance of the preceding direction for African music scholarship, I write this article aiming to abstract paradigms of indigenous epistemology. Given that conferences are fertile sites for advocating new directions in scholarship, I presented this article at the Third International Symposium on the Music of Africa at Princeton University in April 2009.² I argue that ethnomusicology and its related disciplines will become richer when scholars rigorously and constantly explore the hermeneutical and epistemological tools that are embedded in the very African music cultures we study. They are an integral facet of indigenous knowledge and would contribute to our African-centered representation of Africa and Africans in revealing ways with added fresh insights.

In this article, I examine Vinɔkɔ Akpalu’s use of metaphors in (1) the nomenclature of an Ewe music genre he invented, (2) his song texts and poetry, and (3) his sayings and position on dissemination strategies of his songs. This discussion is based on my 1998-1999 and 2003 field conversations with selected Ghanaian Ewe traditional music composers, Nicholas Nayo’s seminal study of Akpalu (Nayo 1964, 1973),³ Sheshie’s (1991) biographical insights on Akpalu’s life and work,⁴ and perspectives from Daniel Avorgbedor, Kofi Gbolonyo, Kofi Anyidoho, and James Essegbey (Anlo Ewe Africanist scholars). Also, Kobla Ladzekpo (a renowned Ghanaian master drummer from Anyako) shared perspectives that complementarily enrich this article. Further, as this article advocates the use of conceptual metaphors, an element of indigenous knowledge, as interpretive frameworks in African music scholarship, I give each of the preceding themes a critical discussion at vantage points, intended to illuminate and legitimize Akpalu’s case evidence and my positioning.

Interpretive Frameworks: Prevailing Practices and Landscape

Although it has long been proven that the attribute of humans as knowledgeable beings is not the exclusive monopoly of certain cultural communities (Boas [1894] 1982), the place of prize and prominence given to different forms of local knowledge within the larger academic community is far from satisfactory. Admittedly, most of today’s ethnomusicologists and other ethnographers have, to some extent, acknowledged the richness and power of “local knowledge” (Geertz 1983) as idiosyncratic of every single cultural group in the world. Feld (1982), Seeger (1987), and Blum (1999) have provided texts that exemplify the specificities of local knowledge in diverse musical practices.

However, one is inclined to suggest that we Africanist music researchers have not consistently and fully explored the question of models and processes through which our informants really interpret their worlds and lives. This practice and subjugation of an aspect of African indigenous knowledge in the academy can be attributed to (1) the imprints of colonial legacies that linger in discourses on Africa (Mudimbe 1988; Appiah 1992; Yankah 1996; Agawu 2003; Mazama 2003; Asante 2007); (2) researchers’ conscious or inadvertent extreme subjective reflexivity that pushes their researched subjects to the mire; and/or (3) lack of consciousness of and appreciation for the richness of a body of traditional African knowledge systems and their custodians whom we study and whose voices need foregrounding in our research reports.

Honestly, Africanist scholars’ heavy dependence on hegemonic canons, including Western paradigms that characterize and circumscribe the production and dissemination of knowledge in the academy, will not be easy to reinvent (Mudimbe 1988; Appiah 1992; Agawu 2003; Mazama 2003; Asante 2007). However, I subscribe to the assertion that “indigenous knowledge fills the ethical and knowledge gaps...