Browsing by Author "Ismaila, Margaret"

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    Indigenous performance and modernity : investigating the vitality of play and work songs of the Dagaaba community in North Western Ghana as verbal art performance
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-03) Ismaila, Margaret; Pretorius, Mareli Hattingh; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Drama.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study looks at play and work songs of the Dagaaba in north western Ghana as verbal art performance and how modernity has influenced the vitality of these indigenous performances. Performance studies remain a contested subject as it cuts across disciplines. However, the overarching theme in scholarship on performance defines it as a paradigm-driven concept which needs to be discussed in context. Aligning with this position, play and work songs of the Dagaaba is studied as performance in the context of an activity in motion as theorised by Richard Schechner. By investigating the vitality of play and work songs of the Dagaaba, I set out to draw attention to the declining nature of indigenous performance. I argue that social change, an inevitable phenomenon which has swept through the Dagaaba land, has halted the motion of play and work songs performances – hence its vitality – and call for alternative platforms to revitalise performances to ensure continuity. Using the qualitative approach, this study focuses on play and work songs as indigenous art forms among the Dagaaba. The main objective of this study is to unearth the influence of modernity on indigenous Dagaaba performances. Specifically, the study seeks to investigate the role of play and work songs as traditional verbal art performances in the Dagaaba community. The study also aims at exploring the manifestations of modernity in the Dagaaba community as well as analyses the perceived impacts of modernity on play and work song performances of the Dagaaba. In addition, the study investigates alternative platforms for indigenous performances. The study finds farming, domestic chores, recreation, environmental rituals, ancestor veneration, and rites of passage as some platforms that sanction the performance of indigenous art forms. The study however finds that modernity has influenced these performances and identifies formal education, Christianity, technology, industrialisation, and urbanisation among others as causes of this change. The study discovers meeting places of identifiable groups and competitions of indigenous performances as alternative platforms for continuity and vitality of play and work songs performances. The study reveals, based on songs collected, that play and work songs satisfy Bauman’s analysis of verbal art as performance. Analysis of songs collected responds to what Baumann identified as the frames of communication, communication devices and keying in performance which provides the audience a structure within which to interpret and appreciate the text. The study contributes to scholarship on performance studies by propounding play and work songs as accessorial performance. It concludes that though play and work songs are vital in the social organisation of the Dagaaba, they are gradually losing their places due to the influence of modernity.