Kakube has come to stay
The making of a cultural festival in Northern Ghana, 1989-2015
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2103201 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carola Lentz, Trevor Wiggins |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 180-210 |
| Publication date | 2017-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0001972016000759 |
| OpenAlex | W2580940081 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 31 |
In Ghana, cultural festivals, usually initiated and organized by the chiefs, provide public arenas where local and regional political elites voice demands vis-à-vis central government, and where national politicians canvass for support. Festivals offer commercial opportunities, forums to promote 'development', and occasions for entertainment. Yet advocating for 'our own culture' stands out as their very raison d'être, offering a frame for cultural entrepreneurs to organize performances that express and reconfigure local styles of music and dance to fit national formats. In this article, we examine such processes of cultural creation for the Kakube Festival in Nandom, a paramount chiefdom in north-western Ghana. We analyse the cultural building blocks and their evolution during the festival's history as well as the context of changing national politics of cultural heritage in which the festival developed. We discuss the invention of a cultural festival to create local alliances and stake claims at the regional and national political level, and how the desire to assert a presence in the national political and cultural arena has transformed the ways in which local culture is defined and presented. We examine the tensions at the heart of such an event, where traditions of chiefly patronage and allegiance meet the requirements of modern political and bureaucratic systems of funding, and the criteria of excellence in cultural performance. Music and dance are essential components and we analyse the evolution and adaptation of these elements alongside the critical path management of the event that has led to its local and national profile
Allegiance · Context (archaeology · Cultural heritage · Cultural policy · Dance · Entertainment · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sociology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · History · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society
Nkrumah & the chiefs
State and society in pre-colonial Asante
The Festive State
Models and mirrors
The Invention Of Tradition
We Are What We Celebrate
The Politics of Heritage in Africa
Staging Ghana
Building the Ghanaian Nation-State
Nation-building, collecting and the politics of display
Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana
The Pan-African Nation
La mise en spectacle de l’identité nationale
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
The Imagined Community of the Antankarana
The Imagined Community of the Antankarana
The bureaucratic making of national culture in North-Western Ghana
African Political Systems
Local Culture in the National Arena
Exhibiting Ghana
Nkrumah and the Chiefs
The kazanga festival
Refashioning Chieftaincy in Ghana
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,44 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2022 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |