Akwantukese Festival of the New Juaben People: The Artforms and Their Aesthetics

Abstract

Aesthetics play a vital role in the celebration of Akwantukese festival. In the course of the festival celebration, several visual art forms are seen and these art forms give aesthetic value to observers. The aesthetic value associated to the visual art forms in the festival can aid people acquire knowledge and satisfaction. Yet, very few people actively participate in the celebration and do a critical observation of these visual art forms. The study is therefore aimed at focusing the aesthetic values of the visual art forms in the Akwantukese festival celebration. The objective(s) of the study are: (i)to identify the visual art forms embedded in the festival celebration. (ii)to describe the visual art forms and bring out their aesthetic values. Phenomenology and descriptive methods under qualitative research approach was employed in this study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 30 respondents for the research and the main research instruments used for data collection were interviews and observations. The results indicate that there are a lot of visual art forms seen in Akwantukese festival celebration that have aesthetic values and can be appreciated by all and sundry. The research concludes that some of the art forms used during the festival celebration have philosophical and symbolical meanings that express emotions such as happiness, dreadfulness, sadness and others. It is therefore recommended that the chiefs and the people of New Juaben Traditional area should try as much as possible to fully participate in the festival celebration in order to see the various visual art forms and appreciate their aesthetic values. Again the festival should be made attractive to the international communities in order to promote tourism.

Keywords: Aesthetic values, art forms, performing art, Akwantukese festival, visual art, celebration

DOI: 10.7176/ADS/80-04

Publication date: January 31st 2020