Indigenous Musical Modes of Communication and their Relevance in Contemporary Times among the Boosi in Ghana

Abstract

The myriad indigenous musical instruments among the Boosi (Grunis) play important roles in their lives. For instance they are played during birth, marriage, death, harvesting time, house construction, festivals, worship time etc. Epistemologically, they consider the various ancestral musical instruments as an embodiment of their culture and belief systems. Indeed, as sources of communication, the instruments shape their language; hence, they possess spiritual forces that emotionalize the people in both happy and sad times. Unfortunately, the advent of Christianity and westernization has shelved the relevance of these indigenous instruments to the extent that most of them exist in oral history but are not documented. The study was done among the Boosi of Bongo District of the Upper East Region of Ghana. The aim of this work is to establish the contemporary relevance of the musical instruments, photo document them for posterity and also promote the cultural heritage of the Boosi. Methodologically, it was an ethnographical study. Data collected were purely qualitative using participatory approaches to elicit relevant information from key respondents. Nineteen musical instruments were identified and the distinctive messages they communicate were noted. It was disclosed that a good number of the musical instruments were not known to the younger generation.

Keywords:Indigenous Musical modes, Communication, Relevance, Contemporary Times, Grunis