FROM PALACE TO ACADEMY: EMBODIMENT, TRANSMISSION AND DIS/CONTINUITIES IN THE ASANTE KETE DANCE AND MUSIC OF GHANA

Abstract

Indigenous dance music in Ghana serves peculiar roles in the lives of its practitioners from birth to death. This dissertation explores the role of the Kete dance of the Asante people as an Afrocentric agency of meaning-making. As a dance-music form, Kete is one of the most popular dances in Ghana and a major cultural attraction in the diaspora. Apart from ethnomusicological explorations of its music, not much has been done with regard to its movement element. I theorize Kete as a social construction that promotes and sustains culture through gestures. A performance of Kete at a particular context like a funeral can expose indigenous gender disparities, socio-cultural class structure, and embodied agencies for indigenous knowledge propagation. Through a qualitative research methodology including first-person methods of autoethnography and practical experiences, I examine my own experience and understanding of Kete as a practitioner since childhood and the experiences of selected participants in Ghana and the United States. The research also has an advocacy purpose through its affiliation with Afrocentricity. As a reflection of intelligent social structuring where dancers communicate through gestures, I explore the transition of Kete from the Manhyia palace in Kumasi (Traditional Category) to the Ghana Dance Ensemble (Academic and then Professional Category) in the University of Ghana from 1963 and explore the impact of neo-traditional structures on its proliferation today. Specifically, I explore the agency of the Kete dancer as centered within Kumasi and Accra, to ascertain to what extent this embodied knowledge can be explored through first-person methods to understand the structures of its proliferation and anticipated future developments.