Kete Dance as Indigenous Knowledge

Kete encapsulates embodied knowledge, undergoing continuous evolution to meet the dynamic needs of its practitioners in an organic and responsive manner.

To expand on this, the Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) incorporated within the broader framework of Afrocentric theory as advocated by Asante-Kete, is here regarded as an alternative theoretical lens for addressing African artistic developments. An IKS encompasses the entirety of historical and contemporary knowledge, including actions and reactions, grounded in a people's interaction with their environment. Kofi Anthonio shares that “human beings, are defined by the way we socialise, including communal gathering which is representative of the society or its coming together to live as an identifiable entity […] and that community is not complete without music and dance.” I contend that any definitions pertaining to the cultural evolution of African people should be based on their own voices, experiences, and interactions with their history. Meaning and contexts are derived from these activities, supporting social functions and activities that are relevant to a people. This chapter serves as a conceptual exposition of Kete as an IKS within the Afrocentric paradigm.

As espoused first by Molefi Kete Asante (Asante 1988) and later by scholars like Frances Owusu-Ansah and Bubela Mji in their push for recognition of African indigenous knowledge forms, I have recognized, through existing literature, the necessity for adopting an Afrocentric approach in African dance scholarship. Ghanaian dance research has not explicitly utilized Afrocentricity until now. This necessity is echoed by Owusu-Ansah and Miji (2013), who share that in exploring alternative approaches to studying their reality, African research must endeavor to diverge from the established Western research methodologies in which many have been trained. This stance does not aim to dismiss or belittle recognized Western investigative methods but encourages African researchers to consider alternative inquiry methods for investigating and preserving indigenous knowledge (Owusu-Ansah and Mji 2013). An Afrocentric method as an alternative approach to existing Western conceptions of dance-music and their functions in African societies is not only necessary but more so needs constant promotion. Historically and presently, Western perspectives on the African body and dance have been sources of fascination and, at times, misunderstanding.

In the beginning, Odomankoma created “Order, the Drum/Music, and the Executioner! According to Asante cosmology played on the Atumpan drum, humans are appointed to exist in an orderly world and society, guided by effective communication throughout their lives, and to eventually transition into ancestorshood through death. The pervasive influence of these three elements—Order, the Drum/Music, and the Executioner—on Asante life is undeniable, shaping their interactions with people and the environment, as well as their understanding of spirituality.

The subtitle “Odomankoma na ↄnwini kete!” in Twi language translates to “God assembled Kete dance-music.” I selected this chapter title because, as evident in this volume, Kete transcends the physical realm and serves as a bridge between Asante/Akan realities. It is carefully ordered to respond to sociocultural context with its unique movement, visual, and communicative systems. I am cautious not to overly spiritualize this aspect of Kete in my effort to position cultural reverence for this dance-music form. Most importantly, I aim to frame it as an epistemology deserving of more scientific explorations.

I am a Kete dancer, musician, teacher, and lifelong student. My journey and growth are intricately tied, especially to this dance form. Kete offered me my first encounter with self-reflection at a young age, providing a lens through which I could assess my life situations and redefine my focus. It played a crucial role in helping me navigate financial challenges during my primary and senior high school days, contributing to our household income. Even when I received support from my sister to continue my university education, dancing Kete allowed me to save money and supplement the financial assistance. As I pursued my first master's degree at the University of Ghana, Kete provided direction and motivation for my research and thesis. It served as the foundation for understanding movement structure, context, and the function of other cultures during my Choreomundus master's program in Europe. When I later gained admission to pursue a PhD in Dance Studies at Temple University, Kete continued to speak to me and drove me toward completion. Today, I share years of experience, practice, and research as a Kete student with the world.

In conclusion, this research explored the transmission of the Kete dance from the palace to the University of Ghana, examining it through the lenses of the Traditional and Academic dance categories. The study adopted an Afrocentric and phenomenological approach, emphasizing the agency of the Kete dancing body in shaping cultural ideals and philosophies within the Asante community. The research began by discussing Awuah's four categories of dance performance in Ghana, focusing on the Traditional and Academic categories for analysis. It highlighted the transition of Kete from the palace to the university, acknowledging the influence of the Ghana Dance Ensemble as a bridge between the Traditional and Academic categories. The research emphasized the need for a phenomenological standpoint to understand the role of these dance categories in the transmission of Kete. It demonstrated the efficacy of the black body in affirming cultural ideals and contributing to the propagation of Akan/Asante culture. The study highlighted the dynamic and evolving nature of indigenous dances, challenging static perceptions and advocating for a deeper exploration of the meanings generated through performance.

Through a phenomenological analysis, the research delved into the experiences of Kete performers, situating the holistic nature of performance mediums like music and dance within the intellectual framework of Asante culture. The Traditional and Academic categories were shown to influence the meanings generated in different contexts, emphasizing the importance of context-specific interpretations.

The research justified the potency of indigenous thought patterns manifested through performance gestures and underlined the significance of the African Genius concept in analyzing movement systems. It argued for the preservation of traditional structures in performance art to avoid distorting identity markers. The study also explored the Pan-Africanist paradigm, showcasing how Kete was employed in the development of a nationalist approach to governing independent Ghana. It advocated for an Afrocentric mode of inquiry, aligning with the researcher's focus and enabling a deeper exploration of indigenous perspectives.

In this research, the data from fieldwork is categorized into four main groups: “Personal Experience,” “Revelatory Incident,” “Realization and Concept,” and “Performance and Propagation.” I employed a “Pheno-choreological” approach, combining “Pheno,” representing the phenomenology of experience, and “Choreology,” signifying the study of movement structure. This approach aligns with John Dewey's theoretical framework on the “social construction of knowledge,” as elucidated by John Okrah in his exploration of African Philosophy of Education (Okrah 2012). The argument posits that if a people's culture comprises nuanced elements specific to their self-identification and their interaction with the environment, then the collective knowledge facilitating such assimilation through individual experiences becomes integral to their social reality. Conducting a pheno-choreological analysis involves examining the implicit and explicit personal and collective experiences of musicians and dancers involved in Kete to generate interpretations consistent with their realization and concept of the dance form, as articulated by Bakka and Karoblis (2010).

The embodied realities mentioned above significantly shape the categorization systems of a community, impacting the creation of phenomena and their contextual understanding. When an individual assimilates social knowledge, such as Kete dance-music, they become an agent within a cultural network encompassing art, communication, and the generation of meaning through performance for subsequent generations. To interpret this interconnected data, I will utilize Kuwor's indigenous holistic approach to dances from Africa (Kuwor 2017).

In this chapter, I delve into the analysis of specific elements of Kete based on the data recorded during my fieldwork in Ghana. The data is categorized under the codes of “Personal History,” “Revelatory Incident,” “Realization and Concept,” and “Performance and Propagation.” These categories were derived from recurrent themes found in responses from my informants and discussions with experts during recording sessions. These themes are then situated within Kuwor's concept of “Ghanaian/African Holistic Nature.” This approach is justified by the phenomenological nature of the research, exploring the transmission of Kete dance in both palace/traditional and academic settings. I argue that understanding the transmission of dance-music in Ghanaian villages or rural communities requires an exploration of their total cultural makeup and the parameters that shape their way of life.

This chapter details an autoethnographic account of my embodiment in my father's palace and a suburb in Kumasi known as Fante New Town. These settings influenced my learning of Kete and the acquired realities as a royal turned commoner. I employ autoethnography toward “finding new ways to write about social life and, to better understand our society, and to promote self-reflective and critical research. Therefore, primary-bodily data are of utmost importance [and] autoethnographic research includes methodological implications and raises the question of situating the body about knowledge construction, “evidence and the evidence of knowledge.” I position my embodied recollections concerning the absorption and dissemination of Kete within various contexts of my identity—first as a royal, then as a “commoner,” entertainer, and artist-student-dancer. These corporeal memories are rooted in diverse experiences, encompassing my personal Kete dance training and performances during my childhood. These memories extend through significant phases, including the period before, during, and after my father's installation as a sub-chief in our rural town in Ghana known as Mpohor. They also encompass my active involvement with amateur groups, professional companies, and my time as a student at the University of Ghana's academy. This narrative delves into the intricacies of learning and practicing Kete in Kumasi, incorporating personal anecdotes. Furthermore, it sheds light on the circumstances that led to my transition from royalty to commoner, navigating the performance of identical variations under different identities and locations. This exploration aims to offer a foundation for understanding the dynamics of transmission and assimilation, highlighting the nuanced knowledge acquired within distinct social classes.

This autoethnographic narrative examines my assimilation of the Kete dance within the framework of three categories as outlined by Grit Koeltzsch: (i) self-observation and reflexivity, (ii) bodily perceptions and experiences across time and space, and (iii) past and present (Koeltzsch 2021).

Fieldwork in Ghana

The fieldwork for this research adopted a multisited approach to data collection, focusing on two regional capitals in Ghana: Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region, where the Kete dance originates, and Accra, serving as the capital of the Greater Accra Region and the national capital of Ghana. In Kumasi, I engaged in data gathering, participant observation, and video recording among the master drummers and dancers at the Asante Monarch's palace, known as the Manhyia palace, as well as at other venues such as funerals and parties.

This chapter delves into the foundation of Ghanaian dance scholarship, emphasizing traditional and indigenous dances and their significance in the Indigenous Knowledge Systems of various communities. It explores postin-dependence dance categories and their progressive changes, drawing on Awuah's (2014) categorization to analyze their characteristics, dancing structures, rules, and aesthetics. The transmission of Kete in the Traditional category, with its move from Kumasi to the University of Ghana in 1963, reflects its unique role in community life. The chapter highlights the official decree from the Asantehene allowing Kete's use in the academy for academic and nationalist purposes, marking it as a distinctive knowledge system within the ensemble's repertoire. The approval and support from both the Asantehene and Dr. Nkrumah contribute to Kete's significance in the broader context of Ghanaian dance scholarship.

Traditional Dance-Musicking

Traditional dances in Ghana serve to navigate the communal lives of the people who engage in their performance. Traditional dances, crucial to community life, involve creators, custodians, and practitioners of artistic elements in dance-musicking across time. They embody an intellectual expression, revealing how individuals interpret their identity and relationships within indigenous Ghana. In the 1960s, Ghana pioneered the integration of professionalizing traditional music and dances into academic practice. This facilitated further exploration, connecting cultural forms with other state elements, shaping not just art but also influencing knowledge production and the conception of the African self. Understanding traditional music and dance requires exploring connections in movements, music, visual forms, multisensory modalities, audience engagement, and dancing events within Ghanaian/African traditions.

There should be a distinction between the dancing activity and the dancing event. One must understand that the dancing activity, herein referred to as the “realization,” is only made salient within the event it is perpetuated in. Hence, it is the dancing event that creates the contexts and validates the movement variations, music, and its historical antecedents. “A dancing event is a kind of an open or restricted occasion in a place and time, where and when dancing is in the focus.” In many indigenous communities, dance events are intricately linked to economic, religious, or political activities, using dance-musicking as a central element to convey meaning.

Indigenous dance music in Ghana serves peculiar roles in the lives of its practitioners from birth to death. This book 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 about its movement element. I theorize Kete as an element of social construction that promotes and sustains cultural/indigenous knowledge through gestures. A performance of Kete in a specific context, such as a funeral, can serve as a lens through which indigenous gender disparities, sociocultural class structures, and embodied agencies for the propagation of indigenous knowledge are exposed. Utilizing a qualitative research methodology that encompasses first-person methods such as autoethnography, along with interviews and audiovisual analysis, I undertake an examination of my personal experience and understanding of Kete as a practitioner since childhood. Additionally, I explore the experiences of selected participants in both Ghana and the United States in providing context for future exploration. The book also serves an advocacy purpose by exclusively aligning with Afrocentricity, a unique feature not previously explored in Ghanaian dance literature. As a reflection of intelligent social structuring, where dancers communicate through gestures, I delve into the transition of Kete from the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi (Traditional Category) to the Ghana Dance Ensemble (Academic and then Professional Category) at the University of Ghana since 1963. Eric Awuah, “A Study of Amateur Groups’ Re-Interpretation of Traditional Dances in Ghana: Role on Continuity and Safeguarding” (NTNU, University of Clermont Ferrand, University of Szeged, University of Roehampton, 2014). I aim to explore the impact of neo-traditional structures on the continued proliferation of Kete today. Specifically, my focus is on investigating the agency of the Kete dancer centered within Kumasi and Accra, utilizing first-person methods to understand the structures influencing its proliferation and anticipated future developments. Asante Kete royal court dance music has its origins in the Asante/Akan ethnic group of Ghana, West Africa. The Akan people constitute the largest ethnic group in Ghana, primarily residing in the southern regions of the country.

Whether considered as a personal movement practice or a cultural phenomenon, Kete has much to say about the people who perform it. Whatever symbolic messages the Kete dance form carries can become a subject of interpretation by choreographers, scholars, teachers, writers, and audience. In this section, I explore the foundational cultural gender concepts embedded within Kete music and dancing. The discussion delves into the specific competencies essential for the performance of gendered movements by both male and female dancers. Additionally, I highlight the gendered messages conveyed through these movements, contributing to the overall aesthetic presentation within the Kete dance form. This exploration aims to shed light on the intri-cate interplay of gender dynamics within the rich cultural tapestry of Kete, offering insights into how gender is embodied and expressed through this traditional Ghanaian dance form.

The embodiment and expression of gender within the traditional Ghanaian dance form of Kete are deeply intertwined with the concept of Africanist aesthetics. Dance ethnologists such as Kariamu Welsh-Asante and Ofotsu Adinku have contributed significantly to the understanding of Africanist aesthetics, which has found relevance in Ghanaian dance scholarship. This aesthetic perspective extends not only to the four dance cat-egories identified by Awuah (2015) but also encompasses African diasporic dance performances. Modesto Amegago emphasizes the necessity of grasping African philosophy to comprehend African aesthetics fully. In agreement with Amegago, I acknowledge that African aesthetics in Kete are shaped by a complex interplay of biological/physical, social, economic, political, religious, and ethical values. These values find expression through the bodies of performers, the perceptions of spectators, and the custodianship of the dance form in diverse contexts. This holistic understanding illuminates the rich tapestry of gendered expressions within the cultural framework of Kete, offering insights into the intricate relationship between aesthetics and the broader philosophical foundations of African dance.

Within the broader exploration of a generalized African aesthetic, the distinct elements of style and character play a crucial role in defining gender roles and cultural stereotypes. These elements not only serve as aesthetic markers but also contribute to gendered interpretations of societal norms and issues through performance.

In Ghana, dance serves a diverse range of purposes and undergoes transformative evolution as individuals and communities progress through various life stages. This chapter will thoroughly explore the landscape of dance scholarship in Ghana, critically examining its theoretical underpinnings from both Afrocentric and Anglo-European perspectives. The analysis aims to assess the profound impact of these viewpoints on dance transmission and scholarly pursuits within Ghana and the broader African context. Special attention will be given to the contributions of indigenous researchers in advancing dance research, with a focus on existing literature addressing Ghanaian dance, particularly the intricate Kete dance form. Throughout this exploration, the chapter will highlight the foundational role of Afrocentric paradigms in shaping Ghanaian dance theory and their crucial contribution to the global recognition of African dances in academic discourse.

The available literature supporting the epistemological exploration of dances from Africa/Ghana by insider/indigenous researchers is limited. Most existing literature from the rest of the world on African dances falls into categories such as historical colonial reports, early anthropological records depicting “primitive societies,” neocolonial publications reflecting Western opinions about African dances, and some multicultural ethnomusicological texts. This exploration begins with an overview of the Traditional Kete dance form, tracing its historical roots and contemporary functions. The narrative then delves into the role of dance as a pivotal element in the post-Ghana independence Pan-Africanist revolution. A closer examination follows, scrutinizing the integration of dance into academia and its profound implications for the conceptualization and promotion of the “African Personality” ideology championed by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

I support the inclusion of an Afrocentric perspective in the analysis of Ghanaian performance practices, drawing on the deeply rooted practices and philosophies inherent in African indigenous traditions. This validation extends to concepts emerging from African dance-music forms. Initially introduced by Molefi Asante and further championed by scholars like Frances Owusu-Ansah and Bubela Mji in their endeavors to establish the acknowledgment of African knowledge forms, there is a shared understanding of the necessity of adopting an Afrocentric approach. They emphasize the necessity of developing alternative approaches to studying African reality and advocate for steering away from reliance on Western methodologies.

Kete is a music and dance form originating from the Asante and also primarily performed by the Akan people of Ghana. Like all indigenous knowledge forms, Kete possesses a nuanced history interwoven with mysticism, sociocultural elements, and historical factors. “The Akan people of Ghana include the Asante, Akwamu, Akyem, Denkyira, and Fante ethnic groups who occupy a large portion of Ghana” Gerry R. Cox and Neil Thompson, “The Akan of Ghana,” in Managing Death: International Perspectives, ed. Gerry R. Cox and Neil Thompson (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022), 85–89, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05559-1_9. They primarily occupy the southern part of the country. Within Asante cultural practices, music and movement systems hold a significant place in life. Beyond their communicative functions, these systems act as vital links connecting the past, present, and future. Kete is a traditional dance-music form originally confined to the palace of the Asantehene and subchiefs, who hold the authority to have traditional music and dances in their palaces. The Kete dance has gone through many changes since its break away from the older Adowa form, and as Joseph Kaminski (2007) shares, “the music of Kete is reputed to possess the power of attracting good spirits […] [Nketia] explains that the surrogated texts extol high moral values through the telling of heroic ideals and a Kete dance must be developed with the involvement of symbolic hand gestures reflecting these values. It is danced barefooted and trained male dancers dance with their Lapa cloth lowered beneath the chest” (“Asante Kete drumming: music from Ghana,” 2007).

There are different accounts attributed to the origins of the Kete Dance form, but this volume employs the two main accounts in my unpublished thesis of 2015 titled The Contexts and Meaning in Asante Dance Performance: The Case of Kete by Emmanuel Cudjoe, The Contexts and Meaning in Asante Dance Performance: The Case of Kete (Accra, Ghana, University of Ghana, 2015). These two are by no means authoritative over the many other accounts that exist about the dance, but they offer interesting insights into the scholarly departure points this book elaborates.