Poetry Around the World- Ghana: Ancient and Pre Colonial Periods & The Ashanti

2centspnf

Reach out to us!

This episode took me a year to complete. Take your time with it ;)
Timestamps:
00:00- Intro poem/ Green Africa- Horst Wolff
01:05- Briefing
02:43- Episode Theme
08:03- Kwesi Brew
09:50- Poem/ The Sea Eats Our Lands
10:26- Analysis
17:21- A Discussion on the Oral Tradition
19:59- Libation/Cobby D Poet
23:20- Article/ The People of Ghana (J. Anquandah)
24:43- Making a New History
25:45- The Cultures of Ghana
29:48- The Peopling of Ghana
33:34- The Language Map of Ghana
37:17- Cultures & People
39:17- Food Culture & Taro Yams
39:54- Ethnomedicare
41:25- Arts, Crafts & Social Customs (Terracotta arts)
44:58- Interview transition
45:58- Poem recital/ Ashanti- Adjei Agyei-Baa
01:20:20- Poem recital/ A Feast in Ashanti- Kofi Amed
01:43:51- Analysis of the final lines
01:51:43- Song Discussion/ Nnwonkoro (D. Locke/K. Ampene)
01:55:21- Dr H.C. Jones on the Difference between Western and Trad. African Music
01:59:08- Conclusion
02:01:12- Poem/ Gold Coast Customs- Edith Sitwell
Links/Articles mentioned in the episode:

• Brendal, Aformeziem. “Kwesi Brew and African Poetry.” Strathclyde, Apr. 2015, www.academia.edu/12056017/Kwesi_Brew_and_African_Poetry.
• How Poems Work #1 - L. S. Mensah on Kwesi Brew’s “the Sea Eats Our Lands.” www.oneghanaonevoice.com/2010/08/how-poems-work-1-l-s-mensah-on-kwesi.html.
• Kush, Femi. “Oral Tradition.” Kwasu, May 2018, www.academia.edu/36707753/Oral_Tradition.
• Persoon, James, et al. “The Early Poetry of Kwesi Brew: An Evaluation.” Kente: Cape Coast Journal of Literature and the Arts, vol. 3, no. 1, May 2022, pp. 40–58. https://doi.org/10.47963/jla.v3i1.835.
• THE PEOPLE OF GHANA: THEIR ORIGINS AND CULTURES on JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/43855009.
  Adjei Agyei-Baa/Ashanti Interview
  The Oweds - H.C. Jones, PhD

Poems featured in the episode:
GREEN AFRICA

Horst Wolff

Africa, you catch our eyes

Waking in your sudden bloom

Of giant flowers, rainbow coloured

Generous with limb and life,

You are eternal in your trees

Which crowd, luxuriate and rot;

Returning to return.

Your white-crowned mountain call us up

Your slopes of promise where as eagles

We look down your spread of green

and the metal bodies of your rivers

Bright with points of splintered light.

Dreaming you, where’er I go

I see Ancestors by their fires

Forming worlds from tales and fables.
THE SEA EATS OUR LANDS
Kwesi Brew

Here stood our ancestral home:

The crumbling wall marks the spot.

Here a sheep was led to slaughter

To appease the gods and atone

For faults which our destiny

Has blossomed into crimes.

There my cursed father once stood

And shouted at us, his children.

To come back from our play

To our evening meal and sleep.

The clouds are thickening in the red sky

And night had charmed

A black power into the pounding waves.

Here once lay Keta.

Now her golden girls

Erode into the arms

Of strange towns.