YES WE CAN!!

On November 4, 2008, history was made when Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America. It was truly a blessings to have voted from West Africa and been in Ghana to witness the enthusiasm and pride that Ghanaians expressed. Africans see Obama not only as an American, but an African too, and they celebrate his victory as a victory for black people worldwide. Kenya declared November 5 a national holiday.

I could not let the day go by without organizing something in the Department of Dance Studies here at the Unviersity of Ghana-Legon. The first photo is of Professor Oh! Nii Sowah, Head of the Department of Dance Studies and myself celebrating at the School of Performing Arts. The following are some photos that were taken of our celebration for Barack Obama with students, staff & faculty: we did the Electric Slide, and the Ghanaian Kpanlogo dance, all while chanting: “Barack Obama is President! Yes We Can! Yes We Can!


Students Celebrating with Signs reading Yes We Can!


Give the Drummers Some! The Heartbeat of the Celebration


Oh! Nii Sowah, Head of the Department of Dance Studies, & Halifu Get Down for Obama


Body & Soul - In the Spirit


Oh! Nii, Nii Yartey, & Halifu, with Terry Ofosu in back, Glorifying the Celebration


YES WE CAN!


THEN I THOUGHT OF OBAMA'S ACCEPTANCE SPEEECH WHEN HE SPOKE OF MRS. ANN COOPER, THE 106 YEAR OLD, WHO VOTED FOR HIM IN ATLANTA:



"This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old. She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin." Barack Obama, November 4, 2008

AND I WAS MOVED, AND REMEMBERED WHAT I HAD WRITTEN WHEN I WOKE UP IN GHANA ON NOVEMBER 4TH:

TODAY IS THE DAY
November 4, 2008 will go down in history. It is the day a black man will become President of the most powerful nation in the world---the United States of America. Barack Obama is destined to begin to vindicate the 400 years of the degradation of people of African descent worldwide. For it is not just African Americans (Blacks, Negroes, Coloreds, Negras) whose history will begin to be atone for, but it is the entire Black “Race.” People here in Ghana are poised to celebrate just like in the U.S. It is clear that the Creator has chosen him as The One, he who is to break the barrier of slavery, segregation, colonialism, Him-Crowism, the lynchings, the vicious violence and discrimination, the psychological cultural racism, the deliberate stripping of culture (that failed), and the basic human suffering that lodged in every individual soul, each family, each community and village, each region (South, North, East, & West), each nation (especially the US), and indeed the world.

Barack Obama’s election as President of the U.S. is much more than a personal story. It is an vindication of a people whose story has become the quintessential narrative of oppression (rivaling the Jews). Obama carries a lot on his shoulders; but he is The One, the one who has been chosen to do so. And as the world watches in anticipation, our Ancestors hover in the Wind, the Rivers, the Oceans---Waiting!

African Hip Hop

Waga Hip Hop 8 was the 8th Annual hip hop festival in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, October 13 -18, 2008. My Fulbright Fellowship is not only for teaching in Ghana, but also for researching hip hop in this part of the world. I had been aware of this festival as a part of Africa’s embracing of hip hop culture. But when I heard that it was actually happening while I was in West Africa, I made plans to attend.

I had a big lecture on October 16; but immediately after I finished the lecture (“Dance Ethnology: A Marriage of Social Science & Dance” for the Institute of African Studies here at the University of Ghana) I was on an air-conditioned fairly comfortable bus to Kumasi (second biggest city in Ghana) and then a second bus northward across the border to the landlocked Francophone country of Burkina Faso. The entire trip took nearly 24 hours. Do you see what we academics do for research (smile)?

When I arrived in Ouagadougou at the Ran Hotel Somketa, it was the last two days of the festival. I met Panji Arnoff (Ghanaian music producer who had informed me about the festival, and the only Ghanaian music artist, King Ayisoba from Northern Ghana.


Panji & Ayisoba in the Restaurant of Ran Hotel Somketa in Ouagadougou

What I realized when we got there is that the focus of the festival was women in hip hop; hence the image of the festival poster. What a surprise! Priss’K and Nash, two women rappers from Cote D’Ivoire had already performed the previous Monday. But I got a chance to meet them and took this photo in the lobby of our hotel. It was exciting, and truly showed me how much hip hop has taken over the world as a kind of second colonialization---but this time one that is creative and for the most part desired by the people. The emphasis is definitely on “indigenizing” hip hop, by rapping in local languages, and often using ancient African instruments.


Nash & Priss'K - featured Rap Artists from Cote D'Ivoire

Friday night’s concert at an outdoor amphitheater was a prime example: besides the obligatory turntablist (DJ Geebyss from Senegal, who was excellent), trap drums, and base guitar, there were a full battery of djembes, a balaphone, and King Ayisoba plays a two-string instrument known as Kologo in the Bolgatanga region of Ghana. He chanted his mysterious language (African rap) with singer/rapper Freddie Massamba from Congo Brazzaville and a wonderful female singer Awa Sissao from Ouagadougou.


King Ayisoba with his Ancestor Stick


The festival definitely featured artists from Francophone countries, and French was the official language of the festival. It’s something seeing the brothers and sisters “get down” in French and make it their own. Their opening song, “Mama Africa” needed no translation, and I got quite a bit of the concert on a DVD.

On Saturday, October 18, the last day of the festival and my second day there, I landed an interview with the main organizer, Ali Diallo, with the producing organization, Umané Culture. Since he spoke only French (and my French is about 8th grade level), our Translator was Jenny Fatou Mbaye of Senegal, who is attending the London School of Economics and Political Science to do her Ph.D. on hip hop. When I queried Diallo about why the focus on women emcees this year, he said that since hip hop is so male oriented, the past female rappers they had invited became invisible. So the only way to rectify this was to feature them, and there are a lot of female rappers throughout Africa. Besides Priss’K and Nash, they also had Ideal Black Girls from Guinea, and Naneth from Gabon.

Women dominated the concert that night, with Sissao returning to do a solo evening. She is like an African Sarah Vaughn, who sings beautifully in French and Mossi, and has a huge following in Ouagadougou.


Sissao from Ouagadougou

Before she came on there was a rap battle with six different male contestants. The winner was a rapper from Niger, Elgrintcho, who also won last year. He had a flow that was a combination of his indigenous language along with a fast Jamaican dub sound. This was a perfect example of the indigenizing process of hip hop going on in Africa, which brings together the best of African performance and the entire diaspora.


Elgrintcho from Niger - Winner of the Rap Battle

The festival ended with a beautiful French R&B singer from Benin called Zeynab. She went from Edith Piaf sounding songs, to a Beyoncé flow, to talkative rap, all in French.


Zeynab from Benin

I left Waga Hip Hop 8 reinforced that our young African sisters and brothers are definitely making new contributions to the globally circulating culture of hip hop, and that “black” comes in so many different cultures and languages.

The Ghanaian-African American Connection

Ghana has had a long history with African America. Even though Liberia and Sierra Leone accepted ex-slaves during the 19th century repatriation movement, those experiments have had a checkered history with questionable success. Our own W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the key founders of the NAACP and author of one of the first worldwide bestsellers by a black author, "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903), came here at the end of his life and is buried in Accra. He was invited with open arms by President Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana, after the U.S. restored Du Bois's passport during the McCarthy Era red scare. The opening picture shows the entrance to the W.E.B. DuBois Center, which is directed by Dr. Anne Adams, former professor at Cornel University.



Inside the Centre, celebrating Du Bois's 140th Anniversary

It is also one of the first tourist sites that Gene and I visited on arriving in Ghana. We wanted to pay homage to the legacy of Dr. Du Bois. The museum contains rare photos of Du Bois and his wife Shirley in Ghana. One can see that he was treated royally and visited and honored by Nkrumah frequently. In fact the entire Centre was the Du Bois's home that Nkrumah gave them soon after their arrival. Du Bois's office has his desk and library in it with original copies of the "Souls of Black Folk," and one of his novels, "Darkwater." It was an awesome feeling to see original artifacts of this great man about whom I have studied and about whom I currently teach at UC Davis.


Exhibited Photo of Nkrumah and W.E.B. and Shirley Du Bois at a State function


Photo of Nkrumah Visiting DuBois on his 95th Birthday, the year of his passing

The highlight of our visit to the Du Bois Centre was seeing his tomb and his wife's cremation urn side my side in the mausoleum. Yes, Du Bois died and remains in Ghana.



In fact, as fate would have it, he passed away at 95 years old on the morning of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. I said an ancestor prayer in the mausoleum and thanked him for his many contributions to our people and world culture. Belinda, the docent, took pictures of Gene and I in Ghanaian stools that line the room.


Halifu in Du Bois Mauseleum

Gene in Du Bois Mauseluem

I left feeling reverence and knew my purpose: like Du Bois, bridging Africa and African America---letting both sides understand their connections in a deeper way. Mine is through culture and the arts. Du Bois’s was through literature and political organizing. Yes, he was also one of the architects of the Pan African Congress that happened between 1919-1945. In fact, the latter world meetings was where the young Kwame Nkrumah first met “the old man.”




Nkrumah, had part of his university education in the United States Lincoln University, the first degree-granting historically black university. One can’t help but feel that his time at Lincoln gave him a particular sensitivity to the plight of African Americans. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why during the Civil Rights Movement he appeared before the UN to lobby for the political situation of African Americans being considered a world human rights issue. Like Du Bois be believed in Pan Africanism, and was one of the key African leaders during the beginning of the African Independence Movement (Ghana was the first independent country in 1957) to promote and establish the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Although history has painted him as a liberator that turned into Ghana's autocratic first President, leading to a coup against him in 1966, Nkrumah is still revered here and has a huge memorial to him in downtown Accra, with his own mausoleum, where his remains rest, which Gene and I also visited.


Gene at Nkrumah Memorial

All of these historic facts linking Nkrumah and Du Bois testify to the long-connections between Ghanaians and African Americans. This relationship set the tone for many American blacks who have moved here, established businesses, started families, and have become citizens.

University of Ghana & The Department of Dance Studies

I am privileged to be teaching in the Department of Dance Studies at the University of Ghana-Legon, thirty-two years after I was here as a young student of dance, auditing courses in what then was called the School of Dance, Music, and Drama. Now, I am a respected Fulbright Senior Lecturer of Dance Studies. This transition over time testifies to a lot of hard work, both in Dance-Theater and academia. I have now merged my study of dance and the humanities, and am proud to be sharing my accumulated knowledge with the wonderfully attentive, and respectful students in the Department of Dance Studies.


Gene at Entrance to the School of Performing Arts

The former Department of Dance, Music, and Drama is now the School of Performing Arts, under the auspices of the Institute of African Studies, which has always been the overarching academic unit, established in the 1961. Professor Kwabena Nketia, the respected ethnomusicologist, started the Music and Related Arts Section of the Institute at the beginning, and it was that unit that involved into the current School, with fully accredited Departments in Dance, Music, and Theatre. This academic program remains a model in the attempts during postcolonial times to regain a sense of cultural integrity and to ensure conservation of indigenous African culture.



Inspiring Campus Statue of African Graduates in front of Balme Libraray

Headed by Professor, Oh! Nii Sowah (a graduate of UC Irvine's MFA in Dance), the Department of Dance Studies consists of a BA, BFA, Diploma, and MFA degrees, serving as a model in all of Africa, regarding degree-granting in traditional indigenous dance and drumming, as well as courses in dance aesthetics and criticism, dance composition, choreography, labonotation, Theatre Management, and Dance Ritual and Arts. I am teaching a graduate course in Dance Ethnology to the MFA graduate students, and Dance History to the Diploma II students. These latter students will be qualified to go on to teach traditional Ghanaian dance and music in the secondary schools.



Graduate Students Peforming "Bawa" Dance at the opening Convocation of the Fall 2008 Semester

I have turned the Dance History course into one exclusively on the history of African American Dance, a course I currently teach at UC Davis, known as AAS 15 - The History of Black Dance. It is a unique opportunity to teach young Ghanaian students, who are a part of the worldwide Hip Hop Generation and influenced by African American pop culture, the realities of how dance and music sustained African Americans during various historical periods, including, slavery, the minstrel and vaudeville stages, early attempts at creative dance, today's concert black dance, and contemporary black social dance. It is a unique opportunity to add historical substance to an often-superficially adoption of "cool" American popular dance and music. I will be sharing more details of this experience on this blog.



W.E.B. Du Bois Road on campus, with a Hip-Hop Event posted

All dance students have practical courses in the various traditional dances of the Ghana and the theory courses that give them a thorough background in Dance as an academic discipline. There is lots of time for spontaneous happenings, and drumming can be heard throughout the grounds. I'm in my element!!




Dance Class in the Deaprtment of Dance Studies



Nii Yartey & Me
Nii Yartey is a Lecturer in the deaprtment, and a Founding Member of the Ghana Dance Ensemble. He was at the university when I was here 32 years ago. Nii is the former Artistic Director of the National Dance Company of the National Theatre, and the current Artistic Director of the Noyam African Dance Institute in Ghana. He has taught for several dance departments in the US, and focuses artistically on the development a contemporary African choreography, based in traditional dance. I hope to work with his company while I'm here in Ghana.

The Slave Castle Experience

I stand at the entrance to Elmina Castle, one the oldest European castles, originally built as a trading post by the Portuguese, but destined to hold human cargo and do business in the most lucrative trade of all, human beings---the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Elmina is a small town that is swarming with tourists to see the castle that was originally called St. George of the Mines, because of the gold mines all along what the Europeans called the Cold Coast, now modern Ghana.
It is a sobering experience to venture across this portal and to be taken back in time by the continuing spiritual vibrations lingering within the walls of this and the neighboring Cape Coast Castle (together known as the Twin Castles). When Gene and I went into the dungeons and holding cells, and the walking corridors, I chanted and prayed for the tortured souls who passed this way long ago, and who became the ancestors of Africans in the Americas. I wore ceremonial white to commemorate the ancestral spirits that must be acknowledged and given homage. Elmina, more than Cape Coast, was overly commercialized with African youth swarming around the tourists, including us, selling jewelry and seashells. Upon exiting the Elmina Castle, one young enterprising Fante boy gave Gene a small conch shell, reading “To my American Father, Gene.” The youth have really learned their hustle around the slave castle tourism, connecting little emotionally to the horrifying history that looms over their town. Yet, this kind of pilgrimage is very necessary for most African Americans.

As I walked through into the Castle, I passed some Ghanaian sisters dressed in traditional cloth, and one of them called me “Obruni” (white), as she exited the castle. My light brown skin meant “white” to her, even with my braids and traditionally made Yoruba wrap and top. This is the reality of the “one drop” rule: in America one drop of black blood, means you “black,” but here in Africa, one drop of European blood, often means you are “white.” However, I challenged her, yelling back that I was black American, and that my grandmother was her color. She basically apologized, saying, “Yes, you are an American black, you are my sister.” African folk are educable about who we are as Diasporans and our connection to them. This incident was a perfect metaphor for the realities of time and space that both created and distanced the branches of the black world from each other. That this incident would take place at the entrance to one of the oldest slave castles of West African was prophetic.



Tourists in the Courtyard of Elmina Castle




Gene Standing in the Male Dungeon---African Men were piled in this room naked, waiting to be taken through The Door of No Return.



Cape Coast Castle



The Door of No Return---Yet we come back now, different---yet redeeming our Ancestors

Gene's Birthday Dinner

We celebrated Gene's Birthday on August 21st in Ghana at the Labadi Beach Hotel. I treated him to a high quality dinner with beautiful surroundings. We hired a taxi-driver for the evening, a luxury that one can afford here that is so deserving of an individual like Gene (as he has directed me to write---smile).

With Sarpei in Ghana

This photo was taken at a U.S. Embassy event at the home of the Cultural Affairs Officer of the U.S. Embassy in Ghana. Sarpei Nunoo is the Cultural Affairs Specialist who has truly helped us make our adjustments to Ghana. He is a wonderful, efficient, and helpful person.

Harriet & Kweku in Akwemu

Harriet & Kweku having been living in Ghana for seven years, building their homestead on several acres of land in the Akwemu area in the Central Region of Ghana. They invited us for a weekend and introduced us to Volta Lake region that you see in the photos of the last post. They are soon to open their bed & breakfast and Black Lion internet cafe on their property in that region. It was a 2 1/2 hour tro-tro ride to get there, a truly local experience.

Images of Gene & Halifu in Ghana

Canoeing on Lake Volta----We've known rivers...


Lake Volta is one of the largest manmade lakes in the world, created by the Volta Dam that is the main source of electrical power for Ghana. We are standing near the Volta Hotel overlooking the Lake.

Akwaaba---Welcome to Ghana!

Well, we’re here folks. We’ve been in Ghana for three weeks now. I have not been able to post any experiences until now, because I committed the cardinal sin and left my computer power cord at home. But thanks to my trusty friend Susheel and FedEx, I now have a new one, and able to continue with plans to share my trip via this blog site. We have had all of the good, the bad, and the ugly/beautiful since we arrived (beautiful, confident African people everywhere, water shortages in our campus apartment, wonderful, eager students, and lots of beggars on the streets---everything).

The ancestors seem to send us a big welcome greeting the first Sunday we were here by giving us a private performance of Ghanaian and Senegalese dance and music through the Afrique Dance Theatre, directed by Joss of the W.E.B. DuBois Centre in Accra. Going to pay homage to the great Pan Africanist himself, W.E. B. Dubois, the first Friday we were here, we had a humbling experience seeing the last house he lived in, his library with original copies of The Souls of Black Folk and Darkwater, as well as old photos of DuBois, is wife Shirley, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana who had invited him to live in his country. But the most reverent part of the trip was to go inside the next-door mausoleum where he is buried. One truly felt his presence, and that Ghana had provided his last resting place, when the U.S. had treated him so poorly in his latter years.

While visiting the center, Gene and I met Joss of the Afrique Dance Theatre, and he invited us to a performance that he promised to convene just for us. What an honor of an invitation! And it actually happened. Gene and I arrived at 2:30 PM for a 3:00 PM performance that turned out to be the real deal: an exquisite performance of Ghanaian dance—Ewe and Dagomba dances---as well as dances that they had learned from Senegal. And it was all for us! There were no other guests in attendance. Joss also interwove his original poetry on the theme of Atlantic slave trade and what happened to Africans in the diaspora, all to a beautiful sensitively play flute.

This is what I mean about the sign from the ancestors, saying welcome (akwaba). Of course, they would love us to try to bring the troupe to the U.S. But there was no hard sales pitch, and we ended the afternoon with smiles and genuine hugs! Gene immediately got a dose of genuine African hospitality, and we felt welcomed by Mother Africa. Notice my smile in the picture when I danced the Bamaya dance from Northern Ghana (which I had studied some 32 years ago when I was last here). The dancers asked me how long I had been dancing, and I said, “longer than you’ve been alive.” And one said that I looked about 18 years old when I was dancing. You know that made me feel ecstatic.

We are now three days before leaving for Ghana. The going away party on July 26 was fabulous with my familly and friends as far away as Los Angeles coming to celebrate with me. I shared my video from Malawi, where I worked with the national dance company and visited villages of the Yao and Chewa peoples; and Gene shared his thoughts about going to Africa for the first time, and his interests in theater there.

This photo was taken at the ending performance of the Annual Katherine Dunham Technique Seminar held at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, not to far from East St. Louis, during the week of July 27. Thank you Susheel for this photo that shows the spirit of Miss Dunham coming through Dr. Albirda Rose (center), the Director of Dunham Certification. We the Certified Teachers were taking a bow at the end of the performance, and the spirit got Albirda. She danced to the drum, and we had her back. This shows the spirit of Africa that lives in the U.S. through African Americans and those in tune with the drum. I had to go the seminar for Miss Dunham, even though I had so much to do to get out of here. Now the last minute preparations are under way.

Before Leaving for Ghana

Even though Gene & I look like we're going to the arctic, we are about to leave for the tropics of West Africa---Ghana, the first independent country on the continent. This photo was taken in Winter 2007 in New York at the African Burial Ground Memorial for the 17th century African bones that were discovered underground in downtown New York. This memorial is a testatement to the African presence in the early Americas. We stand in front of the Gyname symbol of the Akan people of contemporary Ghana that graces this beautiful memorial to our ancestors.

Three weeks before we leave, and before the going away party, we reflect on all that this trip will mean: for me, 32 years since I was in Ghana, and for Gene, his first time to the motherland.