Vu Gbe - Drum Language | ||
| Among the Ewe of Southern Ghana, a legendary metaphor, 'Ela kuku dea be vu la gbagbe', which means 'A dead animal screams louder than a live one,' is commonly used to explain the human experience that inspired the origin of the drum a super voice surrogate was built out of the skin of a dead animal that could deliver the message louder and clearer. -- C.K. Ladzekpo | ||
This process corresponds to J.H. Kwabena Nketia's
"speech mode of drumming"3.
The listener who understands the base language identifies key
features in the drumming, transmutes them into their base language
signifiers, and comprehends these as speech.
Drum language is a speech surrogate form practiced by the Asante
and Ewe peoples of Ghana. Composers often use drum language to
represent proverbs. In Ghanaian society, proverbs are the form
in which deep philosophy is represented in everyday language for
the on-going transmission of world-view. Over time, the Ghanaians
have developed a rich medium in the form of music, movement and
design, precisely integrated with each other to represent encodings
of proverbial statements. Proverbial symbols can be found in
the traditional arts: in the patterns
woven into kente cloth, on the stools people sit on, in the interlocking
rhythms of drummers and in the movements dancers make. The message
of each proverb becomes reinforced through its encoding and presence
in multiple forms. The forms converge in traditional multimedia
when participatory rituals are enacted.
Recontextualizing semiotic encodings became a mainstay of Coded
Messages: CHAINS. For our costumes we went to Makola market in
Accra to choose cloth with appropriate meaning. The pattern "Me
nsu bio" was chosen for a number of reasons. First, was
the image, which reminded us of interlocking links of chain.
Second, "Me nsu bio" is translated from Twi to mean
"I will weep no more," symbolizing a transformation
from despair to hope.
Regarding vu gbe, it is important to realize that not all
Ewe people understand this drum language. Few other Ghanaians
can understand the base language, Ewe, so they are excluded from
comprehending Ewe drum language. Often it is just the drummers
who understand what is being played. Sometimes they share internal
jokes, playing catchy phrases for each other's amusement. Again
the questions: "Who is speaking? Who is being spoken to?"
are raised. When we brought the performance to Anyako, which
is an Ewe village, Francis played drum language
and then spoke the meaning. As you can see from the video clip,
the audience reveled in the secret joke he shared with them.
Commercials -- Nante |
The second stream of semiotic encodings came from advertisements in American magazines. After looking over the ads we began to notice similarities:
In these ads we meet the center. The pictures represent a fabricated
world of prosperity, health, and contentment with a code of signs.
The realities of the associated degradation are invisible. Everything
contrary to this illusion disappears. This absence forms a crucial
clue to the Coded Messages. The ads suggest that if you don't
look or live like the people in the ads you don't exist. Furthermore,
owning the products is a prerequisite for this existence.
A group of the performers moved among postures from the advertisements
and chanted the matching slogans upon command.
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