My mother’s back was, I believe, the first place where I consciously absorbed music, as I do remember – till today – many of the beautiful songs that she sang when I was strapped to her back while we went about fulfilling the errands of the day.
I fear I’m maybe exposing myself to be horribly unscientific in saying this, because I have read, on good authority, that the rhythms that fill the body of a pregnant woman are transmitted to her unborn foetus and influences the development of the infant when it is born.
Certainly, anyone who has watched certain ethnic groups and the way their particular dances and songs are reproduced by their young children, would agree that the kids seemed to have “been born with it”!! But how do the scientists know, though?
Have their techniques reached such an advanced stage that they are able to ask – and obtain answers from – foetuses what is influencing them, as they absorb the succor of life from their mothers’ wombs? I am on dangerous ground here, (I repeat) for some of the things scientists can do these days, fill me with fear and trepidation.
I mean, who could have forecast, a mere 50 years ago, that scientists would Be able to create computer software, called “Artificial Intelligence,” that could write this article for me, if I were so lazy as to tempt my beloved readers to accept a computer’s outpourings as my own best output?
(Hahaha! How do you know whose words you are reading now? Apparently, certain versions of AI can mock AI, if asked to!) We shall be in a mess in another five years, what? Who can tell, then, that an ardent love letter from an “admirer”, containing such Romeo-type encomiums as “superfluous beauty” has not been cribbed from Mr W. Shakespeare’s work, by AI? Well, to reassure you that this piece is my own work, I can say this: “My mother’s back was,
I believe, the first place where I consciously acquired music, as I do remember many of the songs that she sang, when I was strapped to her back with her cloth while going on errands with her, of a morning or evening.
But I fear that maybe I am being horribly unscientific here, because I have read, on good authority, that the rhythms that a pregnant woman generates in her body, are transmitted to her unborn foetus! Ah? Yes! But how do the scientists know? Are they able to communicate directly with a foetus to ask it whether its mother’s music is being fed to it, along with the hormones and amino-acids? I think it would be wise for me to leave that question, don’t you?
Anyway, I was just going to be musical, because when I was about three years old, my father’s nephews went to Accra and became apprentices to a musical group which specialised in two popular musical genres known as ADAHA and KONKOMA.
They practised playing, all day, in our yard, and in the evening, they went to the chief’s palace and played there, charging adults three-pence (the equivalent of three pesewas, if you remember what a pesewa is or – was!) How can a coin die with lack of use? I ask you!
The Adaha and Konkoma songs were brilliant: they satirised our society of the time. One song narrated how some people reacted to a fearful earthquake that occurred in the late 1930s or early 1940s: QUOTE: Da no a asaase woso, Papa scre a wagya ne mmma…Mama scre a wagya ne mma!(On the day of the earthquake, Father ran away and left his children behind! … Mama too got up and left her children).
So people laughed as gleefully as they danced robustly. They had great fun.
Another song showed how “bastardised” the group’s output was, for the lyrics mixed Twi and Ga without a by your leave:
QUOTE: Meekc Kaneshie maba Abongo lorry agbe me-e–e Roman Sofo ei, Scle ha me ooo me ngbo-o-o-o! (I was just going to Kaneshie and come, when a military truck knocked me down! Catholic Priest, please say prayers for me, For I am about to die!) You see why we oldies remember our past with such fondness? This was at Asiakwa, 70 miles from Accra, entertaining itself with its own resources and not waiting for any pre-packaged radio/or TV show! Yeah– those were the days. Indeed.
BY CAMERON DUODU
The post Is music born with us or acquired in real life? appeared first on Ghanaian Times.
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