Ghana's Concert Party Theatre

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253108985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Ghana's Concert Party Theatre Catherine M. Cole An engaging history of Ghana's enormously popular concert party theatre. "... succeeds in conveying the exciting and fascinating character of the concert party genre, as well as showing clearly how this material can be used to rethink a number of contemporary theoretical themes and issues." -- Karin Barber Under colonial rule, the first concert party practitioners brought their comic variety shows to audiences throughout what was then the British Gold Coast colony. As social and political circumstances shifted through the colonial period and early years of Ghanaian independence, concert party actors demonstrated a remarkable responsiveness to changing social roles and volatile political situations as they continued to stage this extremely popular form of entertainment. Drawing on her participation as an actress in concert party performances, oral histories of performers, and archival research, Catherine M. Cole traces the history and development of Ghana's concert party tradition. She shows how concert parties combined an eclectic array of cultural influences, adapting characters and songs from American movies, popular British ballads, and local story-telling traditions into a spirited blend of comedy and social commentary. Actors in blackface, inspired by Al Jolson, and female impersonators dramatized the aspirations, experiences, and frustrations of their audiences. Cole's extensive and lively look into Ghana's concert party provides a unique perspective on the complex experience of British colonial domination, the postcolonial quest for national identity, and the dynamic processes of cultural appropriation and social change. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of African performance, theatre, and popular culture. Catherine M. Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous articles on African theatre and has collaborated with filmmaker Kwame Braun on "passing girl; riverside," a video essay on the ethical dilemmas of visual anthropology. June 2001 256 pages, 26 b&w photos, 3 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, notes, bibl., index cloth 0-253-33845-X $49.95 L / £38.00 paper 0-253-21436-X $19.95 s / £15.50

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253108985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ghana's Concert Party Theatre Catherine M. Cole An engaging history of Ghana's enormously popular concert party theatre. "... succeeds in conveying the exciting and fascinating character of the concert party genre, as well as showing clearly how this material can be used to rethink a number of contemporary theoretical themes and issues." -- Karin Barber Under colonial rule, the first concert party practitioners brought their comic variety shows to audiences throughout what was then the British Gold Coast colony. As social and political circumstances shifted through the colonial period and early years of Ghanaian independence, concert party actors demonstrated a remarkable responsiveness to changing social roles and volatile political situations as they continued to stage this extremely popular form of entertainment. Drawing on her participation as an actress in concert party performances, oral histories of performers, and archival research, Catherine M. Cole traces the history and development of Ghana's concert party tradition. She shows how concert parties combined an eclectic array of cultural influences, adapting characters and songs from American movies, popular British ballads, and local story-telling traditions into a spirited blend of comedy and social commentary. Actors in blackface, inspired by Al Jolson, and female impersonators dramatized the aspirations, experiences, and frustrations of their audiences. Cole's extensive and lively look into Ghana's concert party provides a unique perspective on the complex experience of British colonial domination, the postcolonial quest for national identity, and the dynamic processes of cultural appropriation and social change. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of African performance, theatre, and popular culture. Catherine M. Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous articles on African theatre and has collaborated with filmmaker Kwame Braun on "passing girl; riverside," a video essay on the ethical dilemmas of visual anthropology. June 2001 256 pages, 26 b&w photos, 3 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, notes, bibl., index cloth 0-253-33845-X $49.95 L / £38.00 paper 0-253-21436-X $19.95 s / £15.50

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre

Ghana's Concert Party Theatre PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214362
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
A history of Ghana's enormously popular concert party theatre.

West African Popular Theatre

West African Popular Theatre PDF Author: Karin Barber
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253028078
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
" . . . a ground-breaking contribution to the field of African literature . . . " —Research in African Literatures "Anyone with the slightest interest in West African cultures, performance or theatre should immediately rush out and buy this book." —Leeds African Studies Bulletin "A seminal contribution to the fields of performance studies, cultural studies, and popular culture. " —Margaret Drewal "A fine book. The play texts are treasures." —Richard Bauman African popular culture is an arena where the tensions and transformations of colonial and post-colonial society are played out, offering us a glimpse of the view from below in Africa. This book offers a comparative overview of the history, social context, and style of three major West African popular theatre genres: the concert party of Ghana, the concert party of Togo, and the traveling popular theatre of western Nigeria.

Spiders of the Market

Spiders of the Market PDF Author: David Afriyie Donkor
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253021545
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
An analysis of the trickster spider character from West African folklore, performance, and Ghanian politics. The Ghanaian trickster-spider, Ananse, is a deceptive figure full of comic delight who blurs the lines of class, politics, and morality. David Afriyie Donkor identifies social performance as a way to understand trickster behavior within the shifting process of political legitimization in Ghana, revealing stories that exploit the social ideologies of economic neoliberalism and political democratization. At the level of policy, neither ideology was completely successful, but Donkor shows how the Ghanaian government was crafty in selling the ideas to the people, adapting trickster-rooted performance techniques to reinterpret citizenship and the common good. Trickster performers rebelled against this takeover of their art and sought new ways to out trick the tricksters. “A precise and inviting appeal to political economy, performance, and the enduring relevance of the cultural and archetypal trickster.” —D. Soyini Madison, Northwestern University “David Afriyie Donkor’s experience as a theatre artist and director supports the rich political economic component that frames this analysis of performance and performance traditions for broad audiences.” —Jesse Weaver Shipley, Haverford College “By sharing the performance experiences, rather than texts, Donkor accomplishes the challenging task of introducing rare theatre performances in a particularly compelling context for a Western readership in a global age.” —Theatre Survey “Overall, as a Ghanaian actor and director as well as a scholar, Donkor’s cultural insider analyses of ananse theatre within the space of political economy make important contributions and interventions to the discourses on performance (theory) and neoliberalism and their interaction in Ghana and Africa.” —African Studies Review

Living the Hiplife

Living the Hiplife PDF Author: Jesse Weaver Shipley
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822395908
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Hiplife is a popular music genre in Ghana that mixes hip-hop beatmaking and rap with highlife music, proverbial speech, and Akan storytelling. In the 1990s, young Ghanaian musicians were drawn to hip-hop's dual ethos of black masculine empowerment and capitalist success. They made their underground sound mainstream by infusing carefree bravado with traditional respectful oratory and familiar Ghanaian rhythms. Living the Hiplife is an ethnographic account of hiplife in Ghana and its diaspora, based on extensive research among artists and audiences in Accra, Ghana's capital city; New York; and London. Jesse Weaver Shipley examines the production, consumption, and circulation of hiplife music, culture, and fashion in relation to broader cultural and political shifts in neoliberalizing Ghana. Shipley shows how young hiplife musicians produce and transform different kinds of value—aesthetic, moral, linguistic, economic—using music to gain social status and wealth, and to become respectable public figures. In this entrepreneurial age, youth use celebrity as a form of currency, aligning music-making with self-making and aesthetic pleasure with business success. Registering both the globalization of electronic, digital media and the changing nature of African diasporic relations to Africa, hiplife links collective Pan-Africanist visions with individualist aspiration, highlighting the potential and limits of social mobility for African youth. The author has also directed a film entitled Living the Hiplife and with two DJs produced mixtapes that feature the music in the book available for free download.

FonTomFrom

FonTomFrom PDF Author: Kofi Anyidoho
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042012738
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Includes articles, annotated filmography, interviews, creative writing, and book reviews.

Drama and Theatre in Nigeria

Drama and Theatre in Nigeria PDF Author: Yemi Ogunbiyi
Publisher: Lagos : Nigeria Magazine
ISBN:
Category : Nigerian drama
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description


Performing South Africa's Truth Commission

Performing South Africa's Truth Commission PDF Author: Catherine M. Cole
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353904
Category : Apartheid
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions helped to end apartheid by providing a forum that exposed the nation's gross human rights abuses, provided amnesty and reparations to selected individuals, and eventually promoted national unity and healing. The success or failure of these commissions has been widely debated, but this is the first book to view the truth commission as public ritual and national theater. Catherine M. Cole brings an ethnographer's ear, a stage director's eye, and a historian's judgment to understand the vocabulary and practices of theater that mattered to the South Africans who participated in the reconciliation process. Cole looks closely at the record of the commissions, and sees their tortured expressiveness as a medium for performing evidence and truth to legitimize a new South Africa.

The Generation of Plays

The Generation of Plays PDF Author: Karin Barber
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253216175
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Since the 1980s, Yoruba popular theatre has virtually disappeared due to radio, TV and other mass media in Nigeria. This is the personal account of a theatre worker on tour with the Oyin Adejobi Company. Drawing on archives, interviews and transcribed plays, she describes a successful Yoruba drama.

Wicked

Wicked PDF Author: Winnie Holzman
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema
ISBN: 9781423492764
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Each title in The Applause Libretto Library Series presents a Broadway musical with fresh packaging in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.