Drums in the Diaspora
Kofi Mensah
Drums in the Diaspora
Kofi MensahGH₵ 150
Priced by the author in GHS (Ghana). You pay the NGN equivalent at today’s rate.
About this book
Fourteen essays tracing a single rhythmic pattern from a village in the Volta Region to Havana, Salvador, New Orleans and back again. Part travelogue, part argument, wholly alive.
Sample
A rhythm is a form of memory that does not require literacy, permission, or a country. In Salvador da Bahia I watched a drummer teach a pattern he could not name to a boy who would carry it to Lisbon. The pattern was four hundred years old and had crossed an ocean in the bodies of people who owned nothing else. This chapter follows one such pattern — the one musicians in Accra call kpanlogo and musicians in Brooklyn call nothing at all — through the ports, prisons, churches…
The author
Kofi Mensah is a Ghanaian music journalist and essayist who has spent twenty years following African rhythm across four continents.
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 268
- Published
- 2023
- Chapters available
- 1