West African Warrior
Image Credits
Thomas Edward Bowdich
Music historians owe a great debt to the Englishman Thomas Edward
Bowdich. Sent to Africa to establish relations with the Ashanti
tribe in 1817, he was himself an amateur musician and his travel
account richly describes many aspects of West African music and
culture. He recorded African melodies in notation, described in
detail the instruments and practices he encountered, and even
painted several valuable watercolor scenes of African life. For
example, describing a festival in the Ashanti capitol city of
Kumasi in what is present-day Ghana, he wrote:
"Upwards of 5000 people, the greater part warriors, met us
with awful bursts of martial music, discordant only in its mixture;
for horns, drums, rattles, and gong-gongs were all exerted with
a zeal bordering on phrenzy...."
He was not prepared for the splendor and sophistication of the
Ashanti capitol, and was stunned by the sound as "a hundred
bands burst at once on our arrival...the horns flourished their
defiances, with the beating of innumerable drums and metal instruments,
and then yielded for a while to the soft breathings of their long
flutes, which were truly harmonious."
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