Tonight, the contestants on CBS’ The Amazing Race will be getting a taste of Ghana. But being an IBIT reader, you will have had your taste already.
One of the realities of the global slave trade is that it has left us, its descendants, feeling largely cut off from our heritage, our history, our ancestry. We know we have Africa in our DNA, but we are not really African and never have been.
One of the things you realize when you look at Ghana, however, is that just maybe, that disconnect isn’t as total as it often seems. There have been connections made, exchanges back and forth across the Atlantic, that turn up in music and in food.
Think of the video above as both a visual and audio taste of the country, starting with the capital, Accra.
That audio sense is important, because Ghana has gifted the world with a lot of music. Music is also where you see the cinnection between between Africa and black America.
What you’re hearing in this first YouTube video is an example of “highlife,” a dance music style from Ghana and Nigeria that goes back to the 1930s and has been evolving ever since.
But Ghana is known for another, more modern music style, a blend of West African highlife and American hip-hop, with a little reggae thrown in for some extra Caribbean “flava.”
The result is what Ghanaians call “hiplife,” and it has a growing legion of listeners on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in and around the Caribbean.
Here’s other video sample, courtesy of YouTube:
There’s a third musical form that’s very popular in Ghana, one whose roots are found in America — black gospel music. The church songs of hope and praise that originated with the first descendants of African slaves have found their way “back home,” and Ghanaians are putting their own interpretations on them:
(In reality, gospel as almost as universal in popularity around the world as jazz ad hip-hop. Gospel concerts in Paris, for instance, are commonplace.)
This page on the Ghanaweb site offers loads of videos featuring examples of all three musical styles — highlife, hiplife and gospel.
This abundance of music makes for a bangin’ nightlife scene in Ghana, especially in the Osu district in Accra, where Oxford Street is said to be “on” 24/7..
Then again, you can also find an Irish pub in Osu (other than perhaps North Korea, is there any place on the plant where you can’t find an Irish pub? Just sayin’…).
Then there’s the food. Check out Jollof rice, a dish common to West Africa, and see if it doesn’t make you think of chicken jambalaya or any number of other Creole dishes.
If you sprang from a culture that enjoys arroz con pollo, it just might resonate with you, too.
Another common element in Ghanaian cuisine, flavorful stews featuring chicken, seafood and okra.
Gumbo, anyone?
As for drink, you can find a lot of wine in Ghana. Just not necesssarily wine made from grapes.
Palm wine. Millet wine. Maize wine. Ginger wine. T/he first two are alcoholic, the other two aren’t.
Especially watch out for akpeteshie, a Ghanaian homebrew hard liquor whose alcohol content by colume may reach as high as 50 percent.
A little too much of this stuff and you may not need the plane to fly home.
Add it all together, and you have a country with a great many flavors to it, a land linked by language, history and culture to our own. A place worth getting to know.
Or at least, getting a taste.