Greetings! Aidan here with another installation of the blog for this groovin journey through Ghana!
Today we dove deep into the story of the song and dance of Agbekor also called Atsiagbekor. This was the first song all of us learned to play when we had our intro class at St. Mikes so it was very special to start our first day of lessons here in Ghana with Agbekor. My initial understanding of Agbekor was that it was merely a war dance, showing the opposing side how menacing we were. I had thought it was used in times of war to intimidate the people being battled-however today I learned that it is much different than that. 

The song and dance is really a symbol of what it is like on the battle field for those fighting. It is played for people back home to allow them to see the perspective and re-tell the story of what happens. Agbekor stands for “Clean Life” and can serve as a reminder that we live a Bit clean life outside of war. There is one lead drum that tells the dancers what to do and there are four response drums with a specific rhythm or phrase that carries a message indicating what the dance is all about. For example the drum whose pattern is Gi Toto Gi Gi translates to “Here is the battlefield” and each drum after has its own phrase. The four drums and their phrases put together create the message-(I am adding some more words here to clairfy)-“Here is the battlefield, I love it and I want to sleep here! Let us not forget about our home though, we must not sleep here- let us go back and teach those at home about the battlefield.” 
This may not seem like much in writitng but it really is incredible to me because these drums are really speaking to us. They have a language which we can translate to receive a message! Not only is it an epic rhythm but there are messages layered within. I’ve now been playing Agbekor for four years, I have played each response drum countless times and never knew the message associated with the each drum. There is so much intention put into every nuance of this music and it was amazing today to peel back a few layers of Agbekor to gain a deeper understanding of the back story and a literal translation of what we are saying as we play the drums. More to come!