Nana Yaw Yeboah

The continent of Africa is so rich in culture and tradition.  When it comes to music, the history of creating sound using what we had runs deep.  Musical instruments carved using our hands are what elders and those before us used to create the music the people of Africa danced to.  If we were to keep our traditions we would not be where we are today. We are here today because as a continent, we have thrown almost all of our traditions away. If you think about it tradition has three seats: Communality, Cooperation and Collectivity.

And this engenders the 3 Rs; Relationships, Respect and most importantly, Responsibility.

How are we related? Where is the respect we give to each other? And what is our responsibility towards each other? It’s a major problem that we don’t know what we are and who we are and we are paying the price for it. Most of us have thrown culture to the wind. We do not understand that once we destroy our culture we are gone.  Our music is slowly dying and artists struggle to keep it alive.  Many like this man choose to use instruments that promote our culture, spirit and tradition.  He inspired me to create a short film touching on the very issue of music and tradition in Africa.

I have heard the word tradition, what is tradition?  I define tradition as the very best of any people, which is used to power the people into the future.

In Western society, you see the culture, you see the traditions and you see how it powers them. Unfortunately for us (Africans), we’ve been thought or made to see our own traditions as evil and outdated. So the best that should really power us into tomorrow, we ignore. All education is indoctrination. The best education is the indoctrinations that makes you aware of the indoctrination.