West African women in music: an analysis of scholarship Women's participation in music in west Africa: a reflection on filedwork, self and understanding

Abstract

In June of 2006, as I packed to travel to Ghana to conduct two months of pre-dissertation exploratory research on women's music, I also packed a host of ideas about women's music in west Africa, having conducted extensive library research on the topic in the two years of graduate study I had completed just previous to my arrival in Ghana. I was hoping to find an interesting, fundable music tradition during my fieldwork that summer. I held the belief that women's music existed in west Africa as a category whose boundaries I could clearly define. I thought maybe I'd find the rare female drummer who had broken free from the taboos of gender roles in society. I wished for a group that might demonstrate a sense of female solidarity, developed through the creation of sound and movement. I sought a music tradition where women expressed themselves musically.