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The Noise Silence Makes : Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars
The Noise Silence Makes : Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars
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Author(s): Goshadze, Mariam
ISBN No.: 9781478028192
Pages: 216
Year: 202505
Format: Trade Cloth (Hard Cover)
Price: $ 147.83
Dispatch delay: Dispatched between 7 to 15 days
Status: Available (Forthcoming)

"The Noise Silence Makes analyzes the annual, city-wide ban on noise-making required by the Ga indigenous community in Accra in preparation for the Gas primary religious festival. The centuries-old "ban on drumming" tradition became a point of conflict in the 1990s when newly popular Pentecostal/Charismatic churches refused to subdue their loud worship during the ritual period. The states response to the "Drum Wars" sheds light on the backstage reality of Ghanaian secularity, wherein the state unofficially collaborates with indigenous religious authorities to control sound in Accra, yet constitutionally and institutionally grants superior status to Christianity and Islam as the countrys "religions". Noise regulation technologies used to control the Ga in the colonial context mutated into a mechanism that they now deploy to counter Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, revealing the vitality of indigenous religion in urban West Africa. The secular Ghanaian state has found in favor of indigenous religion, ironically by denying "religious" status to indigenous rituals, while "religious" communities, like Pentecostal and evangelical Christians, must defer to the sonic demands of Ga communities. Contrary to the assumption that culturalization of indigenous religions will lead to their marginalization, Mariam Goshadze shows that the culture label lets the Ga remain active in the secular public sphere and is largely responsible for their continuous leverage. The author shows that sound, or its absence, is a powerful means of structuring inter-communal relations. This work offers an important corrective to the implicit hierarchies of religions still present in the study of religion"--.



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Browse Subject Headings