T EBoW ANsah (uncle tommy)
The Minstrel and Griot
A minstrel passes no judgment. He has no cause and takes no blame. He sings and plays only to tell and divert. The beauty of his art lives in its moral and immoral rawness. He may show flourish if he is capable of any, but the tear or two that he may shed would be nothing but an artifact to buy a little belief from you.
Tumi is a minstrel and has many a time plucked his fingers through the sub layers of the Ghanaian musical tapestry to bring us often nearly forgotten but totally enjoyable nuggets. Once you crack them, they also render in stark vividness life as it was lived then, both in its charm and in its…awfulness.
That’s just what he does here with many of the selections on Palm Wine Music Redux. It tells the story of a place where many a man and the odd woman would go, but yet many others wouldn’t; for, certain folk, even in the tiny village, didn’t care to keep all company.
The place was often in the shade of the biggest tree. The patrons came as their own entertainers. They brought instruments, usually nothing more than their voices and a simple tongue guitar.
They bought and they drank; a little too much sometimes. Then they sang, clapped and played the myriad little woes that beset their lives. Very often a love lost; or the swindle of a partner who didn’t know to play fair; occasionally, a sadness-tinged last laugh of the vindicated. Call it their blues, if you will. It only pounds a little deeper home the cliché, that humans are the same wherever.
But even minstrels can crack. And when they do, they can ooze a little bit of their own humanity. That’s when Tumi’s own voice seeps in from under and betrays where his politics rests: on the side of Mother Nature. He laments what we have done and continue to do to the earth through the way we live. « Thank you for the birds that don’t sing », he sings.
If the name human fits, then listen; a little more carefully than you normally would. You will not loathe this messenger for taking a stand. You will love him.
I listened and I love him dearly. And I hardly even know him (wink).
Kobina Ansah