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Abstract
One of the prevailing concerns of African urban history has been the reframing of African peoples as active shapers rather than passive inhabitants of twentieth-century cities. Yet this effort to accord African urbanites agency – effectively to look past the actions and intentions of the state – has been hampered by an enduring assumption that “real” urban space is predominantly manifest through material infrastructure. Focusing on written descriptions of early colonial Sekondi, the British West African colony of the Gold Coast’s first railway and port city, published in an African-owned newspaper (the Gold Coast Leader), this essay examines how the city’s “middle class” conceptualized and constituted city space from c. 1900 to 1920. Treating such writings as products of, in Henri Lefebvre’s phrasing, “rhythmanalysts” – figures uniquely positioned to “listen” to the city and recognize its multiple cadences – it argues middle-class residents viewed colonial urban space as a “lived” dimension that was inherently dynamic, fluid, and beyond the state’s control. More specifically, it gives serious analytical purchase to their repeated insistence that music and musical events were effective ways to recompose city space and encourages scholars of urban Africa to regard music-making as a mode of city-making worthy of further attention.
Acknowledgments
This essay was made possible by the support of the Archie Fund for the Arts and Humanities at Wake Forest University and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For their assistance, comments, and suggestions, I would also like to thank Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Ato Quayson, the staff at Public Records and Archival Administration Department in Accra and Sekondi, and my colleagues in the Department of History at Wake Forest University.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 For an overview of the history and contents of the Gold Coast Leader (hereafter, Leader), see Jones-Quartey (Citation1974, 17, 20–21); Gadzekpo (Citation2001).
2 The Leader solicited columns from people willing to compose “intelligent” pieces about their immediate surroundings and published these correspondents’ writings under the veil of anonymity. For more on this practice, and the many possibilities anonymity engendered, see Newell (Citation2013).
3 Interview with Nana Kobina Nketsia V, May 13, 2018; “Palaver Book, 1900–1903,” Public Records and Archival Administration Department (PRAAD)-Accra, ADM 11/1/1772/160; “Stool of English Seccondee,” PRAAD-Sekondi, WRG 24/1/507; Report on Public Works, “Gold Coast Colony, Departmental Reports for the Year 1901,” PRAAD-Accra, ADM 5/1/56.
4 “Gold Coast Despatches, 1918 Volume 2,” National Archives, Kew (TNA), CO 96/588/79; “District Record Book, Sekondi District, 1914–1927,” PRAAD-Accra, ADM 26/5/30.
5 “Sekondi Land and Leases,” PRAAD-Sekondi, WRG 24/1/304/5; Chada (Citation1981, 104–110).
6 Over time, ball dances became markers of distinction affiliated with those of socioeconomic status. By 1930, many urbanities used the expression כkככ ball (“he attended a ball dance”) to single out those who attended them as people of renown and sophistication (Plageman Citation2013a, 90).
7 During the 1930s, the cities of Accra, Cape Coast, and Sekondi featured more than fifty of these social clubs (Hagan Citation1969; Newell Citation2002, 33–35).
8 Maringa was a form of palmwine music that originated in Sierra Leone. Ashiko was a form of popular music that featured the guitar, the accordion, small percussive instruments, singing, and vibrant dancing. Although it likely originated in Liberia or Sierra Leone, it became extremely popular in Gold Coast towns, where it prompted outcry from European missionaries and colonial officials alike. By 1910, ashiko had been criminalized in Accra and other towns (Plageman Citation2013a, 31–32, 49–50, 57–61).
9 Diaries of John Maxwell, Oxford, Bodleian Library, GB 0162 MSS.Afr.s.2135.
10 Available population figures for early colonial Sekondi do not indicate who, exactly, counted as “European” and provide slightly different numbers ranging from 120 to 153 residents (Bruce Citation1911, 303; Horn and Mayer Citation1913, 12).
11 One correspondent proclaimed middle-class residents were “ready with open arms” to receive those “from over the sea” until they began to “assume superiority.” Events in the Metropole made this assumption of superiority difficult, if not temporarily impossible (Leader, October 3, 1908).