Akwaaba Thrills Fans

The Akwaaba Cultural Group last Thursday staged a brilliant live cultural performance in front of a large audience at the poolside of the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra. The group thrilled the audience with its own variations of traditional music and dance as well as contemporary dance pieces. The show dubbed, “Akwaaba Cultural Nite”, was organized by Family Tree Entertainment, managers of hiplife musician Obuor and gospel artiste Nobel Nketia. The group boasts of over 30 choreographed dance pieces that are accompanied by authentic African drum rhythms in their diverse repertoire. The main aim of the group is to promote and sustain African culture by presenting dance and music that illuminates the richness and diversity of African traditional values. In it efforts to develop a new style for Ghanaian music, the group performed seven different kinds of dance pieces to the audience who were predominantly foreigners. The group also did the Gome of the Gas, Suhum and Agborkor which are war dances from the Volta Region as well as Otofo, the puberty rite dance of the Dangmes. Another type of dance which the group created was Kadogbe which looked more like one from the Volta Region because of the costumes of the dancers and the rhythm of the drumming. The audience was so much captivated by the group’s performances that most of them were on their feet either dancing along or taking pictures of the action on stage. The Akwaaba group first performed the Kete and Adowa dances of the Ashantis. In these dances, they were neatly clad in colourful kente cloths as traditionally worn by the Ashantis on festive occasions.   There were also funny scenes on stage which kept the audience laughing. During the Kete dance, a seemingly drunk messenger with a gong-gong in hand drew laughter from the crowd as he staggered and frequently fell on stage. There was also a masked man in a scary costume whose gestures equally created humour during the Agborkor dance. Speaking to Beatwaves, Stephen Howard, a representative of Family Tree, said the event was organised to showcase the beauty of Ghanaian cultural dance and formally inaugurate the Akwaaba Cultural Group.  On his part, the leader of the group, David Adjei, aka Skido, told Beatwaves that Akwaaba had been in existence since 1998 as a free style dance group that backed hiplife and highlife artistes like Mzbel, Castro, Obuor, and Kofi Sammy among others. However, according to him, based on an advice from Obour, the group decided to shift from free style to strictly cultural dancing which they have stuck to since then. He said the group’s maiden performances were done in Togo where they entertained crowds in hotels and schools. The then 18-member group returned to Ghana and continued with their performances at hotels, schools, charity organizations and regularly at Alliance Francaise.  The group accompanied Obuor on his tour of all the regions of Ghana during the “Best of the Lifes” concerts with ace highlife musician A. B. Crentsil. They have also toured countries like Germany, US, UK, France and other African countries on the ticket of Family Tree.  “Ghanaians do not appreciate cultural music as much as the foreigners do. But we have stuck to this because we are committed to promoting and preserving our culture wherever we go,” said Skido.