The idea of truck drivers in Ghana as musical undertakers is not an everyday idea. On March 5, ethnomusicologist Steven Feld will try to give his audience a better understanding of just that.
Feld, a professor of anthropology and music at the University of New Mexico, will screen his film “A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie,” the third film in his recently completed trilogy called “Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra, Ghana,” at Jan Popper Theater in Schoenberg Hall. He will also hold a discussion afterward in conjunction with UCLA’s ethnomusicology department.
Kathleen Hood, the publications director and events coordinator for the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, said she is very excited about the screening and the knowledge Feld will be able to share with students here.
“The trend has been toward musicology becoming ever more interdisciplinary. Previously musicologists would only talk about Western European classical music, but now they’re talking about African jazz, even,” Hood said. “Musicologists are now open to exploring more topics.”
“A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie” is an example of this trend.
Por Por is a style of music invented 60 years ago by a union of truck and bus drivers from the township of La in Accra, Ghana that is performed for funerals of union drivers by their fellow union members over the course of several days. It is played with antique circular squeeze bulb horns, bells, percussion and singing. The drivers union sends its members off with Por Por music because it symbolizes not just their occupation but also their way of life.
Feld began his work with the La Drivers Union Por Por Group in 2005.
“I was in Ghana playing in a band, and I was introduced to a photographer who came to take our picture, and the photographer liked the music and he said to me, “˜Well, I’d like to introduce you to some people I know, I think you’d be interested in them.’ And it turns out this photographer was the son of a famous driver who had been involved in this music since the ’50s,” Feld said.
When one of the drivers union longtime members, Nelson Ashirifie Mensah, passed away in March 2008, his family and the drivers union asked Feld to film his funeral and the other events associated with it. “A Por Por Funeral for Ashirifie” is the first time an outsider, Feld, has ever been invited to document this rich part of Ghanaian culture.
In the film, Feld shows the drivers union how much they have in common with New Orleans jazz funerals. Not only do they share their celebratory nature, but they have very similar types of ensembles.
“The film ends with the group leader taking a look at a book of pictures of New Orleans jazz bands and sharing his amazement at how much his culture has in common with theirs,” Feld said.
First-year world arts and cultures student Madelyn Ross is similarly interested in comparing Por Por music with what she heard after spending the summer of 2007 in Tanzania.
“I saw a wide variety of musical practices in which musicians used local resources to produce unique sounds and compositions. I remember specifically a group of children who made some of the most magnificent and original music by rubbing the soles of their shoes against tree branches. I am excited to see this film in order to compare Ghanaian musical culture to that of Tanzania,” Ross said.
Organizers of the event said that students such as Ross will learn about not just music but culture as well.
“Those who attend the screening will gain a whole new perspective on funerals, which in the West are somber events, but in Ghana are more festive than sad at times, more like celebrations,” Hood said.