ABSTRACT
Concerts or concert parties are open-air popular theater events performed throughout rural and urban Ghana by traveling bands of actors and musicians. Concerts creatively fuse morality play, slapstick comedy, and popular band music; in the 1990s some attempted at to convert the audience to new forms of Christian faith. The plays, dance, music, and roadside paintings (that advertise the performance) have a hybrid message that reflects rapid change and modernity, yet remain rooted in local and traditional culture. Early influences include Akan tales about the spider trickster hero Ananse, nativity plays performed at Christian missions, silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Al Jolson, tap dancing, ragtime, and stand-up comedians of American vaudeville and “blackface” minstrel shows. The genre reaches back to the early decades of the twentieth century in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) towns that first acted as a buffer between Europe and the powerful inland kingdoms and that have a long history of breakaway Christian churches.
