Presented By: School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Ethel V. Curry Distinguished Lecture in Musicology: George Worlasi Kwasi Dor
Join us as the Department of Musicology hosts Dr. George Worlasi Kwasi Dor for its annual Ethel V. Curry Distinguished Lecture. Dr. Dor presents a talk entitled "Ambivalence of Creating Youthful Aesthetic Satisfaction and Cultural Referential Meaning in Today’s Borborbor Dance-Drumming of the Ghanaian Ewe Youth”
ABSTRACT
Borborbor, the most popular dance of the Ghanaian Ewe youth, has undergone a phenomenal degree of innovative transformations that exemplify the ingenious creative agency and inventiveness of its practitioners. Invented in the mid 1950s by Kodzo Nuatro of Kpando in the Volta Region of Ghana, Borborbor has witnessed substantial changes in the areas of instrumentation, choreography and movement, geo-cultural scope of its practice, typology and multiple performance contexts and their attendant meanings, and its economic potential. To explore the nature and processes of changes that have shaped the genre over its seven decades’ period of existence, we organized a one-day symposium on Borborbor at the University of Ghana in June 2024. This Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program activity brought together invited practitioners from the socio-cultural and academic communities to dialogue. For our ethnographic strategy, we used focus group interviews and discussion sessions involving the preceding cultural custodians and intellectuals to elicit specialized perspectives. The symposium culminated in an evening concert given by the Abeka Dekaworwor Fafali Borborbor Band and Kpoeta Ashanti Mile Norvisi group. We video recorded the focus group discussion and performances into ethnographic data, and today’s presentation is an outgrowth of this on-going research. After explaining the genre’s compelling aesthetic appeal to Ghanaians beyond the Ewe and exploring what the symposium participants considered as referential meaning in Borborbor, I discuss the emerging ambivalences in the areas of dancing, views on appropriation, and Borborbor in the church. I close the discussion with some summative thoughts and ramifications of the symposium for our research project on the generational changes and creative innovations in Borborbor.
ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKER
Prof. GEORGE WORLASI KWASI DOR, a Ghanaian Ewe, is the McDonnell Barksdale Chair of Ethnomusicology, Professor of Music, and the founder and director of the African Drum and Dance Ensemble at the University of Mississippi (UM). Dr. Dor, who has pioneered both the discipline of ethnomusicology and the MM in Ethnomusicology program at the UM, earned his PhD in music (ethnomusicology), from the University of Pittsburgh; MPhil in Music and BMus from the University of Ghana; and a Diploma in Music Education from National Academy of Music, Winneba, Ghana. Dor’s publications include his widely read West African Drumming and Dance in North American Universities: An Ethnomusicological Perspective (2014), book chapters in Festschriften, and articles in prestigious journals and encyclopedias. Dr. Dor is a two-time Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow and was a Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 2019, and at the University of Ghana in 2024. He initiated and continues to produce the UM’s annual Black History Month concerts since 2005. Other historic commemorative concerts he has produced include UM’s 50th and 60th Years of Integration – in 2012 and 2022, and Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary in 2007. Dr. Dor’s strong leadership in diversity at the UM earned him a 2016 “Lift Every Voice” Award, and the University of Mississippi’s 2021 Diversity Innovator Award. He is a consummate musician – scholar, composer, performer, teacher, and cultural patriot. While his compositions have been studied as themes of master’s and doctoral theses at both Ghanaian and German universities, Dr. Dor’s symphonic works have been performed in Ghana, USA, and Germany. In an August 2022 citation, the University of Ghana’s School of Performing Arts recognized Prof. Dor as “A National Musical Icon of Ghana and Distinguished Contributor to Ghanaian Art Music and African Musicology."
ABSTRACT
Borborbor, the most popular dance of the Ghanaian Ewe youth, has undergone a phenomenal degree of innovative transformations that exemplify the ingenious creative agency and inventiveness of its practitioners. Invented in the mid 1950s by Kodzo Nuatro of Kpando in the Volta Region of Ghana, Borborbor has witnessed substantial changes in the areas of instrumentation, choreography and movement, geo-cultural scope of its practice, typology and multiple performance contexts and their attendant meanings, and its economic potential. To explore the nature and processes of changes that have shaped the genre over its seven decades’ period of existence, we organized a one-day symposium on Borborbor at the University of Ghana in June 2024. This Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program activity brought together invited practitioners from the socio-cultural and academic communities to dialogue. For our ethnographic strategy, we used focus group interviews and discussion sessions involving the preceding cultural custodians and intellectuals to elicit specialized perspectives. The symposium culminated in an evening concert given by the Abeka Dekaworwor Fafali Borborbor Band and Kpoeta Ashanti Mile Norvisi group. We video recorded the focus group discussion and performances into ethnographic data, and today’s presentation is an outgrowth of this on-going research. After explaining the genre’s compelling aesthetic appeal to Ghanaians beyond the Ewe and exploring what the symposium participants considered as referential meaning in Borborbor, I discuss the emerging ambivalences in the areas of dancing, views on appropriation, and Borborbor in the church. I close the discussion with some summative thoughts and ramifications of the symposium for our research project on the generational changes and creative innovations in Borborbor.
ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKER
Prof. GEORGE WORLASI KWASI DOR, a Ghanaian Ewe, is the McDonnell Barksdale Chair of Ethnomusicology, Professor of Music, and the founder and director of the African Drum and Dance Ensemble at the University of Mississippi (UM). Dr. Dor, who has pioneered both the discipline of ethnomusicology and the MM in Ethnomusicology program at the UM, earned his PhD in music (ethnomusicology), from the University of Pittsburgh; MPhil in Music and BMus from the University of Ghana; and a Diploma in Music Education from National Academy of Music, Winneba, Ghana. Dor’s publications include his widely read West African Drumming and Dance in North American Universities: An Ethnomusicological Perspective (2014), book chapters in Festschriften, and articles in prestigious journals and encyclopedias. Dr. Dor is a two-time Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow and was a Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 2019, and at the University of Ghana in 2024. He initiated and continues to produce the UM’s annual Black History Month concerts since 2005. Other historic commemorative concerts he has produced include UM’s 50th and 60th Years of Integration – in 2012 and 2022, and Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary in 2007. Dr. Dor’s strong leadership in diversity at the UM earned him a 2016 “Lift Every Voice” Award, and the University of Mississippi’s 2021 Diversity Innovator Award. He is a consummate musician – scholar, composer, performer, teacher, and cultural patriot. While his compositions have been studied as themes of master’s and doctoral theses at both Ghanaian and German universities, Dr. Dor’s symphonic works have been performed in Ghana, USA, and Germany. In an August 2022 citation, the University of Ghana’s School of Performing Arts recognized Prof. Dor as “A National Musical Icon of Ghana and Distinguished Contributor to Ghanaian Art Music and African Musicology."
Cost
- Free - no tickets required
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