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The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars

The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars - Paperback

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Availability:In StockContributor:Mariam GoshadzeSeries:Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora PeoplePublish date:5/30/2025Pages:216
Language:EnglishPublisher:Duke University PressISBN-13:9781478031413ISBN-10:1478031417UPC:9781478031413Book Category:Religion, Social ScienceBook Subcategory:Cultural & Ethnic Studies, AnthropologyBook Topic:African Studies, Cultural & SocialSize:9.00 x 6.00 x 0.49 inchesWeight:0.6415Product ID:SCVJKWXT8M
For generations, the Ga community in Accra, Ghana, has enforced an annual citywide ban on noisemaking during an important religious festival. In the 1990s and 2000s, this "ban on drumming" became a point of conflict between the Ga people and the newly popular Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, which refused to subdue their loud worship during the ban. Although the Ghanaian state constitutionally and institutionally grants superior status to Christianity and Islam, it ruled in favor of the Ga community, which emphasized its "cultural" rather than religious rights. In The Noise Silence Makes, Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, showing how the Ga people have adopted colonial mechanisms of noise control to counter Pentecostal/Charismatic dominance over Accra's soundscape. Goshadze shows how the drumming ban represents a reversal of the top-down model of noise regulation and illuminates the reality of Ghanaian secularity, in which the state unofficially collaborates with indigenous religious authorities to control sound. In so doing, Goshadze counters the tendency to push African "traditional religions" to the margins, demonstrating that they are instrumental players in contemporary African urbanity.
Language:EnglishPublisher:Duke University PressISBN-13:9781478031413ISBN-10:1478031417UPC:9781478031413Book Category:Religion, Social ScienceBook Subcategory:Cultural & Ethnic Studies, AnthropologyBook Topic:African Studies, Cultural & SocialSize:9.00 x 6.00 x 0.49 inchesWeight:0.6415Product ID:SCVJKWXT8M
Mariam Goshadze is Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion at Leipzig University.
Publisher: Duke University Press

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Mariam Goshadze

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