by Edward Keazor

Created on: February 01, 2007   Last Updated: February 16, 2012

This is going to be a hard one, being a scarcely researched and totally subjective topic- depending on whether you're Nigerian, Ghanaian, Liberian or Sierra Leonian.

The Palmwine Guitar sound is a distinctive Folk sound, which originated in West Africa at the turn of the 20th century. As the story goes, the style emanated from Sierra Leone, where the Portuguese and Spanish sailors whose ships berthed on Merchant ships on the West African Coastal ports of Freetown (Sierra Leone) , Lagos (Nigeria), Monrovia (Liberia) and Accra/Tema (Ghana) lent their Guitars and style to their African shipmates who formulated a unique style fusing native rhythms with the Latin style bequeathed by their Latin benefactors and resulting in an expressive twangy, melodious Guitar sound.

The early African Guitar pioneers, primarily played (in an era before Ipods/Walkmans) on the ships in their spare time to entertain themselves, often raw and rudimentary, a revolution was nonetheless taking place. The Guitars were often played to accompany Native vocal renditions, varied in their content but often centred around themes of Love and peace , Native wisdom, satire and often times personal angst and social commentary.

As time went on the Guitar moved away from the exclusive preserve of the African sailors to the general populace and the local musicians adopted the Guitar, Violin, Mandolin, Banjo (and rather annoyingly that dreadful Instrument- The Kazoo) as elitist forms of expression. A word of note, West African musicians in general played in the Traditional form (using Traditional instruments) at Funerals, Weddings, Religious Feasts and Festivals and to entertain Royalty in Court and not much else- these were the elite. The new Guitar elite as referred to previously occupied a middle stratum in the urban centres, playing at solcial functions for the Urban elite i.e the new Native professional class of Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers and Businessmen, being mostly educated in the UK such as the E.K. Bannerman's, Tetteh Addo's, A. Quartey-Papafio brilliant Ghanaian Barristers of the early 20th century, G.Sorunkeh-Sawyer, A. Dove-Edwin Sierra Leonian Barrister and Doctor respectively, A.Sapara-Williams, Sir Kitoyi-Ajasa, Eric Moore, Joseph Egerton-Shyngle (Lagos Barristers), Dr Doherty, Dr Da Rocha, Dr Curtis Adeniyi-Jones (Doctors) and successful Traders like Da-Rocha, the extremely gifted female Trader- Ore Moore (a product of finishing school in England and reputedly a classically trained

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>