Colonial soundscapes in Otto Friedrich von der Gröben’s Guinean Travelogue (1694)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1683, the Prussian nobleman and explorer Otto Friedrich von der Gröben (1657–1728) founded on the coast of present-day Ghana the trading post of Großfriedrichsburg, which was to become Brandenburg-Prussia’s main administrative hub for the trafficking of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean. While the existing historical scholarship on Gröben has to date mostly centered on his role in the foundation of Großfriedrichsburg, I focus on Gröben’s rich account of African and European sound, music, and dance in the published narration of his journey, his Guinean Travelogue (1694), and contemplate on the ways how he attempts to construct African Otherness and European superiority through the lens of sonic and performative media. Ultimately, I contend that Gröben’s narrative, far from being neutral and objective, needs to be located and read in the context of the dehumanizing logic of the slave economy and the related emerging history of racial formation.