Halo: The Ewe Battle Tradition of Music, Songs, and Performance

Abstract

This chapter is an analysis of halo, a poetic and performance art among the Adja-Ewe of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Avorgbedor finds Halo “a multimedia event, as well as sociomusical drama that involves songs of insult, dance, drumming, mime, poetry, spoken forms, costume, and variety of visual icons” (It is a Great Song! 2001). He also describes it as “characterized by the spectacular, the unusual, the precarious, havoc, danger, and challenge.” Further, in an interview with the popular Anlo-Ewe composer-poet and lead singer of Atrikpui, Asomo Seku, he clearly lays out the collective socio-psychology of halo. Seku rhetorically asked: “Can strong men stand and stir while weak and uncertified warriors humiliate them through songs? Not among us [Ewe],” he answered. “For it is even more painful and unbearable for the Ewe to be insulted through music than to be verbally abused. This is because the song lives on for generations; so does the insult,” Seku added. According to him, musical activity, particularly halo poetry and the potential social impact its theatricals encapsulate is a reliable means of documentation that lives for posterity. Every Ewe would avoid their negative depiction in song. Also confirming the psychological havoc of the song of insult among the Adja-Ewe as the composer of the Atrikpui war song presents, “I would rather fight, die in war and be buried in white calico than to be humiliated in song” (Seku). It is a common practice to portray people in song, positively and negatively in Ewe and many other indigenous African societies, as the practice is a deterring tool, a reliable corrective means that serves as both punishment and reward (Agawu and Dor 2007 and 2001).