Keeping Time: Prayers and Social Vitality in the Ashanti Adaε Festival

Abstract

ABSTRACT In African traditional systems, while culture provides a bond of social vitality and cohesion, prayer connects the living with the sacred. This study closely examines prayer performances during the Adaε festival of the Asante people of Ghana as a mode of keeping time through their renewals of inherent knowledge about the divine to vitalise history, regulate lives today and hold memories for the future. This research is approached qualitatively using ethnographic methods of participant observation and interactions to conceptualise the significance of prayer to temporality during the activities of the Adaε festival. It was established that, whereas the regular lives of the religious Asante people are regulated by the modern calendar, their religio-cultural lives are moderated by the Adaε calendar, with people living in two complex time zones. As a means of keeping the past and revitalising the present, prayer is ingrained into every activity associated with the Adaε festival to venerate the brevity of their forbears, Nana nom, to invoke their communal presence and to seek their favour to sustain the future while evoking notions of timelessness.