29/01/2020
The Kalabashi Concert: Songs of Akotam
The Kalabashi Concert is a choral event that will feature an African stage musical as the highlight. The first part of the concert will feature six choirs: Harmochestra, Adehye Chorale, the DYC Choir, the African Youth Choir and Windy Voices, the Symphonials and the African Glorious Chorale.
Four of these choirs will exhibit collaborative performances. The performances will include sacred and patriotic music, as well as folk songs by George Mensah Essilfie.
The music, the showpiece of the Kalabashi Concert, will be performed by the award-winning Harmonious Chorale Ghana. The third part of the concert will, as has become usual, feature danceable highlife tunes already popular on the Ghanaian choral scene, rendered by three of the featuring choirs that night.
Songs of Akotam
The musical to be staged at the Kalabashi Concert was written and composed by George Mensah Essilfie as a five-act stage musical. Set in an imaginary Akan village, Songs of Akotam tells the story of Kamuta, a wicked giant who captures Abokuma, the beautiful princess of Akotam.
The story rests on a secret to overcome the terrors of the legendary giant.
Originally created by the composer, Songs of Akotam comprises twelve art songs, most of which were written by George himself. A few of them are founded on traditional motifs and tunes, and the rest are folk songs. The music of the play presents a mixture of Western and African traditional music, with the employment of guitars, keyboards, wind instruments, jazz and traditional African percussion instruments as accompaniment.
George Essilfie’s intercultural approach to composition, drawing from musical experiences in the Caribbean, the UK and the USA, as well as from his native land, come together to create a grand experiment: an elaborate fusion that is the hallmark of his art music.
The artistic team includes Mr. Samuel Arko Mensah, James Varrick Armaah, Sarah Boye & Joseph Boako from the Theatre Studies Department, at the University of Education, Winneba.
Mr. Essilfie sees this production as one that will help establish Ghanaian choral music as a force to be reckoned with on the global stage.
Songs of Akotam will be staged at the National Theatre of Ghana, on Sunday the 5th of April at 4pm. Tickets for the concert go for only 50 cedis.
