DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2016.v04i03.014

Pages: 279-289

Indigenous music, as a functional socio-cultural tool, is believed to satisfy specific needs and purposes in the daily life’s activities of traditional societies in Africa and thus, is never performed out of context. An indigenous music genre associated with the economic activities of northern Ewe subsistence farmers in the Volta Region of Ghana is agblehawo. Despite the fact that social change, precipitated by foreign cultural forces such as Westernisation, Islamisation and modernisation, has compelled northern Ewesto incorporate diverse musical traditions into their socio-musical behaviour, the sɔhewo (youth), who constitute the bulk of the farming work force, still perform agblehawo. The major concern of this paper is to investigate and explain the persistent efforts to still retain the performance of an ethnic music in its pure form by the sɔhewo, in spite of their exposure to all kinds of music today in northern Eweland.