In the city of Tamale, northern Ghana, cinemas of the post-colonial period screened hundreds of Hindi films with such frequency that cinema-goers phonetically memorised Hindi film songs, despite not understanding Hindi. Akin to the influence of Hindi films in other majority Muslim regions of West Africa, such as with Hausa communities in northern Nigeria (Adamu 2008; Larkin 1997), older Hindi films gained popularity in Tamale in part because of their Islamicate iconography, such as images of mosques, scenes of prayer, and chasteness in dress. Alongside the visual elements of Hindi films, the timbre, ornamentation, and melismatic nature of older Hindi film songs also hinted at historical and cultural links between the Arab world and Muslim communities in northern Ghana, as did Hindi film song lyrics, which featured key words borrowed from Urdu’s Perso-Arabic lexicon.
Around the time that cinemas closed in northern Ghana in the mid-1980s, audio-visual recording equipment became available in Tamale. With access to new recording technologies, Tamale’s youth began creating their own films and accompanying film music in the region’s major language, Dagbani. Audience expectations shaped a newly emerging Dagbani film industry, and from the early days of filmmaking in Tamale, films included musical structures borne out of the Hindi film industry, such as diegetic lip-syncing, the song and dance sequence, and the role of the playback singer. Filmmakers employed musicians to compose songs, and selected well-known Dagbani singers to record music for actors to “mime” in their films. The role of playback singer, and the use of song and dance segment became important aspects of the Dagbani film industry. Not only did these conventions resonate with local audience expectations, but they also set the Dagbani film industry apart from southern industries, such as Kumawood and Ghallywood.
This presentation explores the collaborative processes through which filmmakers, playback singers, and studio engineers adapt the song-and-dance sequence in Dagbani films. In doing so, I argue that the Dagbani film music industry purposefully, and creatively detaches a transnationally circulating film structure from its original context, subsequently recontextualising the song-and-dance sequence within a northern Ghanaian context.