If you are like me, you are probably forced to sit long hours behind a desk more often than you desire. And in those long uncomfortable hours, questions, ideas and other thoughts fly into each other setting off long trains of reflection over much and yet nothing in particular. Between today and yesterday, a certain notion has been gathering steam in my head. The Ghanaian capacity to import any mundane thing and turn it into an institution. How did Exeter corned beef and Heinz baked beans enter the popular consciousness and hold on with such fastness? What about schnapps, aburofo nsa, and morgans hair pomade? You could say that the military-era control-economy had much to do with it. Whoever had the import chit had the power to impose a certain taste preference on the consumer masses, and over time consumers in such a controlled market naturally become conservative and hold on to that which was once scarce as eternally precious. But how then do you account for the rise and persistence of vitamilk and woodin? In an era of sustained liberalisation? Methinks an interesting place to look for clues is in the creative arts. Why on Earth is Don Williams famous and so beloved in Ghana? Believe me I have asked many non-Ghanaians and most simply scratch their heads at the mention of the name. I have tried to figure out from where Ras Kimono was unleashed upon our hapless eardrums. And why Fela Kuti on the other hand was never truly a mass phenomenon in Ghana. Here too, one might say a controlled press had much to do with it. When one programs coordinator at the state broadcaster finds himself saddled with a set of Don William tapes, woe is you who swears by variety! But to credit all this to the political management of consumer behaviour is to leave out the roles of specific bohemian rainmakers. People who take something, anything, and invest considerable persistence in fixing it into the imagination of a people, like Ghanaians, with generally low trust in institutions, but nevertheless a nomadic tolerance for novelty. What I mean is this: Ghanaians will sample every novel thing, but they fairly quickly return to what makes them comfortable. A rainmaker must therefore not invest in making anything look innovative as its main draw. Rather, like the formidable pushers of ThisWay chocolate, they must create an aura of everyday dependability and settled pedigree. These rainmakers literally bring forth new showers containing familiarity. And they make, as you might imagine, deluges of money doing so. [Disclaimer: no Peace FM enthusiasts were deliberately annoyed in the course of producing this note.]
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 12:05:00 +0000
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