Popular Culture Narratives: Myth, The Sacred and Profane in Ghanaian Art

Abstract

It is fascinating to find a copious range of graphic expressions brandishing public and private automobiles, eating places (chop bars) and eve hairdressing salons. In fact, like a cult with its followers and leaders, these artists, given the profusion of their work, serve a very large clientele, a market that is rare to many other artistic expressions of the academic genre in Ghana. The subject of their representations curiously vary in their concerns, themes as mundane as don’t mind the body complement humane themes such as Eno Mary or Wofa Pa Ye and all these sharply contrasts others as sacred and spiritual as Psalm 23, Abuburo Kosua, adee a, ebe ye yie nsee da (the vagaries of the weather are not enough to imperil an egg that is bound to hatch) a philosophical expression of fate in the cosmology of the Ghanaian Akan. By their nature, representation and contextual presentation, it is easy to assume that these subjects/themes should be more secular or profane than religious or spiritual; however an in-depth interpretation and contemplation of these popular culture narratives reveal a studied religiosity. The critical appreciation of the overlapping characteristics of the banal as well as the sacred of a few of these popular culture icons is the focus of this paper.