Main content

Professor Kofi Agawu

Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University looks at western assumptions about the civilising force of music and suggests an African response might be a little more nuanced.

Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University provides the third in The Essay series running in parallel to the 麻豆社 TV series Civilisations. Once again he is responding to the question of whether or not music is an entirely civilising force, and he does so having just returned from a visit to west Africa. Prof Agawu wonders how the musicians of the Asante kingdom, the sophisticated drummers, poets and singers, might respond to the idea that what they do is civilising, but he also tackles the colonial notion that the music of the colonisers was somehow superior to indigenous music and with that civilising. It's not a theory that stands the test of time when he recalls the four-part Lutheran hymns he remembers from his youth with the highly sophisticated rhythmic and poetic structures of Asante music which are now used in serious and popular music around the world.

Available now

15 minutes

Broadcast

  • Wed 28 Mar 2018 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast