Ghanaian festivals are a lively and colorful component of the country’s culture. Every year, festivals and durbars are organized in different sections of the country to commemorate the people’s heritage.
Throughout the year, festivals and durbars are conducted in various parts of the country to bring people together, promote growth, and enhance society’s beliefs.
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Significance Of Festivals
Festivals are significant in Ghanaians’ life in numerous ways: historically, religiously, socially, economically, culturally, morally, and politically.
Historically
It allows people to learn something about their own past.
Culturally
During festivals, the people’s rich cultural legacy is frequently on display.
The way individuals communicate and interact with one another reflects their friendliness culture.
Morally
It encourages everyone to play their part as good citizens. It gives the chief a platform to be more effective, ethically upright, and accountable to the people. It reminds young people to live morally upright \ lifestyles so that they might grow into good people whose lives will be emulated by future generations.
Religiously
People believe in the existence of ancestral spirits, and as a result, they seek for forgiveness for wrongdoings and beseech supernatural powers for material success, peace, and long life. There is a connection between the living and the dead.
Socially
It is a time for family members, relatives, and loved ones to get together. Quarrels and misunderstandings are resolved at this time.
It provides a venue for transacting weddings between people in a certain geographic area.
Economically
It brings together the majority of the citizens. This enables them to initiate and participate in development projects.
Festivals Celebrated in Western Region
Eluo Yam Festival
The Peoples of Sefwi commemorate the Eluo (el-wu-wo) Festival, which is divided into three parts and held over three days. The festival is traditionally held to commemorate the start of the harvest season and the manner in which traditional leaders would manage and distribute produce among the people in order to avert starvation (traditionally no one is permitted to eat yam before the festival begins.)
Nkronu Festival
The inhabitants of Shama/Beposo, in the Western Region, celebrate it. Purification of stools and prayers to ancestors for a prosperous harvest and long life are all part of this colorful event.
Kundum Festival
Essikado, Lower Dixcove, Lower Axim and the Eastern Nzema. Bosman, a Dutch explorer who visited the Gold Coast in the 17th century and witnessed the festival, left one of the oldest written archives of the event.
Origin
According to legend, the celebration began when a hunter named Akpoley came across some dwarfs dancing in a circle while on an expedition. He returned to his town after witnessing the dance and promoted it to his people. The devil and evil spirits are said to be expelled from towns and villages by ritual dance. The dance is performed by the majority of the people of Axim and the nearby towns during the festival. It is descended from the Nzema people and was afterward passed down to the Ahantas in Ghana’s Western region.
Kundum is a harvest celebration as well as a religious feast. The event begins on the day that the fruit of a particular palm tree becomes ripe.
The celebration
The festival lasts four weeks, although the majority of the activities, including drumming and dancing, takes place at night and on the outskirts of towns at a location known as Siedu or Sienu for the first three weeks. The celebrations are held separately in each of the Ahanta paramountcy’s towns. Each town determines which Sunday their local celebration will begin on its own.
There are three primary components to the celebration: which are
- dancings
- drumming
- feast
Attire for the festival
Participants in the event wear distinctive clothing, footwear, and occasionally masks. Musicians take the drums to five different shrines on the outskirts of town to kick off the event. Requests for the town’s good are made at shrines, and rum is poured on the ground as a libation.