Kirjahaku

This will be the first book to focus on the African patrons, who commissioned grand family mansions from the 1860s to 1950s, to highlight their intentions during the tumultuous period in the Gold Coast Colony (part of present-day Ghana) from roughly 1874 to independence from the British on March 6, 1957. Today, coastal Ghana today is dotted with grand old homes; most are uninhabited, in ruin and hauntingly eerie. Whilst most people associate these homes with European patrons, these structures were constructed for wealthy Africans. Case studies reveal the “Coastal Elite Style,” an umbrella term for the multitude of innovative responses to European, Afro-Brazilian and American architecture. These hybrid mansions communicate ideas of status and modernity through their combination of local aesthetics with the manipulation of foreign architectural styles. This movement is significant because the layered meanings expressed resistance to the British and established a vernacular for housing in Ghana today. By decolonizing the study of colonial architecture by placing the gaze on African patrons, these mansions will be revealed as unique works of African Modernism. This book will expand upon existing literature concerning hybridity in colonial residential architecture. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architectural history, colonial studies, African studies and Atlantic studies.

Kakaamotobe, meaning to scare, is known across southern Ghana, West Africa, as Fancy Dress performance. Masqueraders dress in colorful costumes and wear fancy and fierce masks; they dance energetically to drums or brass band music through the main streets of town during holidays, especially during Christmastime. Competitions held in two towns are intense annual events. This lively secular masquerade is a carnival form that has been practiced for well over a century primarily by coastal Fante people, and many additional ethnicities participate today. Kakaamotobe: Fancy Dress Carnival in Ghana explores the fascinating history, aesthetics, performance, and underlying messages of this masquerade with ties to other carnivalesque practices in the Black Atlantic. While Fancy Dress may engage with global cultures through some of its aesthetics, the practice is profoundly African. The utilization of elaborate costumes, masks, and brass bands expresses not a desire to imitate outside cultures, but rather the impulse of youth to adapt traditional culture to the contemporary environment. Courtnay Micots argues that the outward impression of folly belies the more serious refashioning of power, identity, and modernity in the community.