16 research outputs found
CREATIVE PROCESSES IN AKAN MUSICAL CULTURES: INNOVATION WITHIN TRADITION
CREATIVE PROCESSES IN AKAN MUSIC: INNOVATIONS WITHIN TRADITIONEric Odame Beeko, Ph.D.University of Pittsburgh, 2005The aim of this dissertation is to explain the creative processes in composition and performance of traditional music, and the subsequent innovations that emerge out of these processes in the musical traditions of the Akan people of Ghana. The study is premised on the fact that traditional musicians in the Akan culture, like most people on the surface of the earth, also have the natural capacity to consciously or unconsciously effect changes in their environments, play significant roles in most human-initiated change processes, and make contributions to both the material and institutional aspects of their culture, as their creative sensibilities or tendencies continue to bring about various forms of innovations from time to time. Based on this fact, the present study is oriented more toward the creative activities of individual composer-performers in the Akan society who are believed to be making profound contributions through their creative activities, consciously or unconsciously and directly or indirectly, to sustain the entire music traditions of Akan. Akan traditional music is transmitted orally and musicians literally compose the music either before or during performance; the music that they produce is either entirely new or a partial re-composition of pre-existing music. Accordingly, the study investigates the processes by which new ideas are generated and added to existing ones. It examines how Akan traditional musicians, working within the constraints imposed by the artistic parameters of the culture, consciously and subconsciously generate new ideas as they reproduce, reconstruct, reorder, and reinterpret the existing musical elements through their creative processes, and as a result bring about innovation in the tradition. These innovations are a necessary factor for sustaining the tradition, and for making it relevant to every period. Although the primary focus of this study is the Akan culture, it, however, highlights several issuesârelating to creativity, change and innovationâthat may also concern many cultures of Africa. Therefore, by using the Akan culture as a premise, what the study also seeks to establish is that an approach to the study of social change in relation to African art in general cannot focus on institutions without taking into account the human creative activities. The human creative tendencies that reveal both the innate capacity (the personality) and the culturally acquired knowledge are of primary relevance in understanding both change and continuity, particularly in Africa, and generally in any oral tradition
Task Inventory for Training Program of Machinists in Two Metropolitan Areas in Oklahoma
Occupational and Adult Educatio
Assembling an experimentalist regime: Transnational governance interactions in the forest sector
Constructing a transnational timber legality assurance regime: Architecture, accomplishments, challenges
The emerging transnational timber legality assurance regime comprises a set of interrelated policy instruments, both public and private, aimed at controlling trade in illegally logged wood and wood products. The potentially productive interactions among these instruments in the emerging forestry regime create prospects for engendering learning, stimulating cross-fertilization, and enhancing accountability. In this article, we analyze the EU's Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, interacting with public legal timber regulations and private certification schemes, as the core of an emerging transnational experimentalist regime. An experimentalist regime of this type may provide a promising approach to addressing contentious transnational environmental issues like forest governance where there is no global hegemon to impose a single set of rules. However, experience with FLEGT implementation suggests that there are also a number of outstanding challenges to constructing an effective timber legality assurance regime, which if unresolved could undermine its promise. The argument proceeds in three steps, based on an exhaustive analysis of recent developments. First, we outline the architecture and promise of the emerging timber legality assurance regime. Then, we review key accomplishments to date. Finally, we examine the ongoing challenges facing this innovative regime as it moves forward, and consider how they might be overcome through the adoption of a more consistent experimentalist approach
The EU-Ghana VPA: a comprehensive policy analysis of its design
The European Union's FLEGT initiative aims at eliminating illegal timber from its market. An important instrument to achieve this is the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to install, amongst others, wood tracking systems in timber exporting countries. Ghana was the first to conclude VPA negotiations with the EU. Using the Policy Arrangement Approach (PAA), this paper presents a critical policy analysis of the consensus building and negotiation process and outcome (so far). It shows that the national forest discourse of Ghana has been reshaped by the VPA process, that the traditional forest sector has been opened up, that new forest rules have been designed and that power relations have changed in favour of so-called fringe actors. Theses developments seem in line with the wider shift from government to governance in politics. Yet the question is whether these observable changes will be sustained in the implementation phase of the VP
Voluntary Standard Systems and Regulatory Processes for Timber Products: Analysis of Green Procurement in Germany
The Dual-Relationship Concept of Right-Ownership in Akan Musical Tradition: A Solution for the Individual and Communal Right-Ownership Conflicts in Music Production
Experimentalism in transnational forest governance: Implementing European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements in Indonesia and Ghana
Over the past decade, the European Union (EU) has created a novel experimentalist architecture for transnational forest governance: the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. This innovative architecture comprises extensive participation by civil society stakeholders in establishing and revising openâended framework goals (Voluntary Partnership Agreements [VPAs] with developing countries aimed at promoting sustainable forest governance and preventing illegal logging) and metrics for assessing progress toward them (legality standards and indicators) through monitoring and review of local implementation, underpinned by a penalty default mechanism to sanction nonâcooperation (the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested wood on the European market). This paper analyzes the implementation of VPAs in Indonesia and Ghana, the two countries furthest advanced toward issuing FLEGT export licences. A central finding is the reciprocal relationship between the experimentalist architecture of the FLEGT initiative and transnational civil society activism, whereby the VPAsâ insistence on stakeholder participation, independent monitoring, and joint implementation review, underwritten by the EU, empowers domestic nonâgovernmental organizations with local knowledge to expose problems on the ground, hold public authorities accountable for addressing them, and contribute to developing provisional solutions