What interests me about my target culture is the history of music that exists in the country of Ghana. From a music anthropology perspective, tracing the roots of genres like Highlife and Afrobeat to current day Hip Hop is a great joy of mine. Music is extremely important for the way that language is developed because culture influences the different slang and pidgin versions of words that become popular with the younger generation. When I am traveling in Ghana, I will likely be surrounded by folks of my age so listening to the music helps me become familiar with the words I should use so I don’t sound too much like a foreigner. To engage with this topic I do need a special vocabulary to engage and it is a form of pidgin that can be spoken between countries in western Africa. It is a trading dialect that encompasses slang from different regions. Knowing what these words mean when they are mixed in with Twi in music allows you to be the most active listener that you can be. The culture associated with Afrobeat is really amazing because though Nigerians and Ghanaians are the tastemakers for the genre, other countries and cultures use it as a jump-off point to blend their dances and clothing to give it its own life. Linguistically it ends up as a mixing ground of amazing words. Knowing Twi or Igbo will most equip you to enjoy the lyrics that are being spoken, and the special vocabulary is not impossible to learn, it just takes time.
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