Ethnomusicology and African Music: Modes of inquiry and interpretation

Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia was born in Asante Mampong, Ghana on June 22, 1921. He received training in European music theory as a high school student at the Presbyterian Training College. In 1944, he received a Britain's Commonwealth scholarship. He went to England to study linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He also took classes at the Trinity College of Music and Birkbeck College at the University of London. He became an ethnomusicologist, composer, and leading scholar on African musical traditions. In 1952, he accepted a research fellowship in African studies at what is now the University of Ghana. He traveled to the United States in 1958 on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. Over the course of one year, he studied at Juilliard, Columbia University and Northwestern University. In 1961, he became the deputy director of the University of Ghana's new Institute of African Studies. Three years later, he became the first African to serve as the institute's director. He later became the founding director of what is now the School of Performing Arts. He wrote several books during his lifetime including The Music of Africa, Ethnomusicology and African Music, and Reinstating Traditional Music in Contemporary Contexts. He also wrote music for choirs, solo voices and instrumental groups that used both African and Western instruments. He died on March 13, 2019 at the age of 97.