Artists are wired to receive supra-rational signal. It is a mind and spirit interface thing. We do not question that signal because our souls agree with it. In time, we learn to decipher it for the world, and thereby articulate the essence of human consciousness: totem. Cave paintings of all periods attest to this fact.
Except, in the case of emblem art, the deciphering process is particularly ‘demanding’. This is because an emblem is a fusion of visual and verbal factors in a dialectical relationship—abstract but eloquent, tangible but enigmatic, rarefied but functional, and high-minded but vernacular. Moreover, an emblem is never fictive because it is a philosophical entity; thus, it cannot abide formalism or the luxurious reticence of post-modernism.
As if that is not enough, emblemists are also compelled to make absolute statements, and to assume a ‘magisterial’ position within the very public they aim to serve with their art—if they should have the audacity or warrant to make their marks on history. Yet, absolutism is anathema to us artists. It shifts the very basis of our being. Attrition is more our way, because we are the ultimate purveyors of subjectivity, or relativism; lest we become illiberal. That is, until emblem art becomes your calling, and then you develop a primordial capacity for humility, which allows you to surrender readily to your subconscious – the ultimate oracle. Thence you garner universal truth. And, while you extrude the emblem from that bewildering blaze, you become aware of the proximity of sacrament, and, therefore, a high risk of sacrilege. Tightrope. This may explain why emblems gain an ethereal aura, eventually; at least in African terms.
However, the supra-rational signal I speak of is not a random phenomenon. It is a direct response to an urge, a hunger, a meditation, a prescience of what can be, and, above all, a predisposition. In my case, it was my age-long preoccupation with the disappearance of the GaDangme ‘Kpamo’ emblems that once adorned gateways and canoes of old Accra; and with their surviving twin form, ‘Abë Buu’ (Proverbialism). A unique oratorical form, characterised by electric repartee, allegory, metaphor, allusion, insinuation, and wit, Abë Buu imposes decorum and circumspection on GaDangme family, or clan, assembly. It helps move things ‘behind closed doors’, as it were. I was lucky to witness this expressionistic art throughout my childhood, and I remember thinking it was the secret cant of the initiated. Sacrosanct. Yet, when I started writing poetry at the age of eleven, the selfsame code walked in readily with me, forcing my adopted English language to submit to it. Giddying. Sadly, however, the GaDangme emblems stayed away like forsaken deities. They had withdrawn far into arcane lore. That is not to say GaDangme emblemists had stopped making emblems—there was simply no one to interpret, record, codify, or exploit them for general ‘consumption’.
Ghana’s post-Independence push for a single national identity had a lot to do with that. It had pooled only the prominent cultural assets of her diverse races, but, alas, the Kpamo were not the GaDangme’s most prominent asset—theirs was a genius for the art and science of nation building and diplomacy. By the late 70s, the Kpamo had completely lost their footing in that dynamic melting pot. Henceforth they would be mistaken for mere decorative refrain, wherever they occurred. Much the same way the GaDangme proto-Judaic ‘Kpele’ religion has been mistaken for animism, and its venerable Wulomei for ‘fetish priests’.
But I had the fabulous Ashanti Adinkra to depend on. They had fared better than their GaDangme counterparts; the Ashantis had curated them strategically into veritable leitmotifs of both ritual and functional design, and inspired academia everywhere to codify them. They were ubiquitously Ghanaian and, therefore, Pan-African. To me, they epitomised Ghana’s fine philosophical traditions, her cultural autonomy, pervading optimism, style, pride, spirituality, and her natural sense of justice. I learned visual symbolism and abstraction through the Adinkra, and oral poetics through Abe Buu. Even then, my heartbreak over the hole in GaDangme heritage continued to fester.
That said, it would take me until 2004 to rise to the task of creating GaDangme emblems. And this came to me while I was creating abstract drawings for a poem I had composed for the much-maligned Gypsies of Europe and elsewhere. As I winnowed the stanzas for visual hooks, it dawned on me that the whole poem was actually rooted in GaDangme philosophy and elegiac allegory. Uncannily, the GaDangme people had at the time started suffering the effects of a population shift; including the wearing away and mockery of the Ga language. Since then the cultural erosion has reached crisis point, so my attention has shifted to the ‘incitement’ of a renaissance, to help stem the tide. But, even as I write this, I hear the old GaDangme emblems are making a resurgence, and I am very thankful to be in the position to update them.
After all, my mother was a GaDangme from Prampram, and though my father was a prince of Winneba, his paternal grandmother was a GaDangme princess of the Asere clan. I was born in Accra, my umbilical cord was buried in Accra, I was circumcised by a GaDangme stalwart, and I was given a set of GaDangme names at birth: Nii Lartey Kofi. Not that it matters intellectually, but it helps to be 'of the blood', for, right from the onset, I felt inclined to contribute original proverbs, adages, dicta, aphorism and maxims to the GaDangme wisdom milieu—resplendent though it already is with poetic devices and spiritual factors beyond my modern, itinerant mind. A tall order, you may think, but, when it came to it, the process felt very natural. I first emblemised three old GaDangme proverbs and sayings as an homage and, sure of my footing, I veered off into heraldry and created a special slogan and emblem for General Dallaire, Brigadier General Anyidoho, and the Ghana Army for their gallantry during the Rwandan Genocide (page 75). That done, I felt unfettered.
Many of these emblems started life as doodles on paper, which I then replicated digitally as vector images, for the sake of structural integrity. In due course, I mustered the courage to realise pieces directly in the digital medium. But these are only technical facts. Mainly, a quake occurred in my mind, and a gyroscope of ideas and imagery came through me. I sealed myself away, working fervently for fear of waking from the trance. Seven days and forty-four emblems later, I finally lifted my head. Why I stopped at forty-four, I do not know, but I suspect some kind of symbolic significance. While compiling this monograph, however, I had cause to refine some emblems aesthetically; leading to variations, in a few cases, as is often the case in emblem art. I credit this process to my heightened critical analysis, after being away from the work for eleven years. I have provided all spare variants as an appendix to this book, hoping that they are viewed and utilised as true equals of the rest of the collection.
The proverbs and adages underpinning the Abëtëi represent aspects of GaDangme cosmology, moral codes and credos, as I have understood them since my childhood. I have striven to uphold the ideals of spiritual and material dualism, hospitality, territorial and political restraint, social balance, tolerance, probity, the centrality of motherhood, and, above all, the omnipotence of The Deity. I therefore feel confident enough to present this work to the GaDangme people, to all Ghanaians, to all Africans, to the African Diaspora, and to the world at large.