SHORT ABSTRACT
 

This talk examines the literary and dramatic evocations and enactments that distinguish haló performance among the Anlo-Ewe, with emphasis on why and how they extend and interrogate local aesthetic premises of music and dance.  The talk argues, with illustrations, that the express privileging of histrionics, instrumental resources and song-speech continua constitutes an essential performance strategy-a musico-dramatic inventiveness necessary for achieving both musical excellence and combat superiority over an opponent. The framework of social discord and interpersonal aggression defines the incisive communicative intent of haló ; it justifies also the privileging and tensioning of language, musical, and dramaturgic arts.
 
 

    EXCERPTS FROM THE TALK....
 

1.

Musical ironies of textual and dramatic transformations then begin to turn on themselves and the performers, interrogating their independent statuses and at the same time reaffirming the ontological spremises of musical sounds, text, visuals, and dramatic components. The merging of both fact and fictive narratives, the evocations of "sacred" or the tabooed are justified by the unique nature of haló  experience, and by the inherent artificiality of musical experimentation. In haló participants not only fight with words, they fight also to reclaim the musicality of words, and they fight to preserve and extend the literary, musical, and dramatic resources of the local community.

The framing of the text in musical and paramusical environments elevates also the important component of humor, tensioning of purely musical affect, personal inventiveness, language skills, and ultimately combat superiority. The combined effects of these resources are thus necessary in achieving both spectacular attention from the audiences  and in denigrating an opponent. As demonstrated, these other performative routes are not just convenient accessories; they locate the entire performance within its wider cultural setting, thus legitimating the how of these particular aspects of haló....
 

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