Music and Wellbeing in Everyday Life: An Exploratory Study of Music Experience in Ghana

Abstract

In this paper we highlight the experience of music in everyday contexts in Ghana. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and semi-structured interviews, we examined how people experience and use music in everyday life in potentially beneficial ways to enhance subjective wellbeing. In contrast to previous research where music's self-regulatory role has been highlighted primarily in the context of solitary music listening, for the participants in our study music also played a crucial role as a form of social and participatory performance practice. This was particularly evident in the strong connection between music, religion, and social dance.

A Critical Cross-cultural Study of Sensorimotor and Groove Responses to Syncopation Among Ghanaian and American University Students and Staff

“…According to Kubik (2010), the basic, regular pulse is significant in West-Africa precisely because it does not need to be emphasized by instruments but can be totally silent and instead embodied in listeners' imagination or body-movements. Our results are consistent with this observation, and might be further explained by the increased exposure to dance among students at Cape Coast university (Carl & Kutsidzo, 2016). Since we found no group differences in rhythmic discrimination abilities as measured by the MET Test, as well as no group differences in tapping to isochronous rhythms (control condition), any difference in synchronization is unlikely due to a difference in basic rhythmic skills but may rather be a result of differences in exposure to syncopated rhythm, such as in groove-based music, or exposure to dance (Carl & Kutsidzo, 2016).…”

“…Our findings suggest that Ghanaian listeners are able to perceive and reproduce a regular beat in a temporally more consistent way when it is only partly emphasized by acoustic sound. Many African music scholars have noted a resilience of beat perception despite the rhythmic complexity in West-African music (Kubik, 2010;Waterman, 1952), and studies show that students at Cape Coast University are exposed to traditional Ghanaian music 3.5% of the time (Carl & Kutsidzo, 2016). According to Kubik (2010), the basic, regular pulse is significant in West-Africa precisely because it does not need to be emphasized by instruments but can be totally silent and instead embodied in listeners' imagination or body-movements.…”

“…We defined our cultural groups similar to Polak et al (2018, p. 4), with country of residence 'only as a rough proxy of partly overlapping yet partly non-overlapping social fields and music-cultural environments'. While there is significant overlap in the cultural influences of American and West-African groove-based music, Ghanaians appear to be more exposed to groove-based music and dance overall (Carl & Kutsidzo, 2016).…”

“…We have a good understanding of the musical exposure of our Ghanaian group, due to an ESM study with students at Cape Coast University, among whom we recruited our participants around the same time. Carl and Kutsidzo (2016) report that their participants were exposed to music 53% of the times sampled. The most common types of music exposed to were Gospel (38%), Hiplife/Hiphop (21%), RnB/country/'cool' (13.1%), Highlife (10.7%), Reggae (4.9%) and traditional music (3.9%) (see also Otchere & Carl, 2016).…”

“…Being mindful of the pitfalls in cross-cultural research and the tendency to rely on stereotypes when comparing African and Western musical experiences, we based our predictions on previously demonstrated differences in exposure; Ghanaian students are more exposed to groove-based music (Carl & Kutsidzo, 2016) than British students (Greasley & Lamont, 2011), who have comparable music listening preferences to Americans (Bonneville- Roussy et al 2013). Exposure has been shown to both increase (Cameron, Bentley, & Grahn, 2015) and reduce synchronization accuracy (Clayton et al 2004;.…”