Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the Ghana Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
More than two hundred publications and eighty compositions. He did not just study African music — he established that it could be studied, and built the discipline that studies it.
Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia was born on 22 June 1921 and became Africa's pre-eminent musicologist, described in his lifetime as the most published and best known authority on African music and aesthetics in the world.
He wrote more than two hundred publications and composed some eighty works of his own, developing a compositional idiom drawn directly from Ghanaian traditional music and doing as much as anyone to establish African art music as a contemporary form. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, was made Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music the following year and chaired the department from 1987 to 1990, and on retiring in 1991 founded the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana. He died on 13 March 2019.
He wrote more than two hundred publications and composed some eighty works of his own, developing a compositional idiom drawn directly from Ghanaian traditional music and doing as much as anyone to establish African art music as a contemporary form. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, was made Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music the following year and chaired the department from 1987 to 1990, and on retiring in 1991 founded the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana. He died on 13 March 2019.
- Wikipedia — J. H. Kwabena Nketia
- Society for Ethnomusicology — J.H. Kwabena Nketia memorial
- University of Pittsburgh Department of Music — In memoriam: J.H. Kwabena Nketia
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