![]() Author Maya Angelou had been advocating for a trans-national concert in Ghana for years as a symbol of this shared history.īut Nkrumah was deposed in 1966, and in the coup’s wake the meaning of “freedom” in post-colonial Ghana took on bitter new meaning. For some key African-American activists and cultural icons involved in the civil-rights struggle, Ghana was viewed as a kind of sister country, a spiritual home. Guiding this transition into a new era was Kwame Nkrumah, who advocated Pan-Africanism as a way to bring the Third World continent closer to economic parity with the West and link it with people of African heritage worldwide. In 1957 Ghana had declared independence from Great Britain it became the first African country to become a self-contained state in modern times. It was no small coincidence that Ghana itself was now in many ways going through the kind of social and political upheaval that accompanied the birth of the United States. The once-boisterous passenger section of the DC-8 grew silent as the plane approached its destination, as if the artists were bracing to confront an inescapable truth: Many of their ancestors had come to America from this country against their will in centuries past, sold as slaves. And it began to take shape and crystalize in the streets and beaches of Ghana before the first notes were even struck on March 6, 1971. In many ways, what they experienced was a transformation. Though they may not have fully realized it on the way over to Ghana, the African-American contingent of musicians and singers were about to participate in something more than a concert at an exotic location. “For half the people, the reason we all went was to reconnect with what we thought was our ancestral background,” McCann said. ![]() A few members of Pickett’s band shrugged off the opportunity and stayed home because they didn’t want to undertake such a long trip for a single paying gig. Still don’t,” said Ike Turner, as if this were just another gig. “I don’t know nothing about Africa, period. For these performers, Africa was the land of “Tarzan” and jungle savages, a primitive place with which they had little in common. Yet a number of artists arrived in Ghana with little or no knowledge of the continent other than the dubious perceptions painted by Hollywood movies.
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