The Noise Silence Makes by Mariam Goshadze, Paperback, 9781478031413 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Noise Silence Makes

Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars

Author: Mariam Goshadze   Series: Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People

The Noise Silence Makes
Paperback

Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, Ghana, showing how the 1990s and 2000s conflicts between the Ga people and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches during the annual city-wide ban on drumming illuminates the innerworkings of Ghanaian secularity and the importance of "traditional religions" to African urbanity.

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Summary

Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, Ghana, showing how the 1990s and 2000s conflicts between the Ga people and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches during the annual city-wide ban on drumming illuminates the innerworkings of Ghanaian secularity and the importance of "traditional religions" to African urbanity.

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Description

For generations, the Ga community in Accra, Ghana, has enforced an annual citywide ban on noisemaking during an important religious festival. In the 1990s and 2000s, this “ban on drumming” became a point of conflict between the Ga people and the newly popular Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, which refused to subdue their loud worship during the ban. Although the Ghanaian state constitutionally and institutionally grants superior status to Christianity and Islam, it ruled in favor of the Ga community, which emphasized its “cultural” rather than religious rights. In The Noise Silence Makes, Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, showing how the Ga people have adopted colonial mechanisms of noise control to counter Pentecostal/Charismatic dominance over Accra’s soundscape. Goshadze shows how the drumming ban represents a reversal of the top-down model of noise regulation and illuminates the reality of Ghanaian secularity, in which the state unofficially collaborates with indigenous religious authorities to control sound. In so doing, Goshadze counters the tendency to push African “traditional religions” to the margins, demonstrating that they are instrumental players in contemporary African urbanity.

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Critic Reviews

“Re-sounding tensions about ‘noisemaking’ arising between Ga ‘traditionalists’ and Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians in Accra, Mariam Goshadze offers a fresh take on interreligious entanglements from a sonic angle. This amazing book breaks new ground for understanding the precarious position of ‘traditional religion’ vis-À-vis Christianity by situating it in the Ghanaian secular regime in which religion, culture, and heritage are defined and managed. A trailblazing contribution to the study of religion and secularity in Africa.” - Birgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies, Utrecht University “This fascinating, innovative, and theoretically and ethnographically rich study questions the fixity in Ghana of the categories by which most political analysts define contemporary democratic nation-states. Mariam Goshadze’s argument for recognizing Ghanaian secularity as a unique formation is compelling and convincing. The Noise Silence Makes represents what is best about religious studies: its ability to analyze apparently nonreligious dynamics in productive ways through the accumulated tools of ritual analysis. A tour de force.” - Joseph Hellweg, author of (Hunting the Ethical State: The Benkadi Movement of Côte d'Ivoire)

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About the Author

Mariam Goshadze is Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion at Leipzig University.

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Product Details

Publisher
Duke University Press
Published
31st May 2025
Pages
277
ISBN
9781478031413

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