Text

theses

The Ghanaian drummer Kofi Ghanaba is not frequently discussed as a central figure in the historical trajectory of modern jazz drumming. However, the nature of his musical relationship with the firmly influential Max Roach implies that Ghanaba may have had an important impact on the vocabulary of the jazz drumset. This thesis, using historiographic and analytical material, attempts to show the specific transference of musical data and concept from Ghanaba to Roach, thus re-orienting Kofi Ghanaba as a significant figure in the evolution of 20th-century jazz drumming.

Historiographic and analytical methodology can help us to surmount the problems inherent to attempts at defining influence when there is an absence of verifiable primary-source testimony. The identification of a relevant temporal period and the use of transcription and analysis to comprehensively search for instances of “individual rhythmic correspondence” between Roach and Ghanaba is referred to using the metaphor of building an historiographic “sandbox,” through which we drag an analytical “comb.”

Section I uses historical documents to establish proof of the physical and aural relationship between Roach and Ghanaba. Section II draws on existing research, my own comprehensive discographical exploration, and transcription and analysis to narrow down the possibilities of “individual rhythmic correspondence” between the two drummers. The use of complex ostinatos in long-form individual improvisations emerges as the most likely point of transference from Ghanaba to Roach.

There are inherent historiographical difficulties in tracing point-to-point musical transference that can make proving lines of influence between artists an exceedingly murky endeavor. However, the significant documentation of physical and aural proximity, primary source confirmation of musical influence from both subjects, and concrete musical correlations supported by transcription and analysis suggest a firm basis for understanding Kofi Ghanaba as an influence on Max Roach, and, by extension, on the continuum of 20th-century jazz drumming.

ETD_11326

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

ETD graduate

doi:10.7282/t3-fk86-7t11

The author owns the copyright to this work.