Invalidating indigenous religious traditions via Christianity: Popular Ghanaian gospel songs/music

Abstract

This paper is about a subtle means deployed by followers of Christianity in delegitimizing Indigenous Religious Traditions (IRTs) in Ghana. It traces the activities of the historical debut of both the fourteenth-century Portuguese entry and the 19th-century missionary activities. It argues that local gospel music lyrics are meant to communicate a message to the listener, and the message is geared almost all the time towards delegitimizing the mainstay IRTs and their contents. The current generation of Christians, even though headed by Africans, are following suit of what happened earlier in those two periods—employing various means in expanding Christianity in an attempt to shrink or uproot IRTs. Lyrics and graphic video pictures in Songs/Music have been an ardent device directed to this agenda. Using historical and the content analysis method in analysing fifty local Ghanaian gospel music, we noted the genre in the songs as fear, spiritual battle between the enemy, the devil (witches, dwarves, juju,) disease, and God, power, empowerment, healing, freedom, and appellations. The recurring markers from songs composed by both known musicians and anonymous composers were grouped into three broad themes and analyzed. Findings indicate that the local gospel songs depict a plan to undermine IRTs by distinguishing between good and evil. Supplier, giver of good things (God and his son Jesus), and the destroyer and detractor of good things is the (devil) present in IRTs.