A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter II-6:  Chieftaincy in Dagbon

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The Yaa-Naa and the thirteen divisional chiefs; types of divisional chieftaincy; organization of the chieftaincy hierarchy; buying chieftaincy; how the hierarchy shifts; paths to the Yendi chieftaincy; the elders' chieftaincies; paths to the elders' chieftaincies; drumming protocols related to the chieftaincy hierarchy


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Supplementary material

Images


Figures and lists


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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Introduction

Chieftaincy levels

Buying and selling chieftaincy

How chiefs move from town to town

The elders' chieftaincies:  Gushegu, Gukpeogu, Kumbungu, Tolon

Differences in who eats different chieftaincies

The Yendi chieftaincy and its doors

The divisional chiefs

Commoners chieftaincies

The elders' chieftaincies:  Tolon, Gushegu, Gukpeogu; Kumbungu

Drumming Bimbiɛɣu

The gbiŋgbiri luŋa

Doors to the elders' chieftaincies:  Gukpe-Naa, Tolon-Naa, Kumbun-Naa, Gushe-Naa

Conclusion:  the ways of chieftaincy


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Proverbs and Sayings

If you want to know the ways of Dagbon, you have to know about the ways of the chiefs.

Every town has got the chiefs who can come to eat chieftaincy there.

And some people's roads will come to make one road.

And that is why I talk and separate them for you.  It's like taking a small child and showing him the Holy Qur'an:  you don't show him the whole thing at once; you start from the first chapter.

Talks separate.

A Yaa-Naa's town cannot sell a Yaa-Naa's town.  And it shows that a Yaa-Naa's town is big to everybody, but they are more than one another.

If someone is talking talks, what is coming is not what is going back.

If you give somebody a wife and show him how to sex, then that person is a useless person.  And so I am giving you a wife, and you should know how you are going to sex her.

Our Dagbon chieftaincy is mixed up.  Only we drummers know how it goes.

Yaa-Naa's grandson can eat some chieftaincies, but we say that those chieftaincies are for the sons of Yaa-Naas.

How someone's chieftaincy goes from one place to another, there are different levels, and it is not every chief who can move from his town to eat the chieftaincy of another town.  And it is the particular town which shows whether a chief of that town can go out from the town to eat another town's chieftaincy.  And every town has got people who have a way to eat chieftaincy there.

“So-and-so sat on the skins and remained in the chieftaincy.”

The one who eats Yendi is “the one God likes.”

Yendi talks don't die:  if you say that Yendi talks have died, the next day the talks will stand up again.

Yendi too has got its ways.

In these modern times, everybody's eyes are open.

If you say a talk dies, the next day it grows, because there are children and grandchildren and elders.

Every town has got its ways, and Yendi talks don't die.

The one who becomes Yaa-Naa is the one God likes.

Something will show that something doesn't happen, and we haven't seen it, but it can happen.

Old talks don't die.  If they die, they change.  That is how tradition is, and it is not a fault.

They only carry a child on the shoulder to see what is far away.

It is your town which will show how your chieftaincy moves.

Old talks don't die.  If they die, they change.  That is how tradition is, and it is not a fault.

Namo-Naa and Yendi Sampahi-Naa are like two parts of a broken calabash.

If it were something that could happen, it would have happened a long time ago.

These chieftaincies I am talking about, each of them is standing on its way, and the talks of the chiefs are mixed.

Talks come to enter one another.

In Dagbon here, every chief stands on his own way.

Chieftaincy talk doesn't die.

How the chiefs move, it doesn't show that if you are the son of a chief, you will also eat chieftaincy some day.

Our custom shows us that the person who becomes a chief is someone God likes.

The talk of chieftaincy never ends, and no one can know all of it.

In Dagbon here, every town has got its way.  And every family has its way.

If you farm millet and birds come to eat the seeds, you don't send a blind person to go and watch your farm.

If you want to give something to someone to keep for you, you should give it to someone with patience and with very good eyes so that he will be watching the thing well for you.

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