The Ghanian scholar who changed how the world hears African music

Kofi Agawu is regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on African music. The Ghanaian scholar, teacher and researcher has changed how the world hears and studies it.

I am a scholar of indigenous African music. I have researched and written extensively on African indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews.

I also know Professor Agawu personally. He has visited my institution, the University of Venda in South Africa. In this article, I pay tribute to his pioneering work in African musicology while taking issue with one finer point in his theories. This, I think, makes for a more useful tribute than unbroken praise.

The invention of African rhythm

Kofi Agawu, who turns 70 on 28 September 2026, was born in Hohoe in Ghana’s Volta region. He is Ewe, which is the dominant group of the region. He finished school at Achimota in Accra, studied in Britain and completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1982. After many years at Princeton, he now teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Across six books he has made it very hard to go on saying that African music is something that is “felt” rather than something that is thought about analytically.

For most of the 20th century, writing about African music...

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