Bizung School of Music and Dance

Gonje

by Sara-Maria Sorentino

The gonje (alternatively spelled gondze or goonje) is a mysterious instrument—strange and uncanny even to those among whom its playing is commonplace.  The sounds, the technique, and the crafting of the gonje all make for an intensely singular aural experience. Decorated with scarves and a specially designed brass ball for ornamentation, it is nearly inexplicable for an outside observer to discern how a mass of string tied to a resonator can produce such a range of sounds.  The gonje screeches and wails and hums better than the most accomplished avant-garde saxophonist.  What is probably an ancestor of the lute, the fiddle and the violin, the single-stringed gonje is found in different variations across West Africa.  Gonje musicians became members of the royal court of Dagbon (the ethno-linguistic territory for the Dagbamba people, in which Tamale is situated) in the 19th century during the rule of the Dagbamba paramount chief Naa Yakubu I, although the gonje, said to have come from a town called Yambi in what is now Burkina Faso, has been integral to Northern Ghana for many centuries.

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