An article about a controversy about the current national anthem of
Ghana at http://www.accra-mail.com/mailnews.asp?id=13450 also
mentions another (unofficial) anthem in Twi and other Ghanaian
languages. Excerpt below. (Seen via a Google alert)... DZO
NATIONAL ANTHEMS AND PATRIOTISM
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. | Posted: Tuesday, July 12, 2005
...
For me, there is the other "real" or authentic National Anthem that
wistfully and inexplicably failed to win the contest during the
1950s. That which is titled, in Akan, "Yen Ara Y'asaase Ni"** by the
celebrated and immortalized Dr. Ephraim Amu. Needless to say, the
latter sounds more Afrocentric and solemn than the one that won the
national-anthem competition.
Indeed, it appears to have been unwisely rejected largely because the
composer, who also penned the libretto, had rightly determined that
an organic, or authentic, Ghanaian national anthem ought to be
composed in a Ghanaian and African language spoken by most Ghanaians.
As it stands, the lyrics - or libretto - of the current national
anthem sounds unmistakably stilted and awkward and outright
amateurish and unmemorable, which is why Dr. Delle might have so
easily forgotten it. Dr Amu, whom this writer personally knew quite
well while growing up on the campus of the University of Ghana, would
almost definitely have characterized "God Bless Our Homeland, Ghana"
as patently reactionary, neocolonialist and Eurocentric. Indeed, "Yen
Ara Y'asaase Ni" ("This is our own [or ancestral] land") vehemently
decries the sort of clinical dementia that makes Mr. Rawlings and his
(P)NDC ideological dictators presume themselves to be the perpetual
hijackers of Ghanaian democracy. It is the kind of anthem that I
relish playing and exulting in - the kind of progressive clarion call
to national self-defense as the jealous guardians of our collective
patrimony.
Editor's notes *"Lift High the Flag of Ghana" was the first libretto
of Ghana's National Anthem. "God Bless our Homeland Ghana" came
later. ** This unofficial anthem was even in the '50s very popular,
having been translated into other Ghanaian languages. I used to sing
the Dagbani version as a small schoolboy somewhere in Yendi/Tamale.
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