Models of Form and Style

This chapter prioritizes the inventiveness of nnwonkorɔ performer-composers and their strategic borrowing of rhetorical devices from a pool of traditional Akan verbal art forms including libation ( mpae ε), funeral cries ( nsui ), jubilation chants ( ose ) and drum poetry ( ayan ). I will proceed to provide a brief description of libation in order to examine how the prototypical, two- sectional nnwonkorɔ song units are transformed into multi-sectional song units when the formal procedures of libation are interpolated. I must first acknowledge that the brief background of the libation is primarily from Archbishop Peter Kwasi Sarpong’s (1996 ) book and Joseph Adjaye’s (2001 ) performance-based study of the libation in Akan societies.