'Song of the Pharaoh' bestrides time and space like a colossus

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

The Africa Institute, Sharjah, in 2022 launched renowned Ghanaian avant-garde artist Mohammed Ibn-Abdallah’s play, Song of the Pharaoh, at Base Lounge in Accra, Ghana. The book, which has sung its way into the bestseller list in scholars’ circles, boasts an enviable social and academic pedigree.  

Its creator comes from a long line of pan-African activists and Islamic thinkers. Abdallah is the major Ghanaian playwright of his generation, and Song of the Pharaoh is his most ambitious play. It explores the life of the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Akhnaten and is a timeless story of love, politics, and religious intrigue set in ancient Egypt.

Song brings together decades of formal theatrical experiments with a spectacular Pan-African aesthetic combining Ghanaian traditional music and dance forms with an eclectic, creative blend of styles from Egypt and across Africa. It was ceremonially unveiled by the author in line with The Africa Institute’s second edition of the country-focused season with the focus on ‘Global Ghana’ - an annual initiative exploring one African country or African diaspora community through a range of scholarly and public programmes.

To further engage and stimulate audiences, a panel discussion, a music performance that showcased an ensemble that included some original and new cast members who performed excerpts from Song of the Pharaoh, was hosted.

The occasion celebrated the launch of the publication of the play in English and Arabic. “This book, Song of the Pharaoh, is the first bilingual publication as part of The Africa Institute series, Writing Africa, making it accessible to Arabic readers across the globe,” said Salah Hassan, Director, The Africa Institute.

“It represents the commitment of The Africa Institute to translation in order to familiarise readers with the diversity and complexities of African creative expressions and as an important form of bringing different cultures into a fruitful dialogue of ideas, interpretation, and presentation of African cultural forms and norms.” Introducing the book, ethnographer and artist Jesse Weaver Shipley, spoke of Abdallah’s seamless technique of incorporating music, dance and reflexive reflections on the performance itself into the dramatic narrative, forcefully and playfully pulling audiences into the story itself.

  Scene from the play Song of the Pharaoh.

“It is important to say that Abdallah’s work in theatre and the arts have opened critical dialogues among artists and audiences in our evolving cosmopolitan world. As a writer, director and politician working on culture, his work tries to rebalance the power dynamics that lie just below the surface and to tell stories that reshape how people remember and forget,” said Shipley.

The publication was made possible by the support and leadership of Hoor Al Qasimi, President, The Africa Institute; Awo Asiedu, Acting Dean of the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon, who guided the faculty, staff, and students at the School of Performing Arts and last but of course not the least, the skilled translators.

Song of the Pharaoh first premiered at Ghana’s National Theatre in September 2013 with a cast that included the National Theatre Company, the National Dance Ensemble and the National Symphony Orchestra. Musicians blended the akpaloo and kora genres into a modern original musical score.

The dance choreography blended various movement styles from around the continent, incorporating staccato aggressive war dances, celebratory sweeping wedding movements, and somber funerary marches rendered in slow motion.

Song of the Pharaoh tells the tale of the rise and fall of Akhnaten, a young pharaoh who fights to change the direction of his kingdom. It is a timeless story of love and political and religious intrigue set in ancient Egypt. Akhnaten marries his childhood friend, the famed beauty Nefertite, and they vie with her uncles for religious and political supremacy of the nation. They also oversee a time of growth and artistic flourishing.

The couple encourage education and build a new capital called the “City of Light.” Akhnaten is also the proponent of a monotheistic religion that conflicts with older forms of worship. Intrigue threatens to bring down the young rulers and their vision of the future. In the final scene, the struggle continues as Akhnaten leads a procession of followers into exile as his newly built “City of Light” sinks into the desert.

The characters are shadowed by three storytellers and a time-travelling spiritual, historian who narrate the tale and mediate among the audience, actors and the characters. As they move between the past and the present, the story of ancient times blends with critical portrayals of modern postcolonial struggle. The book consists of a foreword by Hassan and an introduction by Shipley.

Abdallah holds an MFA from University of Georgia and a Ph.D. from University of Texas, Austin, in theatre. His major plays include The Slaves, Trial of Malam Ilya, Alien King, Verdict of the Cobra, Land of a Million Magicians, and Witch of Mopti.

Written over the course of fifty years, the works have been concerned with developing an avant-garde theatrical style Abdallah has termed Abibigoro which translates from Akan as “Black/African play” but he uses to connote a “Total African Theatre.”

“I wanted to write Song of the Pharaoh because I was tired of seeing our story, our history being told to us and to the whole world by those who haven’t experienced it,” says Abdallah. “I always say, until the lion learns to tell his own story, the hunter’s tale is what is known. And this time, the Pharaoh has decided to sing his own song and tell his own story.”