This interesting Gold Coast / Ghana stamp with drummer from 1957 is one of my favorite stamps. It captures so much in such a small canvas. Postage stamps often have political meaning. I recently wrote about the use of an instrument as a national symbol on the postage stamps of Myanmar (formerly Burma). The topic of this post is how a stamp was used to reinforce a colonial government.
Colonial Postage Stamps
Scott Number 8
I think this stamp displays many elements of the relationship between the colonial power (Britain) and a former colony (Ghana). Most colonial stamps featured white European monarchs as a reminder of who was in control. Stamps functioned much like having a monarch on a coin or a portrait hanging in a government building. These images were a reminder of who had the power.
Colonial stamps often only featured an image of the monarch. A second group of stamps featured an image of the king or queen alongside a scene that represented something about the local colony. This is a rare example where that local scene is of a musician, in this case a drummer. I love the juxtaposition of the profile view of Queen Elizabeth the II seemingly looking over the head of her subject, while the drummer is practically a caricature of an “African drummer” as a European would have viewed them.
But a little political history is also necessary to understand this stamp. The Gold Coast, like the Ivory Coast and the Slave Coast, were regions on the west of Africa that received their names from the resources that Europeans exploited from the area. The coastal areas were much desired by European powers as far back as the 15th century when more extensive trade began to take place. Over the next several centuries, Europeans would take ever more control and push ever farther into the interior of Africa as they sought natural resources from their colonies.
After World War II, with Britain in a weakened state and colonies around the world taking their independence, the area known as the British Gold Coast along with several other adjacent protectorates also controlled by the British were combined into a single political area. In 1957, the independent country of Ghana was born encompassing these areas.
The Stamp
SG 138 Scott # 133
The above stamp is an updated version of one first made in 1948. It replaced the image of King George VI with that of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II.
Although the postage stamp is printed with the words “Gold Coast” next to the image of the Queen, you can also see that there is black lettering overprinted on the stamp that clearly says “GHANA / INDEPENDENCE / 6TH MARCH, / 1957.”
So this stamp represents a very specific moment in time, when Ghana established itself as a new and independent country. Visually, the whole story is there. The “old” name of the country, the colonial monarch’s portrait (although she remained as head of state while Ghana was in the commonwealth), alongside the image of the Ghanaian drummer and the cancellation stamp celebrating the new Ghana. This is a stamp that talks as much as the drums.
The Drums
The drums are called Atumpan and are said to “talk” because of the rhythms that a skilled drummer can produce. Those rhythms convey messages to others who know the language. The atumpan should not be confused with the smaller variable-tension “talking drums.” The smaller instruments are played under the arm, and by changing the tension on the cords of the drum the pitches are changed to mimic speech pattern. I found this pretty fantastic video on Youtube clips of a drummer in 1922 along with a field recording. You can see that the drums being played are almost identical to those on the stamp. Then there is the primitive recording technology with the horn pointed right at the drums. It just so reminds me of the Queen looking over the drummer in the stamp. The juxtaposition of the “modern” west and “traditional” Africa.
The atumpan are still in use in contemporary Ghana. The following video shows a drummer playing a message, with a translation of what the drums are actually saying.
