A Biographical Study of Mama Dosi’s Song Texts

Abstract

ABSTRACT According to Miller and Brew (2003), biographical study of an artist’s work reveals to us the life experiences and the background that engineered the composition of such literary works. This assertion is based on their definition of biographical study as “a collection and analyses of an intensive account of a life, usually by in-depth unstructured interview” (p.5). Against this backdrop, I used the narrative theory, whose proponents believe in the interplay between interviewer and interviewee with the aim of taking the idea of the story to interpret how the individual constructs an account of life to do a biographical research on Mama Dosi and her song texts. Mama Dosi is an E3e song composer from 3ume in the Volta Region of Ghana. The choice of Mama Dosi was necessitated by the fact that after a critical investigation on biographical works of E3e composers, that a lot of biographical works have been carried out on E3e male composers but it seems to me none on female E3e songs composers especially those from Tongu area of Volta Region of Ghana. After a thorough study and analyses of the song texts, it was evident that, the life experiences of Mama Dosi such as the early death of her parents, her polygamous marriage, the death of her husband, her social life, and happenings in the community served as impetus for her literary works. This proves, to a large extent that an artist’s work and his or her life experiences, background and beliefs are interwoven.