JHP Cultural and Diversity Legacy presents “Woshishije Cultural Group in 2023”

JHP Cultural and Diversity Legacy presents 

“Woshishije Cultural Group in 2023”

‘Woshishije’ in the Ga Language from the Greater Accra Region of Ghana means “Our Beginning”. As many of you know already, JHP Legacy seeks to promote cultural performances that are unique to specific nations, regions, ethnicities, and tribes.

JHP Legacy is proud to announce that from January through November of 2023, the renowned Ghanaian group would be touring our city, county and our Puget sound region providing over 60+ unique performances that include but not limited to traditional dances and dance-drama performances.

Woshishije is known for Ghanaian Traditional dances like Atsiagbekor, Fume Fume, Kpanlogo dance and drumming. This particular dance and drumming is the unique dance and drumming festival of the Ga Traditional area, especially for the people of Labadi, Bukom and Teshie-Nungua area. The Northern dances that are particular to harvest periods are also uniquely performed by this group to demonstrate thanksgiving periods. Damba-Takai, Bamaya, Bawa are some of the many dances that are performed with exaggerated costumes and wooden swords to tell a harvest story.

JHP is thrilled to announce that performances will begin in January at the Shoreline Conference Center, Shoreline Community College, University of Washington and proceed to outdoor performances at Cromwell Park, Paramount Park, Brugger’s Bog Park, when we begin our summer in 2023.

Woshishije believes that culture is an essential dimension of development in every individual’s life and therefore, development solutions should be tailored to locally relevant traditions. institutions should make use of local expertise and knowledge in order to augment development. It is good to state emphatically that the founding members of the group were not educated formally but still had the idea and the need to use dance and drumming for community development.

In view of this, Woshishije has a recognized performance titled “Installation on the Stage”

Over the past ten years, one of the unique performances which is proprietary to the group is “the installation of a paramount King/Chief in public”. This is a live performance of about 16-24 people on stage, with a setting of a palace where an instalment of a Chief is exhibited. The pouring of libation, the recitation of the oath, the linguist recitation on the drums and everything related to this is so unique and well-crafted to perfection. The group decided to craft this as a form of education and the uniqueness of this is worth seeing.

The Pacific NW would get to experience traditional dances that are exceptionally unique to the Ga-Dangbe ethnic group in Ghana as well as the Ewe tribe and part of the Northern Region of Ghana. Woshishije would provide dance workshops in our school district and other community drum and dance workshops shall be organized.

Specific Dates and times shall be provided as the New Year begins.

--Ebenezer Pobee