Amara & Kweku

Amara grew up in Dakar. Kweku grew up in Accra. They met at a conference in London on African cultural heritage, spent two years of long-distance conversation, and planned a wedding that would be held in Dakar with elements of both their traditions present. The Wolof side of the family handled the ceremony. The Akan side of the family handled the Knocking. The result was a weekend that both families agreed they had never experienced anything like.

The griot, the traditional West African oral historian and praise singer, who performed at the reception had been commissioned by Amara's grandmother six months before the wedding. He had spent those months researching both families, learning the genealogies, the stories, the migrations, the marriages that had brought each family to this moment. When he performed, standing at the centre of the reception hall with a kora player beside him, he sang each family's name and history in turn for six uninterrupted minutes. Guests who had never heard their family sung at a celebration wept without embarrassment.

Kweku wore a kente toga commissioned for the weekend; Amara wore successive boubou outfits in Wolof bridal tradition, changing three times. When both families danced together at the end of the evening, to a song that mixed the kora's melodic register with the highlife guitar rhythm Kweku's family had brought from Accra, Dakar and Accra became, for one night, the same place.