One morning last week I went fishing and noticed for the first time Bortey Radi putting his ear down to the rail of the canoe. At first I thought he was just tired: it was four in the morning and most of the crew was wearily stretched out on the canoe's benches and piles of net. But Bortey wasn't catching a final snooze as we commuted to the fishing grounds, he was in fact checking for fish.
"Some of the fish shout as they swim past the boat," Bortey explained. "We put our ear on the canoe and can hear them as they go by." It was the fisherman's equivalent of a hobo putting his ear to a railroad track to listen for a coming freight train. "Does it work with steel boats?" I asked. "No, only wood. You can also use the wooden boat hook or a wooden paddle. And if you crouch in the bottom of the canoe you can hear them, too."
'When the net has mostly been hauled on board, the terns
circle and dive into swirling pools of fish at the side of the
canoe. They add their own shouts to those of the fish and
the men.'
Of the 20 or more types of fish the fishermen catch, only six of them shout. Listening through the handle of a wooden paddle I heard the high whistle of one type, moi. Two other varieties also whistle, another two make low grunting noises, and one makes a soft "kwa kwa, kwa kwa." That fish is named after its shout—kwa kwa.
Using pure, uninformed speculation, it occurred to me that perhaps the fish use a type of sonar to navigate. Or maybe the fish, like their fishermen, are singing. Any way you can imagine it, listening for fish through the hull of the canoe is an extraordinary concept: the canoe becomes not just a staging ground for musical fishing, but also an enormous 90-foot amplifier that, when used properly, helps the fishermen locate their quarry.
The boat serves as an amplifier in another way. The men stand or sit on the benches and sing, and as they sing the sound moves down into the hull of the boat, which—empty of net—becomes a long echo chamber in which the sound resonates. A cross-section of the hull reveals a big U, about four feet deep and six feet wide. The sound goes in, bounces around and fires back out at the workers seemingly louder than when first sung. You can duplicate this effect at home by facing the corner of the room about two feet away from either wall. Then sing or shout directly at the corner in front of you. You should be able to hear yourself loud and clear in both ears, almost as if you're wearing headphones. That's what it's like working on the benches of a musical canoe.
Furthermore, if you crouch down in the hold as the work goes on you can literally feel the singing as the boat vibrates. At the same time the boat is vibrating from the ropes coming in over the rail. The rope is about the thickness of a man's thumb, and the corrugated strands rub a groove in the wood where they come in contact. In these places the rope is stretched very tight against the wood and the resulting fiction causes the whole boat to vibrate. Since the men are pulling in time with the music (when possible), certain beats get an added bass "thrum" from the taught lines. (In general these thrums come on the first and third beat in a song with a feeling of four, i.e. beats one and three in a four-beat measure.)
This fascinating piece of the fishing process opened my ears to other sonic phenomena out on the water, like the songs of other fishing teams floating over to our boat as we do our work. On an average morning there are between 50 and 150 canoes out on the stretch of coast visible from Nungua, depending on how many fish are in the area. When the giant schools of fish move right in next to the coast, every seaworthy canoe that can be manned heads out to bring in the catch. Other days, when the fish have moved elsewhere, fewer canoes can be seen on the gulf.
Since the fish move in schools, it is common to see a handful of canoes in a clump around a school of fish. Sometimes one canoe will set its net and begin hauling it in, and if it is full of fish, another fishing team will come along and set their net in a giant circle around the first. They catch any fish that made it out of the first net. So it's common to be near other canoes, and as a result you can often hear them singing. At times you can hear two or three teams singing in addition to your own. Some are far off and faint, others only half a football field away. The songs cross and collide with each other like ripples in a puddle.
Other sounds inform the musical experience on these fishing canoes: the metal rings attached to the net rattle and clang as they go over the side during the casting, and then rattle and clang again as they are brought aboard during the hauling. The water sloshes around in the open bilge and occasionally someone will hop down in to bail. These actions contain a rhythm of their own.
And when the net has mostly been hauled on board, the terns circle and dive into swirling pools of fish at the side of the canoe. They add their own shouts to those of the fish and the men.
The fishermen are tuned into all of these noises, and they use them as clues to finding fish. They also use their eyes to watch for birds and for the fish as they dart through the water. They use the sky, checking weather patterns throughout the day and the seasons, as well as the flight patterns of the terns and seagulls. They also look for clues in the water, like the color and the currents. When the breeze is off the land it causes the water from the deep to churn up to the surface and this causes the fish to scatter.
These fishermen have developed a sophisticated understanding of the local environment to help them find their fish, and it is worth noting that a whole book could be written about the knowledge they possess. I would like to be the guy to do that, but unfortunately my time here is short.
Yesterday I spent the morning on a final fishing trip, and it was one of our best. I have learned how to lead songs while we fish on board the canoes, much to the amusement of the fishermen, and they now constantly request more tunes. As a result the last two weeks have been some of the most enjoyable of my four-month-old Watson journey. I'm sad to leave Ghana so soon.
From one perspective my project seems like a series of poorly-timed goodbyes. From another it is a series of introductions to fascinating people and traditions that I get to spend the rest of my life exploring. Tonight I add one more goodbye and a new introduction, as I push on to Tanzania after midnight. On the plane I will write some final thoughts on my time in Ghana, and I'll type them up and send them out when I arrive in East Africa. Until then, wish me ample legroom and smell-free cabin-mates.
— Bennett