NORTHERN TRADITIONAL CLOTH

Tamale Smock (Northern Kente)

gong gong gong gong, the children in Tamale call it, this smock that has helped to revitalize Northern Ghana’s fashion industry. For those children, the name comes from the gong of the drum that the smock is usually worn to play; at occasions like the Damba festival, for instance, dancers sway from left to right, arms bent and extended outwards, allowing air to blow out the flair of their smocks. Gong! Gong! Gong! Gong!

The Waala of the Upper West Region call it woori,or “weavings” for the intricacy of its patterns; the Grunsi of the Upper East Region call it fumenko, which means “the real cloth”; and among the Dagbamba, it’s called binmaŋli, or “the real thing,” for its strength and durability, as Salifu Fusheini, a weaver, told me. For all the different names we have for this intricately-woven textile, however, if you call it “smock,” people will know what you mean. And it’s experiencing a revival: indigenous to Northern Ghana, a historically marginalized part of the country whose myriad ethnic groups share enough common ancestors, languages, foods, and cultural festivals—like the Damba festival—the attention the smock fabric is getting, across the nation, is almost revolutionary.