Ghanaian Scholar Wins International Award For Musicology

Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University, USA has been awarded the Frank Llewellyn Harrison Medal for 2009 by the Society for Musicology in Ireland. The award was presented to Professor Agawu at the joint plenary conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Royal Musical Association in the Freemasons’ Hall, Dublin on 10 July 2009. Professor Jan Smaczny, President of the Society, welcomed Agawu to Dublin, noting “the reach and excellence of his scholarship.”

Named in honour of one of Ireland’s most distinguished musicologists, the Harrison Medal “recognizes musical scholarship of international distinction; it honours the highest musicological endeavour and salutes the leadership the candidate has exerted on the international musicological community.” This is only the third time that the award has been made. Previous recipients are Professor Christoph Wolff of Harvard University and Professor Margaret Bent of All Souls College, Oxford University. In his address to accompany the award, Professor Smaczny cited Agawu’s “remarkably pioneering” books, including Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (1991), African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective (1995), Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions (2003) and Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (2008).

He singled out Playing with Signs, which received the Young Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory in 1994, as “one of the books from the last twenty years that can genuinely be said to have changed the way the profession views the canon.” Smaczny concluded his address by noting that “Distinction has certainly followed Kofi Agawu throughout his career. Provocative enquiry, the challenge of fondly held nostrums and the assertions of the unwary or unprepared. There is a lucidity to Kofi Agawu’s writing that makes his work a model, not just for musical scholars, but for many others across the full range of the humanities.”

A native of Akpafu-Todzi, Professor Agawu attended the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School, Legon and Achimota Schoool. He received his undergraduate degree from Reading University in the UK, his masters’ degree from King’s College, London, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has taught at Cornell, Harvard, Yale and King’s College, London and held visiting positions in Italy, Belgium, Holland, Hong Kong, the UK, South Africa, Canada and throughout the United States. He was awarded the Dent Medal in 1992 by the Royal Musical Association for distinguished contributions to musicology, and the Distinguished Visitor award by the School of Music at the University of Toronto in 2004. A Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Sciences since 2000, Professor Agawu is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Ghana, Legon.