There are stories that do not begin; they unfold. The Kente story is one such story—a cloth that remembers before men could write, a thread that carries the memory of hands that once spoke in color and pattern. Today, its name has become a battlefield. The Ewes and the Asantes have taken up arms made of words, their voices rising and crashing like ancestral drums across the plains. The argument burns so fiercely that even the old gods must turn their ears away.
Tables tremble under the weight of fists. Scholars bend paper to prove their lineage. The air is thick with pride and suspicion. And through it all, the cloth remains silent—glimmering in its sacred composure, as though amused that mortals would quarrel over what only spirits can remember.
But there, in the middle of this loud storm, the Dangmes sit in silence. They chew their words like kola nuts and smile faintly, watching the Ewes and Asantes tear through the air like rival wives in a house too small for both. The irony is almost cosmic: the Kente’s story begins not in Bonwire, nor in Anloga, but in Agotime—a Dangme town that long ago married itself to Ewe custom so completely that the two are now separated only by the music of their speech.
The Dangmes of Agotime once spun a cloth they called Agbamevo—a fabric older than memory, older even than the quarrel that now rages. Over time, a new pattern emerged—Kente—woven from the same spirit but wearing a new face. The Ewes say it was the natural child of Agbamevo; the Asantes say it was a revelation, a gift dropped from the heavens. Both stories shimmer with truth and imagination, as all great myths do.
The Ewes whisper that their weavers traveled northward, crossing rivers and forests, until they reached Bonwire. There, they taught the art to the Asantes—warp by weft, thread by thread. But the Asantes tell it differently. They say a hunter in Bonwire, blessed by solitude and the hum of the forest, saw a spider weaving its web in the bush. The web glowed with morning dew and revelation. The hunter returned to his village, and from that vision, Kente was born.
The story carries the fragrance of an Asante myth—majestic, eternal, untouchable. It sits beside the tale of the Sikadwa, the Golden Stool that fell from the sky to anoint the Asante Kingdom. In that light, it is easy to see why the Asantes believe Kente, too, must have descended from above. For in Asante cosmology, nothing of worth ever grows from the ground; it must be commanded from the heavens.
Even so, time has a quiet way of unspooling illusions. Historians whisper that the Golden Stool did not descend at all—it was seized in battle from Denkyira. But myth is stronger than truth when truth is inconvenient. The Asante remain immovable, their pride gilded in legend.
The Ewes and Dangmes, on their part, do not trust legends, unless they are spiritual; so they smile. They say the name itself—Kente—betrays the truth. For it was never Kente, but Kete: from the Ewe verbs ke (to open) and te (to press)—the rhythm of weaving itself. “Ke-te, ke-te,” they say, imitating the sound of the loom’s heartbeat. When the Asante first heard it, they repeated it in their own tongue, and thus Kente was born from the echo of Kete. And so, like the loom that never stops turning, even language was woven into the cloth.
Still, even if the Asante name came from a misheard word, it does not diminish their genius for reimagining it. Perhaps, as the Ewes gave the cloth its soul, the Asante gave it its ceremony. For the Kente that drapes Asante kings is not merely cloth—it is a scripture of status, a prayer of power, an argument in silk.
Yet, history is a cruel archivist. It only preserves what can be touched, not what can be sung. And so, when the museums opened their vaults, the oldest Kente they found were not Asante but Ewe—woven long before the 1800s, when Bonwire’s legend begins. The threads spoke before the hunter dreamed.
Still, no truth ever ends a story. The cloth continues to be woven, and with each generation, the loom hums a little differently. The patterns multiply like children who all bear the same ancestral face but claim different fathers. The Ewe see themselves in the geometry. The Asante see the divine in the symmetry. The Dangme, silent as ever, see the comedy of it all—and perhaps the wisdom too.
In the end, the Kente itself knows. It remembers every hand that touched it, every voice that named it, every spirit that whispered into its thread. It carries within its weave the laughter of women in Agotime, the prayers of men in Bonwire, and the quiet nods of Dangme elders who no longer bother to correct anyone.
The Kente may not belong to those who shout the loudest. It belongs to time, to color, to rhythm, to the ancient patience of the loom.
And so, the debate endures, like the cloth itself—brilliant, tangled, unending.
Agotime is a KPONE settlement. Kpetoe and Afegame.
Kwame Akoto Kpone & Ningo. Kokui a female descent of Togbe Wenya from the family of Togbe Tetekpa of Weta married a King of Ningo. After the death of the King there was a dispute with the succession a section of the people wanted her son to succeed the father and others objected on the grounds that shr did not come from Ningo. She reported the incident to Togbe Tetekpa who in turn informed the elders at Anloga. Famous hunters and warriors such as Doe Dala, Klutse Agamatsu etc were sent on an expedition to look for unoccupied land to settle the Queen and children etc. They secured lands from their relatives, the people of Adaklu and settled Kokui and her children there and Agotime was founded. The stories of Dangbe and Ewe and Asante are timelessnessly interwoven like the story of kente. It is Ghana’s story 🇬🇭🇬🇭🇬🇭
Mello A King Thanks for the invaluable education.
What about Agbozume and other Kete weaving towns of Volta Region? What about it being Co-developed by the Eʋeawo and Dangbes, since they have similar migration route? Why are the names of the towns Agotime Kpetoe and Afegame not Ga-Adangbe names if they were made up of “originally” Ga-Adangbes?
Alberta Mortty Your point and insinuation are valid criticism. I am not a historian, but I think your point buttresses some, if not all, of what I wrote. That the Dangmes in these places and the Ewes are so completely woven together that the two are now separated only by the music of their speech.
Narmer Amenuti But you indicated earlier it is solely a Dangme town. Which is not the case. For centuries.
But Narmer Amenuti, both “Agbamevo” and “Kete” ( or “kente”) are Ewe expressions. Not Dangme, not Twi. The linguistic distinction between Ewe and Dangme, especially in Agotime, is a whole lot more complex and nuanced than you make it out to be. I hope you do not fall victim to western ethnography. For example, the people of Alakple may be originally Dangme as well, but could one separate them from the Anlo? The Dangmes of Agotime are closer to the Ewes there in the same way the Dangmes in Ada are closer to the Anlo than to the Gas in Ga-Mashie. Ethnicity is a stubborn subject in Africa. I preach caustion.
However, this is an enjoyable essay!
Dade Afre Akufu Correct. Points well-taken. And thanks as well.
Dade Afre Akufu Kente is Twi word so mind your speech it has nothing to do with dangme
I suspect you’re a Dangme man, no doubt, displaying unconscious public biases to lay claim to a story that indeed must have a beginning. It’s only by first finding who the inventor of the traditional loom that yarns these beautiful kente artifacts before one can trace the birthplace of this national traditional asset especially when we can throw in the group of people who first lay hands on these colorful cotton threads from external source to weave them. The investors are more likely the fantes who first hand interaction with the likely foreign resources
Axel Wiseman tracing the “inventor” of “traditional” loom, simply agree with the statement that some stories don’t have beginnings or something…. Just to say your point cut out for you above, agrees with the post than disagrees.
Inserting the “inventor” and “traditional”(whatever this word actually means, thanks to Hegel and his adherents) suggests non-static society. Where inventions operates, so therefore, presence of “innovation” over time can’t be ruled out. Based on how complex African societies and cultures were, borrowing ideas, arts, etc, from each other before the arrival of colonialists.
With this in mind, how do we “find” the “inventor” of the loom in this situation?
Axel Wiseman I suspect it is not the logic of my argument that unsettles you, but the ghost it awakens—the ghost of the Dangmes, whom you would rather keep unmentioned, like a forgotten ancestor whose name disturbs the peace of the living. You accuse me of bias for daring to invoke them in a debate that clearly winds through their ancestral looms, as though truth itself must shrink to the size of your comfort.
For years, this argument has swung like a pendulum between Asante and Ewe, each side singing its own hymn to heritage. Yet when I lift the veil and point to the Dangmes—who stand, quietly and centrally, in the very warp of the cloth—you call my gesture partial. Tell me, by what divine arithmetic does omission become virtue and inclusion become sin?
And now, as if to sweeten the irony, you invoke the Fantes—as though plucking them from the blue sky of your imagination could balance the scales of your discomfort. You would rather expand the circle to those distant from the loom than acknowledge those whose hands contributed to its mystery. Strange arithmetic indeed.
So I ask again—not out of anger, but curiosity—how does this bias of mine work? For it seems, in your reasoning, that to name the forgotten is to offend the powerful, and that silence, not speech, has become the last refuge of the fair-minded.
It becomes interesting and problematic at the same time to claim that Agortime is a Dangme town or settlement. That may not be entirely true. Perhaps, blend of different groups across cultures, overstepping what we know today as “broaders”(int. boundaries), and Agortime evolved later, as rightly point out by you, to be dominated by Dangmes. The power of trade at that period, value of salt that Dangmes had upper hand over, can’t be ruled out…..
Finally, crediting a group of people as the “originator” of the art of producing a wrap on seems overstretched. Just like the perfect story of the anthropogony traceable to the Garden of Eden, necessitating a sleeping dog to lie.
Considering the complexities, dynamics and nuances involved in human interactions, and above all social and political systems in today’s Africa before the arrival of the colonialists.
Phanuel Ayawli I understand. I am not saying the Dangmes invented Kente, just as I am not denying that Agotime is Ewe. What I am saying—what I have written—is that Agotime lives in the twilight between two worlds: a Dangme heartbeat wrapped in Ewe song. There, history did not draw borders; it wove them. The people became a living tapestry—an ethno-linguistic experiment that could only have been conceived by the gods of trade or born from the quiet migrations of family and time.
It is not heresy to say that Agotime is both Ewe and Dangme; it is simply the truth of mingled blood and shared salt. Cultures do not meet at their edges—they spill into one another like rivers that have forgotten where they began. And in that sacred confusion, art is born.
So when I insist that Dangmes, too, stand at the center of the loom’s story, it is not to rob the Ewes of their glory, but to remind us that history’s cloth has many hands. The weaver, the trader, the storyteller—all have threads in this fabric.
To speak this reality is not bias—it is reverence.
Narmer Amenuti the Dangmes and ewes always move together. Check the history of damgmes. Until recently that some deny not to speak or even understand ewe language for reasons up to them.
They are like first cousins.
The Primitive African during his days in Ntoaboma, unable to read nor write,Greek or Latin, nor comprehend the Geometrical Principles of Euclid, Chose rather to preserve his Story and Secrets not in Literature but Language,
They had no knowledge in patent rights ,Name proved origin.
It will however be strange for a people to “invent” something as complex a the art of Weaving,an art perhaps only the Ordained craftsman in the Palaces of Kings could possess,and yet was UNABLE to give it a Name.
Even for Linguistic illiterate or the toddler learning to make meaning of Word etymology, Ke-te are too basic to be used as Name for such a complex technological invention; unless of cos the invention of Kente predates 14th and 15th century migrating African ethnicities, a period where our languages were in their formative stages of basic 2 and 3 letter words, of which if that was the case then no one can claim ownership, not Asante,Ewe or Dangbe.
Perhaps the Asante has been able to weave some mystery around its origin and Name, given names to every unique motif ever made from Dwene si Dwene so, to Premo ne kwae3 etc:even when they made one for commoners they named it Edwene-asa( anwenne3 asa,Lack of motifs).etc.
Asante as history has taught us has largely remained Warriors and Merchants,
They paid little attention to the arts and crafts, Money and military might is enough to Hire specialists of every race and color,
From The Kalmo Moor from Timbuktu to the mason from Fante land to the Carpenter from Anlo and therefore exception cannot be made for the Weaver in Bonwire
A Kingdom founded in the 17th century cannot posess an art that will probably need 300 to 500 years of tria an error to perfect unless of cos it was ‘revealed’ by the Gods apparently. 😂
But as someone who speaks Asante Twi as first language and blessed with fair command over the language, one will notice weaved into the language are traces of almost 10 different languages and everything borrowed,from Food to Arts,craft ,Names of basic items to even greeting, The words remain in their original language,
From Akpeteshie to Sika,Samena,Sikyire,Srekye ahoma (Silk thread)
Dokono, Gob3 😂 Agoo, Ayekoo etc.
HONESTLY none of our Ethnicities can boldly claim it as originators therefore I find it intellectually dishonest for anyone to use anecdotes and probably mishearing to credit anyone as originators outside those who has given it PROMINENCE.
I won’t be surprised the next argument will be who Taught who how to name their children cos Korku sounds similar to Kwaku lol.
I mean doesn’t it even cross our minds we might be even be related and only separated by Historical circumstances unknown?
Kente is an Akan word not Dangme get this clear
Michael Asante What is the Akan etymology, please walk us through it.