Netflixing Tradition: The Case of ‘Dote Yie’ and Ghana’s Cultural Storytelling By Bright Kwadwo Oduro

Last week, Kumasi stood still with a great cinematic piece. The Manhyia Palace and the wider Ashanti Region hosted a four-day Dote Yie. The traditional parting rites for the late Asantehemaa, Nana Konadu Yiadom III. Dote Yie witnessed tens of thousands of mourners, chiefs, priests, politicians, and diaspora delegations. These high-ranking personnel packed palace courtyards and public squares to witness a ritual sequence that is at once a political theatre, a sacred liturgy, and a living archive of Akan identity. Dote Yie was marked by traditional drumming, durbar processions, firing salutes, priestly rites and pageant-like regalia, which were widely reported and photographed across national media.

Dote Yie, literally “farewell” in Akan Twi, is not an aesthetic spectacle detached from meaning. It is a moral and mnemonic practice that stages how a people remember, transmit authority, and rehearse political continuity. The ritual sequencing of a Dote Yie for royals, laying-in-state, drumming and dirges, libation, enacting of melancholy and celebration, final interment, reflects the Akan worldview that the dead remain active members of the community and that public mourning is itself an educative act. Ethnographic and cultural studies of Akan mortuary rites demonstrate how music, dance, speech, and material culture (such as kente, gold regalia, and carved stools) are integral to the rites’ function as a social glue and intergenerational instruction.

What I watched in Kumasi was a living museum: (a) Master drummers setting lamentation rhythms, (b) Adowa dancers translating grief into choreography, (c) Priest-diviners performing rites at dusk, (d) Palace stewards parading ancestral stools and regalia, and the Asantehene, as chief mourner, embodying continuity. The visual language is powerful. Saturated cloth and kente motifs, the sheen of gold, the choreography of procession and palanquin, the soundscape of talking drums (Fontofrom). It is a mise-en-scène tailor-made for cinematic storytelling. Observers noted not only the ritual’s cultural depth but its civic effect. The city’s businesses paused, people travelled home, and national attention focused on Kumasi for the week.

Why film and why now?
Two linked arguments justify a major film project: (1) the Dote Yie is both visually spectacular and socially legible; and (2) it carries contemporary political meaning. The rites are not mere tradition for tradition’s sake, hence, they stage succession, public legitimacy, and the negotiation of modernity and tradition. For international viewers, a well-crafted documentary (or a high-production feature documentary series) would translate these practices into a universal story about memory, leadership, and nationhood, while for Ghanaian audiences, it would function as cultural documentation and civic education.

There is precedent for global platforms embracing African cultural narrative when access, context and narrative integrity are guaranteed. What makes Dote Yie exceptional as film material is its layered dramaturgy: private mourning vs. public performance; ritual specificity vs. national symbolism; and the emotional work of a community negotiating loss and continuity.

Dote Yie is not merely theatre: it is a pedagogical device by which the Asante rehearse what matters about leadership, memory, and morality. To film it responsibly is to become a custodian as well as a storyteller. This is a rare moment when Ghana offers global audiences a fully formed cultural drama, visually sumptuous, ethically complex, and politically resonant. With careful cultural partnership and editorial seriousness, a Dote Yie film can both preserve and project Ghanaian narrative sovereignty, told by Ghanaians, on Ghanaian terms. “Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu are waiting, let’s tell the Ghanaian story the Ghanaian way”.

Bright Kwadwo Oduro is a teaching and research assistant and columnist dedicated to exploring issues related to development and film as a tool for education, policy engagement, and civic transformation. He writes the weekly series “Film as a Developmental Tool in Ghana”.

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