Ashanti

‘First day of the yam custom, with king of the Ashanti and British troops’, from Thomas Bowdich's Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819). His book provides the first detailed account of the thriving Ashanti kingdom, with descriptions of its customs and culture, the royal court, and the capital of Kumasi. Bowdich also wrote vocabularies of the various languages he encountered, and made notations of traditional music.

Region of Ghana, western Africa; area 25,100 sq km/9,700 sq mi; population (1990 est) 2,487,300. Kumasi is the capital. It is the most densely populated region in Ghana, and most of the people are Ashanti. Most are cultivators and the main crop is cocoa, but the region is also noted for its forestry, mining of bauxite, metalwork, and textiles. For more than 200 years Ashanti was an independent kingdom.

During the 19th century the Ashanti and the British fought for control of trade in West Africa. The British sent four expeditions against the Ashanti and formally annexed their country in 1901. Otomfuo Sir Osei Agyeman, nephew of the deposed king, Prempeh I, was made head of the re-established Ashanti confederation in 1935 as Prempeh II. The Golden Stool (actually a chair), symbol of the Ashanti peoples since the 17th century, was returned to Kumasi in 1935 (the rest of the Ashanti treasure is in the British Museum). The Asantahene (King of the Ashanti) still holds ceremonies in which this stool is ceremonially paraded.

Ashanti (1980– )

US R&B artist. Known for her demure sex appeal, she became the first artist since the Beatles to achieve three simultaneous number one hits in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. After several successful duets with popular rappers, she released her best-selling self-titled debut album in 2002, which featured the hit single ‘Foolish’ and sold more than half a million copies in its first week. She followed with the album Chapter II, featuring the hit single ‘Rock Wit U (Awww Baby)’, in 2003 and Concrete Rose, featuring the hit single ‘Only U’, in 2004.

Behind her rapid rise to stardom was New York City producer Irv Gotti (1971– ), who signed her to his Murder, Inc. record label. Her hit duets ‘Always on Time’ with Ja Rule and ‘What's Luv?’ with Fat Joe were numbers one and two on Billboard's Hot 100 chart the same week in 2002 that her single ‘Foolish’ entered the top ten. A remix of the song, ‘Unfoolish’, a duet with the Notorious BIG, became a hit the same year. Her debut album, Ashanti, won several awards including the 2003 Grammy Award for best contemporary R&B album.

She was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, in New York. She trained as a dancer at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center in New York City and achieved small film roles in Spike Lee's biopic Malcolm X (1992) and the hip-hop comedy Who's the Man (1993). She appeared in the Disney musical Polly as well as in several popular videos before reaching a wider audience with her collaboration with New York rapper Big Punisher in the hit single ‘How We Roll’ (2001).