Ethnomusicologists working in Africa often focus on the strategies displayed in the course of a public performance while ignoring the creative process and the decisions that lead to it. This practice assumes, wrongly, that traditional African public musical performances derive from ancient repertoires that hardly change, and thus can be easily reenacted with little or no preparation. Kwasi Ampene, in his study of nnwonkoro, a female song tradition of Akan women of Ghana, draws attention to this fallacy when he observes that “not much is known about techniques and processes of musical composition in preliterate societies.” While it is true that a public performance represents an important arena for creative decisions (“composition-in-performance,”) and provides an important context for understanding the nature of African musical performance, it is important to note that deliberate and deliberative compositional activities and rehearsals often precede a public performance. Regarding this issue, Alan Merriam observed that African musicians do practice “composition, recognize it as a distinct process, and are in a number of cases quite able to discuss it.” The process of composing a new musical performance in Africa is often communal, rather than individual. George Dor defines communal creativity as “a creative activity, whether performance or composition, in which members of a particular community come together to collectively express their communal ethos.” According to him, “membership of a particular group” involved in this activity “may be inclusive or exclusive.” Commenting on an example of communal creativity in Ghana, he observes that joint ownership of, and the process of composing, songs represent an important index of group identity among the Anlo-Ewe people. Capturing the very intentional process of this creative act as rendered at specific moments offers considerable reward to the goal of understanding how music constitutes a form of social action in African societies. As Christopher Waterman has explained, the social significance of a musical performance derives not just from the content of the performance but also from the conceptual, contextual, social, and behavioral elements that guide its production process.