Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: Vollebaum here. The Republic of Ghana is nicknamed West Africa's
Speaker 1: Golden child. It's renowned for its amazing wildlife sanctuaries, and
Speaker 1: international companies like Google, Guinness, and Coca Cola have set
Speaker 1: up facilities in Acra, the capital city on Ghana's coast,
Speaker 1: and Acra is also known for another industry, a one
Speaker 1: that's homegrown. The business is so unique that it's caught
Speaker 1: the eye of death care providers all over the world.
Speaker 1: In Ghana, there's a big tradition behind big coffins carved
Speaker 1: and painted into shapes from chili peppers to taxi cabs
Speaker 1: to Nike sneakers, just about any object imaginable to suit
Speaker 1: the deceased's personality. Each one is a vibrant work of art,
Speaker 1: requiring skillful carpentry. In the Ga language, the funerary boxes
Speaker 1: are called proverb coffins. In English, we often call them
Speaker 1: fantasy coffins, but the practice of building these fantasy coffins
Speaker 1: has never gained traction outside of Ghana and neighboring Togo
Speaker 1: before the article. This episode is based on how stuffworks
Speaker 1: spoke with Genevieve Keeney Vesquez, a licensed in balmer who
Speaker 1: serves as the President and Chief Operating officer of the
Speaker 1: National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas. She explained
Speaker 1: that she's never come across any parallels to fantasy coffins
Speaker 1: from other parts of the globe. She said, I get
Speaker 1: made aware of quite a lot of interesting rituals and
Speaker 1: customs and have yet to hear of anything close. Her
Speaker 1: museum houses the largest collection of fantasy coffins outside of Ghana. Altogether,
Speaker 1: it has a dozen on permanent display. There are shapes
Speaker 1: ranging from a Mercedes Benz to a red legged crab.
Speaker 1: Fantasy coffins have been showcased at art museums as well,
Speaker 1: from the Brooklyn Museum to the National Museum of Modern
Speaker 1: Art in Paris, France. These ornate coffins reflect the area's
Speaker 1: blend of beliefs about ancestry and death. Modern fantasy coffins
Speaker 1: were devised by the Ga people, who are part of
Speaker 1: the region's Ga Adongwei ethnic group. Cultural and religious traditions
Speaker 1: described dying as a period of transition from one life
Speaker 1: to the next, and funerary rites as a celebration, and
Speaker 1: there's also a concept that the deceased still have influence
Speaker 1: over the circumstances of their living relatives. Keep your loved
Speaker 1: ones happy post mortem and they might grant you some
Speaker 1: blessings down the road. So making a good impression on
Speaker 1: newly dead family members and sending them offen style is
Speaker 1: considered hugely important. That's where fantasy coffins come in. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: it was common practice to bury a body with some
Speaker 1: personalized trinket, like a miniature canoe, that represented the individual's
Speaker 1: former career or aspirations or social standing. Back in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen hundreds, before Ghana achieved independence from the British Empire,
Speaker 1: and a craw area carpenter by the name of Seth
Speaker 1: kenny Quay did something similar, but on a much larger scale.
Speaker 1: Kenny Quay was born in nineteen twenty two, and by
Speaker 1: all accounts, he had an entrepreneurial spirit. When he was
Speaker 1: a young man, kenny Quay created a coco pot shaped
Speaker 1: palanquin for a local chief to ride in during an
Speaker 1: upcoming festival. When the chief died unexpectedly before the festival,
Speaker 1: kenny Quay persuaded the family to bury him in it instead.
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, the artist's grandmother passed. Remembering the mourner's
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for the chief's coffin, he crafted an elaborate one
Speaker 1: for her in the shape of an airplane. She had
Speaker 1: lived in a suburb near Across Airport and had loved
Speaker 1: watching the planes go by, but had never taken a
Speaker 1: flight herself, so Kenny Quay gave her a way to
Speaker 1: fly into the afterlife. Kenny Quay was approached by mourning
Speaker 1: clients requesting personalized coffins whose designs would tell the stories
Speaker 1: of their occupants, like a boat for a fisherman or
Speaker 1: an onion for a farmer, and the rest was history.
Speaker 1: Kenny Quay wasn't the sole inventor of fantasy coffins as
Speaker 1: we now know them, but he did popularize the concept.
Speaker 1: Artistic coffins became the specialty at his workshop, where he
Speaker 1: passed on his skills to his sons and grandson, who
Speaker 1: still manages the shop to this day, as some of
Speaker 1: his other apprentices, like the now renowned artists Pa Joe,
Speaker 1: would go on to found their own businesses in a
Speaker 1: crap and supply coffins as art on the international scene.
Speaker 1: Joe told the BBC back in twenty sixteen that when
Speaker 1: he goes he's considering a coffin in the shape of
Speaker 1: a hammer. Given their elaborate shapes and details, it's easy
Speaker 1: to forget that in first and foremost. Most fantasy caskets
Speaker 1: are purchased for their original intention and must be functional
Speaker 1: for burial in the ground. Building materials vary. A funeral
Speaker 1: ready coffins will consist of less expensive, lightweight woods and
Speaker 1: go for a couple thousand dollars. Others are tailor made
Speaker 1: display pieces built to wow the patrons of art galleries
Speaker 1: and museums. The latter tend to be made of hard
Speaker 1: woods like African mahogany. A coffin of the sort can
Speaker 1: easily sell for more than ten grand. Regardless of where
Speaker 1: the coffins are headed, they all need to be carved,
Speaker 1: painted and sanded before the client hauls them off. They
Speaker 1: can take a couple of weeks to build, as for
Speaker 1: the shapes, and that's up to the buyers. Artists have
Speaker 1: built human sized wooden cameras, eagles, hair dryers, pineapples, and
Speaker 1: beer bottles for their customers. In Ghana. Bodies can spend
Speaker 1: months or even years inside refrigerated storage units, while the
Speaker 1: family of the deceased organizes the funeral. After the day
Speaker 1: and time are set and the coffin is paid for,
Speaker 1: the event can proceed. Gone in Funerals are lengthy and
Speaker 1: expensive affairs that might last for three full days at
Speaker 1: a time with the community and extended family. The dozens
Speaker 1: to hundreds of guests are attended to by musicians, DJs, photographers, caterers, bartenders,
Speaker 1: and morticians. Visitors might help the inner family recoup some
Speaker 1: of the costs by raising funds on site while also
Speaker 1: dancing the night away. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article Gana's Fantasy Coffins Are to Die for on HowStuffWorks
Speaker 1: dot com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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