How well do you remember childhood nursery rhymes like this one, rain, rain go away, come again another day, little children want to play, rain, rain go away? How did you interpret it? How did it make you feel?
These are questions Ghanaian creative Emmanuel Dankyi – who is looking to find the devil – is answering in his Rhymes animated project.
The first episode,
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In the first episode, a little girl, head downcast and tightly clutching her stuffed toy wades through a growing pool of water as the rain relentlessly pours. It’s easy to conclude from the video that ed. does not particularly like the rain.
Given ed’s position as a digital creative who relies on electricity, I’m tempted to say the Electricity Company of Ghana might have been an inspiration for this particular episode. Rain in Accra often means fluctuating power supply and in most cases, complete power-cuts.
“I was thinking, some of these rhymes they taught us as children had more meaning to them than we understood, we never looked into them and I’m sure our teachers sef don’t know the deeper meanings, we see them as just rhymes” explained ed.
“So I set myself on a mission to interpret them into what they mean to me; as poems with deeper meanings. Hence the project rhymes” he concludes. This is similar to how cartoons often have double meanings attached which are only usually later decoded when fans become adults.
ed.’s personalized take on his favourite childhood rhymes serves another function for the artist. A little over a year ago, he started this project as an experiment to explore different things and try some new stuff.
Want to win some cool merchandise? In collaboration with Squid Mag, ed. Is giving away exclusive merch to whoever can correctly guess the next rhyme.
In the meantime, check out the first two episodes below and don’t forget to catch subsequent episodes on
Be inkredible!
Rain Rain Go Away
Row Your Boat
Watch the full series below.
What do you think?
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