In 2023, the Hakpanya Collective was invited to present a multidisciplinary performance at the Accra Indie Festival—a work rooted in their debut album project, Vayina. More than a musical offering, Vayina emerged as part of a larger community-engaged initiative, The River and Me—a filmic and sonic exploration of ecological loss and human resilience in Fuvame, a coastal community in Ghana’s Volta Region.

Through field recordings, oral testimonies, and embodied performance, the project traces the lived realities of a people displaced by marine erosion since 2016—first from their ancestral lands, then again from resettlement in Agorkedzi, as the sea continues its relentless advance. What remains is a fragile strip of land between river and ocean, a threshold where survival is negotiated daily.

Drawing from indigenous storytelling traditions and contemporary performance practice, the work transforms environmental data into human narrative—inviting audiences not only to witness, but to reckon. It asks urgent questions: What human actions have accelerated this crisis? And what responsibility do we each bear in restoring balance?

The performance at Accra Indie Festival became a site of convergence—where art met advocacy, memory met movement, and audience became participant. In amplifying the voices of Fuvame, Vayina extends beyond stage and screen, positioning creative expression as both archive and intervention—an evolving call toward ecological consciousness, cultural preservation, and collective accountability.