Ese music: honours for the dead: status for the sponsor

The Igbo society is a distinct culture area in the political entity called Nigeria. Nigeria, population estimated at over 88 millions, is a country populated by over 248 distinct linguistic-cultural groups. A fast modernising nation naturally endowed with mineral (predominantly oil) wealth, and now practising a presidential system of modern government (since October 1979) after 13 years of military rule, Nigeria is a nation where modern technology and value systems operate in apposition with traditional belief systems

Folk music in Nigeria: a communion

Folk music in Nigeria evolved as a corporate communal experience. It has been sustained as such, and continues to expand and enrich its resources as it crumbles ethnic barriers, incorporating broader geographical communities as it extends its ethnic identity. By this is postulated that folk music had narrow ethnic identities. Then through human tendencies of social interaction, direct borrowing and unconscious assimilation folk music began to identify larger ethnic unions in style and content. More recently, as a result of improved communication, education, other agencies of modern civilisation and neo-cultural aspirations, folk music areas in Nigeria are diffusing more and more into one another to form larger homogeneous blocks

Re-configuring education and research about Africa: the indigenous knowledge force

Prescript: Any nation that prioritises pure science and technology education over education in the human-making and spiritual development disciplines is breeding a society of brilliant psychopaths. The price is fostering extraordinary criminals among the privileged and unprivileged alike, and yet lamenting that the ground is not level for social stability and peaceful coexistence to thrive. After all criminality is a matter of education and upbringing, not a genetic inheritance.Absurdity: When a human person is amazed to discover that his human neighbour also actually has a head, and in fact eats through the mouth instead of the anus, then we have developed to an age of articulate glorification of absurdities.Verity: Nobody now can discover indigenous knowledge systems in Africa. They have always been in existence. We can only encounter, recall or discern, perform, record, review and advance what we have inherited.Indilinga: African Journal of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IAJIKS) Vol. 4(1) 2005: 282-29

REINSTATING THE SOFT SCIENCE OF AFRICAN INDIGENOUS MUSICAL ARTS FOR HUMANITYSENSED CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

The paper argues that the philosophical, theoretical and performative principles as well as proactive humanity intentions, which frame indigenous African heritage in the musical arts (synergy of music, dance, drama and material properties) furnish exemplary knowledge resources, which should inform humanity conscious education policy, curriculum orientation and content as well as knowledge transmission dynamics in modern African classrooms, and beyond. Sample philosophical, humanning and epistemological ideals that mark indigenous African musical arts formulations as a soft science of sublime humanity and societal management, are outlined. They remain contemporaneously valid and viable for cognitive as well as respectful advancement into Africa-sensed classroom education practice that is conscientious about developing sound-humanity as well as equitable society through affirmative classroom education. The researched and discerned uniquely African creative formulations, experiential theory as well as purposive transmission modalities furnish the resource paradigms that have been applied and tested as contemporaneously efficacious in the three different proactive education sites cited in the paper. The cumulative research and practical experimentations have enabled the design as well as knowledge content of model curricula for culture-sensed musical arts education in modern African Primary and Secondary education

Active or dormant crucial knowledge: Which generates enduring humanning benefits?

Humans have for ever created and advanced knowledge valuable to existence. Performative interaction of virtuous knowledge guarantees its validity, viability, preservation, advancement and propagation as a worthy human legacy that will forever enable, endure and endear human survival if cherished and sustained. To imprison, abandon, or relegate humanning knowledge integrity in preference for fashionable inventions, smacks of irrational brilliance and, no matter how outwardly captivating, debilitates the humanity essence. Modern physical archiving in exclusive/restrictive locations in preference to interactive regenerative conservation is disingenuous. African musical art is a robustly purposive, humanning knowledge agency, and foremost intrepid life overseer. It preserved crucial knowledge in human memory, interactively making it beneficial to all mankind within and beyond its cultural domain. To what advantage, therefore, is esoteric documentation of indigenous African music for exclusive classroom availability or as inactivated publications? For what purpose is storing indigenous African music as dormant preservation? These perturbations query the sense of indulging exotic documentation and archiving geniuses, which are modes of obscuring and silencing the proactive humanning lore. Rather, persuasive advocacy is imperative for cognitively researching, reactivating and performatively propagating the humanning integrity of the pristine knowledge realm. This mission entails reinstating, advancing and applying its humanity benefits in contemporary cultural, national, and international existential interactions. Such a governance policy action will reestablish the divine societal role of the musical arts to sober inhumane mental overdrives; oversee public morality; engineer inter-cultural amity; instill fellow-humanity conscience; stimulate mass mind wellness; and inspire stress-less living, learning, and productivity. Preservation that accomplishes these humanning essentialities, while accommodating modern literacy imperative, is the advocated sensible and essential human archiving

African Music Creativity and Performance: The Science of the Sound

What we believe we see or hear is often far from the truth of what we are seeing or hearing. What we know we feel is often merely a sign of what we do not know is happening to us. Without cognitive understanding, what we do with extant indigenous knowledge manifestations will be abstracted misrepresentations and misimpressions that problematize contemporary advancement and re-deployment in initiatives

Re-searching music education for civic activism

I am nurtured by indigenous African musical arts education philosophy and practice, and encountered literary music education and scholarship in adulthood. It is with dual musical sensibilities that I ponder the human mission of school music education. My reflections will derive from experiences of applying African indigenous musical arts in classrooms and practical research sites. The objective has been to awaken the instincts of students who are searching to know music for a fulfilling musical life. Researching the nature of the fuel (the innate musical disposition of learners) is critical for better determining the nature of the spark (knowledge content and actualization strategies) that will ignite innate capabilities into a fulfilling professional pursuit or amateur engagement with the music of life

REINSTATING THE SOFT SCIENCE OF AFRICAN INDIGENOUS MUSICAL ARTS FOR HUMANITYSENSED CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

The paper argues that the philosophical, theoretical and performative principles as well as proactive humanity intentions, which frame indigenous African heritage in the musical arts (synergy of music, dance, drama and material properties) furnish exemplary knowledge resources, which should inform humanity conscious education policy, curriculum orientation and content as well as knowledge transmission dynamics in modern African classrooms, and beyond. Sample philosophical, humanning and epistemological ideals that mark indigenous African musical arts formulations as a soft science of sublime humanity and societal management, are outlined. They remain contemporaneously valid and viable for cognitive as well as respectful advancement into Africa-sensed classroom education practice that is conscientious about developing sound-humanity as well as equitable society through affirmative classroom education. The researched and discerned uniquely African creative formulations, experiential theory as well as purposive transmission modalities furnish the resource paradigms that have been applied and tested as contemporaneously efficacious in the three different proactive education sites cited in the paper. The cumulative research and practical experimentations have enabled the design as well as knowledge content of model curricula for culture-sensed musical arts education in modern African Primary and Secondary education