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Emerging Solutions for Musical Arts Education in Africa

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Emerging Solutions for Musical Arts Education in Africa Emerging solutions for musical arts education in Africa Selected articles prepared in advance for the 2003 PASMAE conference and commissioned research-based chapters on the collective voice of conference participants Kisumu, Kenya, 5 to 11 July 2003 Edited by Anri Herbst Cape Town • African Minds Emerging solutions for musical arts education in Africa Selected articles prepared in advance for the 2003 PASMAE conference and commissioned research- based chapters on the collective voice of conference participants Kisumu, Kenya, 5 to 11 July 2003 Published for the Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education (Pasmae) by African Minds 109 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, South Africa ISBN 1-920051-11-2 © 2005 Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education (Pasmae) First edition, first impression All rights reserved Copy editor: Edwin Hees Music typesetting: Adrian More Artwork: Geoff Walton Production management: Compress www.compress.co.za Marketing and sales agent: Oneworldbooks www.oneworldbooks.com Orders can be placed with Oneworldbooks: P.O.Box 16185, Vlaeberg, 8018 Telephone: +27 21 4222 463 Fax: +27 21 4222 469 E-mail: [email protected] On-line ordered: www.oneworldbooks.com ii Contents Foreword vi Anri Herbst Keynote address 1 Establishing dialogue: thoughts on music education in Africa Mogomme Masoga Part A: The collective voice Musical arts education in Africa: a philosophical discourse 11 Anri Herbst Discussing music as science and art 25 Meki Nzewi and MÍcheál O Sûiilleabháin Technology and the musical arts in Africa 32 Michael Nixon Part B: The individual voice Dodo performance: an avenue for education in and through music 47 Hellen A O Agak To ‘sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’: music in the education of the Kenyan child 54 Emily Achieng’ Akuno Relative theories: an African perspective 64 Mandy Carver Investigating musical lives in Botswana: students at the intersection of local, African and Western musics 72 Sheelagh Chadwick The significance of minimal units and intercultural music education 101 Rossana Dalmonte iii An ethnic approach to music making as a strategy for teaching African music: the need for systematic research 108 James Flolu The distant music of the future 114 Marjut Haussila Linking African sounds through collaborative networking 134 Christopher Klopper Report on music technology 143 Robert Mawuena Kwami Indigenous African music in a relocated context: a case study 153 Robert Mawuena Kwami Indigenous music theatre of the Tsonga people of South Africa 163 Nyiko Nelson Manganye Factors affecting music education in Zambian government schools and the community 169 Boscow Mubita, Joyce Nyirenca, Justina Nayame, Munalula Kakanda & Arnold S Muyunda Pedagogical implications for the use of African music in developing a contextualised secondary school music education in Zambia 178 John A Mwesa Instrumental music ensemble as a general musicianship training strategy 202 Meki Nzewi An audiovisual approach to musical arts education in Africa: a multidisciplinary perspective series 211 Odyke Nzewi Resources: musics of Southern Africa for education 219 Elizabeth Oehrle Reclaiming Kenya’s popular music: a solution to a dilemma 228 Caleb Chrispo Okumu iv Game songs and folktale songs as teaching resources in musical art education of a Luo child 235 Rose A Omolo-Ongati Research-composition: a proposition for the teaching of composition from the traditional perspective 250 Christian Onyeji Performance styles of selected Luo contemporary genres 267 Charles Nyakiti Orawu Issues of access, demand and teaching of African music and its related technology in the Kenyan higher education system 283 Wislon O Shitandi External influence on the Litungu traditional popular music of the Luhya in Kenya 298 Isaac Waswa Shitubi The Soccajasco kids project: an African musical intervention in an African problem 306 Krystyna Smith Interactive songs for children 321 Johanella Tafuri Linking music making to musical arts education in Africa: a case study of Zairian music 327 Mellitus Nyongesa Wanyama & Joseph Basil Okong’o La pratique de la danse comme processus du cognitif musical dans l’apprentissage / Dance as a cognitive process in learning music 338 Adépo Yapo v Foreword A person who is carrying an elephant on his or her head should not be searching the ground for a cricket. Since I heard this African proverb a week ago, I knew instinctively that it is relevant to this book. The equivalent of this proverb is phrased more harshly in Matthew 7:4 (Living Bible): ‘Should you say, “Friend, let me help you get that speck out of your eye,” when you can’t even see because of the board in your own?’ In our search for solutions to musical arts education problems unique to the African context, there is no time to beat around the bush. Post-colonial Africa cannot afford to sit back, waiting for the West to provide solutions; neither is it healthy to keep on blaming others for the continent’s situation which is, to a large extent, to be laid at the door of colonial governments. However, proverbs tend to work in both directions: while people from Africa should seek creative problems to restore the continent’s cultural riches within the context of the global world, the Western world should also engage in acts of self-analysis, allowing the African voice to be heard the way that it is; not in fancy Oxford English or Princeton phraseology. It is a voice which tends to ‘repeat’, although not exactly, ideas in true oral fashion to gain advanced energy and direction; a voice which bears marks of colonialism and a voice of peoples undergoing transformation as an important part of self-analysis, singing songs in acculturated verses validated by indigenous refrains. James Flolu from Ghana succinctly summarised this situation during one of the sessions at the Pasmae Conference in Kisumu, Kenya; he called for a mature African identity, be it from singularist or pluralist perspectives, that will reflect responsible interaction and respect for other cultures: We have been hindered by this concept of "their" music and "our" music, which has influenced our attitude and approach to the teaching of music in the classroom. We have become very conscious of something being "Western" and another being “African”; however, at some point we will have to realise that, if we look around us, a lot of things that we see are neither Western or African – they just belong to "us". Emerging solutions for musical arts education in Africa is the outcome of the conference of the Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education held in Kisumu, Kenya, 5-11 July 2003. This publication is unique in that, apart from presenting individual voices of participants, an entire section is devoted to the ‘collective’ conference voice based on principles of Grounded Theory. This emergent collective voice is portrayed in Part A, which consists of chapters written by focus vi group leaders Michael Nixon, Meki Nzewi and Micheál O Suilleabhain, and myself. Since the conference, we have experienced the unfortunate loss of a dear colleague and friend, Robert Kwami, who chaired the technology session at the conference and who passed away before this publication came about. May his soul rest in peace. Apart from detailed notes by the focus group leaders, arrangements were also made for audio-visual recordings, which resulted in a 106-page electronically typed transcript. These documents informed the relevant chapters in which the discourses are presented. Although frequency of occurrence plays an important role when generalisations are made, none of the participants’ opinions were dismissed as peripheral and an attempt has been made to present a holistic picture of the musical arts in African countries represented at the conference. Forty-four articles and essays were prepared prior to the conference and underwent a strict impartial peer-reviewing process involving four peer reviewers per contribution. Twenty-six of these articles were recommended for publication and, after being edited, appear in Part B. Because many of the individual contributions belong to more than one of the focus areas, it was decided to print them in alphabetical order and not grouped according to the focus areas. Caroline van Niekerk administered the peer-reviewing process and started preliminary editing of some of the articles, an effort for which Pasmae’s executive is grateful. Christopher Klopper handled all Transfer of Copyright administration and assisted me by typing in the bibliography of a contribution in which the relevant information was omitted from the electronic copy. He also made me laugh at times when all I wanted to do was to bang the computer! I would also like to mention Jasper Saayman’s dedication to this project; his administrative assistance was invaluable and he managed a smile even after his computer was flooded and he, as a consequence, had to redo large chunks of work for this publication. Adrian More set all music examples and gracefully moved notes according to my instructions: ‘slightly to the left, a bit up … yes, that is it!’ The task of communicating between African countries is not one for sissies, and definitely not one which the uninitiated should tackle bare-handed or bare- foot. One of the very real problems related to a poorly established communication infrastructure between scholars from countries, cities, towns and villages on the African continent, even at the dawn of the 21st century, is that, despite the editor filling cyberspace with zillions of email messages, some articles
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