Prospects and challenges of teaching and learning musics of the world’s cultures: an African perspective

Resumo

African music is an intrinsic part of some social event or occasion. The music is a communalfunctional expression closely bound up with daily human living and activities. Performance practice ofAfrican music is governed by function and context association, rule and procedure that determine howthe music should be performed. These underpinnings provide that the effectiveness of African songsdepend on the context in which the music is both heard and performed. The impact of globalisation hasmade the world become a small place, bridged and linked by modern technology. Musics of the world,both local and global, are available through the mass media. Many of such musics are used for teachingpurposes outside their cultural contexts of performances. With these principles and belief systems underlyingthe practice of African music, how should the music be treated, transmitted/handed down in itstransferred context? An attempt has been made to answer this question. The African perception on thelearning of music is that music cannot be properly understood and appreciated without the knowledgeof its social and cultural context. This paper examines the viability and practicability of this theory incases where music is taught out of its cultural context. The challenge for the borrower is to determinehow the owners of the music defi ne it since ‘music’ has various components in African culture. Fiveimportant terms come into use when dealing with the teaching and learning of world musical cultures:Borrowing, appropriation, adaptation, accommodation, negotiation. This paper discusses these termsusing one of the widely travelled ‘Kenyan’ popular music by Fadhili Williams, Malaika.