Ilesanmi Augustine

Africans love music and dance; when there is music there is dance, in that music spurs people to dance and the rhythm dictates the dance step and body movement. Music affects the mind of the dancer and that process calms an agitated or troubled mind. Psychologically, this extends to the audiences that have found themselves in a performance setting.

Admittedly, each of us is to some extent, a product of the culture into which we are born. Our physical, intellectual and emotional lives are affected continuously by our social environment. The foods we consider most succulent, the art we enjoy, our patterns of friendship, family solidarity and group identity are influenced by the cultural standands we absorb.

The same is true of music. A people’s sense of their history, of their relationship to a deity, of their joy in life and sorrow in death are revealed by the use they make of musical materials. An idea of what music should be – how it should sound, when it should be heard, and who should perform it are related directly to cultural backgrounds, in short, the listener’s “ear” is very much conditional by his or her culture.

 African societies do not set aside music for the same set of events. Not all societies have work songs or songs for puberty ceremonies. Not all societies celebrate their marriages with music and dancing. Even where similar events incorporate music, the organization of the events and the emphasis on music may not always be the same.

  In community life, therefore, music making is to some extent socially controlled. Some musical types can only be used in limited contexts. The music for a particular rite, ceremony or festival may not be performed in another context unless there are some special reasons for doing so. This is why every society seems to make special musical provision for recreation and to encourage the formation of musical and dance class.

Every musical types played in community life has a tradition which governs its mode of performance, its repertoire, its choice and use of musical instruments that govern the context in which it should be played.

In every culture, music plays an important role in rites and ceremonies, and for all people music has an emotional content that satisfies certain deeply felt needs. Yet the resulting sounds are often so diverse that the music of one group may not be recognized as music at all by other groups.

As regards the uses of African music, religious music may be either ceremonial or esoteric. The ceremonial music is heard on such diverse occasions as the end of harvest or fishing season, at weddings and funerals, and at installations of heads of state or rulers.  The Esoteric music is played only by the particular religious group for which it is designed. These organizations have a repertoire of drum performed only by their members.

African music is meant to be heard by the deity. It is believed that music is the vehicle through which the sacred word is brought to human beings. More commonly music is used to lift up prayers to a divinity.

In addition to marking the stages of life, music also deepens and defines African existence. Through songs and dances young men and women are taught the language of the tribe, the traditions of family living, the obligations they will be expected to fulfil even the “facts of life”.

The Nigerian cultures are very rich when it comes to music and dance with the accompanying customers, musical and cultural instruments. This an area where museums need to come in, to tap and encapsulate the richness of the traditional music and dance and showcase them to the whole world in order to promote and enhance cultural tourism development.

All over the world, museums are the custodians of our cultural heritage both the tangible and the intangible. The visual, physically seen and concrete artefacts, art works, antiquities, monuments, sculptures, statues, historical sites, natural history sites among others constitute the tangible.

While under the intangible heritage we have folklores, folktales, stories, proverbs, traditional music, dance, drama, wrestling games, just to mention a few. The most emphasized under the intangible heritage are the traditional music, dance and drama in most communities in Nigeria and beyond. Hence, the traditional music, dance and drama of any community showcase the picture of the culture of that particular community. This alludes to the saying that music is the soul of life.

With the number of the museums in Nigeria, each museum can penetrate the locality and bring out the best of the music and dance to her immediate location. Each museum can inaugurate a cultural troupe to showcase the peculiar music and dance of the culture of the area. These cultural troupes to showcase the peculiars music and dance of the culture of the area. These cultural troupes can become revenue generating means for the museums. The troupes could perform outside the museums at social functions where they are invited.

An annual festival of traditional music and dance could be organized yearly during the International Museums day celebration whereby all the cultural troupes of all the Nigerian museums could come together to celebrate.

The other aspect under the intangible heritage could be elaborated and promoted too. This is by airing stories, folktales, folklores, use of proverbs, traditional games, wrestling to mention a few, on the electronic media (radio and television), and in the newspapers and magazines.

A careful observations of the various forms of our intangible cultural heritage are quite revealing and it shows that the traditional music is fast disappearing and changing which accounts for the internationalization of the culture and it is foreign music that is being promoted against the traditional one.

Since culture itself is dynamic and keeps changing, the traditional music too will move with the dictate of the times. On the advent of modern forms of entertainment through Juju and fuji music even for commercial reasons, they came up to satisfy the aspiration of the listeners.

The old fashion juju was without guiter or accordion, but today these instruments form the bedrock of Juju in Yorubaland for the simple purpose of international acceptance. There was no choreography in the traditional dance in Yorubaland but the colonial masters came to introduce this dancing steps and because of the strong instruments from the Western World, the acceptance became easy

Also, the coming of religion brought with it, specialized forms of entertainments such as the gospel music since most of the churches and Mosques are not willing to engage traditional musicians to play in their fold, the need to come out with their own form of entertainment at least to satisfy their followers become inevitable

The development of various instruments that are automatic in nature tends to dominate and displaced the traditional instruments for instance, if traditional instruments are set to produce music, many listeners may prefer to go elsewhere than to listen to such music.

It is therefore on this premise that this paper concludes by calling on the National Museums, Art councils, cultural centres, communities and cultural groups to strife and preserve our rich intangible traditional musical heritage.