Music and sustainability of peace:An appraisal of selected Yorùbá traditional songs

Abstract

Yorùbá context has music as a fundamental motivator in communal development, projects, war, attendance to dispute, conventional gathering, exigent meeting, and peace maintenance and so on. At present, attention is gradually shifting focus from the obtainable mediation and impartation of traditional music towards popular urban culture. Hence, the study sets out to identify the possible potency of Yorùbá traditional songs as means of peace advancement and to ascertain the status of its usage for peace social stability in contemporary dispensation. Anchored on functionalism and communicative theories, the research used Yorùbá traditional song repertory, and bibliographic modes of enquiry to achieve its set goals. The result shows that Yorùbá traditional music for peace advancement is in three dimensions, namely, peace conservative songs, peace recovery songs and peace conceptual songs. There are also traditional songs for ritual peace advocacy. The paper concludes that traditional repertory is convincingly potent in the maintenance of peace culture in the Yorùbá context.