Beyond Western Formal Structures: Music Education as a Performance Process in Nigeria

Abstract

Formal music education in Nigeria is largely a Western heritage bequeathed to it through missionary, school and colonial activities in Nigeria, as in other parts of Africa. Its processes in Nigeria have also trod the path established for it from the Western contact. This has raised issues bordering on structure, creative process and methods that have been generally voiced by Nigerian music educators. Views have been expressed against the West-centric structures that seem to have disrupted the natural music education processes and heritage of the Nigerian leading to a palpable lack of progress recorded so far. Evidence of criticisms against the Western structures and processes by notable scholars exist. Significant in the Western process is the foregrounding of theoretical knowledge. This structural notion of music education seems to run in opposition to the established praxis in the Nigerian socio-cultural context. Whereas the West prioritizes knowledge and theory which drive practice, Nigerians seem at home with the primacy of practice which drives theory and knowledge acquisition in music. This calls to mind the well-known participant-observation method or learning by practical participation. This article argues music education in Nigeria as a performance process against the classroom structures established by the West. It supports the notion of music education as structurally anchored on the cultural heritage of practice and creativity as pathways to the development of theoretical knowledge in music education. The descriptive method is employed in the discourse to re-affirm the views raised by Nigerian scholars against Western structures of music education in Nigeria, while raising the notion and foregrounding practice in Nigerian music education structure.