Nigerian Contemporary Music Practice: A New Musical Culture in Socio-Cultural Projections

Abstract

In the 1960s, there were reports from post colonial West Africa of a somewhat unflinching loyalty to western standards and traditions by music educators and western-trained music composers who did not take kindly to reforms in certain directions in the practice of their music profession. Today‟s reality is that we have come a long way and may have succeeded in reversing that colonial trend especially as most composers have begun to examine the basis of their music. Thus their post independent nationalist identity consciousness motivated the exploration and exploitation of traditional elements in the hope of producing indigenous forms of musical expression as foundation for a viable contemporary music practice. This paper examines the current trends in Nigerian music practice through a performance study of music compositions. The result is the finding of a compelling evidence of a vital force that these contemporary compositions share in exploitation of local and foreign idioms leading to a new creative synergy with global appeal while satisfying local aesthetic expectation.