Indigenous Music in a New Role

Abstract

Music is a unifying force that repositions and resituates indigenous knowledge to suit contemporary needs for diversified usages, today including Christian worship. The incorporation of indigenous music in Christian worship inspires commendation and queries from the perspective of scholarship in the 21st century. Diverse musical performances, with vocal and instrumental styles and forms, function widely in contemporary Christian worship contributing to maintaining local Yoruba social and cultural identities. This paper focuses on changes and adaptations of indigenous music in Christian worship today, looking at the case of Èsà music. Èsà is a musical practice of the worshippers of the masquerade cult in Yoruba land in South West Nigeria. This is a chant/song that focuses on praises and adoration of the spirit behind the cult in the traditional settings. Agawu’s post colonial theory is applied in the study of the appropriation of Èsà music in Christian worship. Agawu argues that “African music is best understood not as a finite repertoire but as a potentiality. In terms of what now exists and has existed in the past, African music designates those numerous repertoires of song and instrumental music that originate in specific African communities, and performed regularly as part of play, ritual, and worship, and circulate mostly orally/aurally, within and across languages, ethnic and cultural boundaries” (Agawu 2003: xiv). This article shows the chant/song relevance in Christian worship and how forms of Yoruba traditional music have been transformed into music for Christian worship and other Christian religious events. Christian èsà has become a new register of Yoruba music.