Vitiating oral African musical traditions by (mis) representing them through Western notational systems

Abstract

The concept of musical literacy has tended to be associated with the ability to read and write in conventional ways of representing music. We feel that this needs to be extended to include the ability to practically exhibit one’s musical knowledge through singing, playing a musical instrument or dancing. African musical cultural traditions have been passed on from generation to generation via the oral tradition. The advent of colonialism and Christianity has brought with it western ways of doing and representing concepts which exist largely in the written tradition. Tonic solfa and staff notation have been used to notate African music. These methods leave out everything else that cannot be notated; ululation, dance, whistling, vocables, and several other para-linguistic performative expressions. African performers improvise ad libitum and do not do it the same way always. When the music is transcribed, it implies a fixed do-it-this-way form which is uncharacteristic of African music performance. Through a historical and methodological-literature point of view, we present new discussions by musicologists and ethnomusicologists in Africa or of Africa. We strongly feel that the strengths of using western notational systems to represent African music are outweighed by the weaknesses because the use of them superimposes the written over the oral tradition. From a Critical African Cultural studies perspective, we argue that this is reductionist as the music score cannot stand in for the totality and beauty of an African music performance. The conclusion calls on upcoming ethnomusicologists in or of Africa to proffer new directions that are embedded in being, becoming, and remaining African