SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: Music

CONTRIBUTORS:

Akwaowo, N. Ekpedeme
Onwuekwe Agatha

ABSTRACT:

Most art music composers in Nigeria have been in the practice of producing works which reflects their traditional music, and have utilized resources from respective musical traditions to do so. Nonetheless, some contemporary Nigerian composers have fallen short of engaging in serious composition for their traditional musical instruments, in adhesive preference for Western musical instruments as basic means to project cultural musical ideas. This disposition may be viewed to be inconsistent with growing trends to various art forms development in Nigeria, which centers on serious utilization of resources that abound in one’s environment. Against this disposition, ten (10) instrumental works originally composed by the researcher were produced for the Ibibio key C eighteen-slab diatonic xylophone and other accompanying traditional musical instruments. Entitled “Nkukwak Ikon”, the compositions reflect the cultural universe of the Ibibio people, aligns with indigenous theories of composition, and projects some innovative creativity. The compositions were embarked after field observations and knowledge of the musical practices and paraphernalia of the Uyo-based Amazing International Cultural Troupe and Udo Mariam Troupe. They were embarked after effective consideration of the Ibibio folk musical practices, which is archetypal of Africa’s musical construct. The study achieves its key objective of contributing to the repository of instrumental art music in Nigeria, based on a composition model for indigenous instrumental works in general and the Ibibio key C eighteen-slab diatonic xylophone composition in particular. The study makes recommendations which might lead to serious use of traditional musical instruments as composition medium by indigenous composers.