MUSIC APPRECIATION: ROLES IN CHURCH WORSHIP AND ITS PRACTICES IN A RECESSED ECONOMY

Abstract

Music appreciation is precisely a contemplative form of educational, non-professional musical training designed to develop the ability to listen intelligently and discriminately to serious and different genres of music with the aims of judging rightly the use and quality of the musical elements employed (Ekwueme, 2008). This systematic art involves intellectual and emotional responses and it is the emotional aspect that tends to direct our valued interest in the process of appreciation. This emotional instinct is often referred to as “Affective Experience†which predominates over the cognitive and psychomotor skills. This paper examines the various aspects of musical appreciation; the affective experience is what is actually guiding the emotional effect of music especially in church worship as it appeals to different categories of people performing the diagnostic and therapeutic roles in mental health. In a recessed economy like Nigeria where a lot of people are suffering from psychological and mentally related sicknesses, the appreciation of music (both vocal and orchestral) plays a lot in lowering the blood pressures of a greater number of the citizens. It has been observed that the power of music to create some effects appears, sometimes to be independent of human intellectual effort. There is power behind sound and organization of soundâ€. The paper concluded by offering some suggestions to the problems.