IGBA-EZE INSTRUMENTAL ENSEMBLE OF ANAKU: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF DOCUMENTATION STYLE

Abstract

There is something wrong with the ways some scholars in Ethnomusicology have conceived archiving and documentation of musical materials among cultures. Some of these come as prejudice or bias regarding the very essence of traditional music. This paper is an attempt to review the common approach to documentation of traditional music which makes a reduction in the vital value of a people’s music. The music, thus reduced to artefact, satisfies only the whims of academic scholarship. Here the musical data gathered from the living music of Anaku people are carefully transcribed as is common practice. This however, raises issues bothering on the essence of musical notation for traditional music. This notation is often of little or no use to the culture or music owners except to academics. Is this a form of cultural superiority to impose this form of notational documentation on local music? This descriptive survey employs musicological tools which include participant observation, field recordings and interview of “informantsâ€. The usual explanations which claim to project local music to the world, to protect them from going extinct, or to preserve them for future generations are all found in the study to be off the mark for overlooking the inner workings of traditional music and its transmission medium from time immemorial.