MUSIC: A REPOSITORY OF ORAL LITERATURE IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION

Abstract

Music which is a repository of oral literature in African traditional religion plays great and fundamental functions in the social, economic, cultural, emotional, religious, and others lives of her adherents. Music is a do without in African religion. This is because, religion is basically and structurally oral and as such, its liturgical, moral structural remain is sustained and subsumed in songs. African traditional religion is not just a religion but a way of life and based on this, music remains core as a life wire of the religion. To an average African religious adherent, music is a piece of the song that is used to communicate the supreme being or other divinities or ancestors.

In interrogating the essence of music in African traditional religion, this article seeks to contextualize African Traditional Religion as a phenomenon, with a scholarly view to African traditional religion as an oral literate religion in the sub-Sahara region of the earth topography. Since the religion is orally centered, forms of oral traditions of the religion (storytelling, folk tale, myth, proverbs, adages, idioms, wise saying, legends, invocation and incantation, and songs), will be examined. Music and its typology are crystally considered, not forgetting the center gravity of the study (music and religion ), with particular reference to music in the African traditional religion. It is in searching the correlational value of music to oral literate religion like African traditional religion, that the functions of music in African traditional religion will be considered in this study. Against the backdrop, this study places a premium on “music: A Repository of oral literature in African traditional religion.”