Music and Culture, a perfect match

Talking about music, the first idea that rushes to your mind is leisure and pleasure. Today, most people find pleasure in being entertained by modern live bands or singing along songs of renowned artists, little knowing that even most part of our own culture is of music. Traditional culture in general is by design more of an art- the hierarchy, the beliefs and most of all the traditional music played. Thus the drumming, melodious flutes and the dancing in our local cultural practices have made it genuine.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010
The Brothers on stage

Talking about music, the first idea that rushes to your mind is leisure and pleasure.

Today, most people find pleasure in being entertained by modern live bands or singing along songs of renowned artists, little knowing that even most part of our own culture is of music.

Traditional culture in general is by design more of an art- the hierarchy, the beliefs and most of all the traditional music played. Thus the drumming, melodious flutes and the dancing in our local cultural practices have made it genuine.

Imagine what trouble our forefathers would have had, conserving a boring culture with no harmony in it. Just sitting silent around the fires, introduction ceremonies with no traditional dances to entertain clouds or other practices, less music would have been sickening  them.

Who could tame the youth before us in their leisure time anyway?  Our forefathers learnt that only music could act the third party to connect them to their sons.

This music could therefore never be detached from traditional culture.

Adele Nyambo, 70, says that she has liked music since her youth and still finds pleasure in seeing her grand daughters dance. "I sometimes give them permission to go dancing in night clubs because I also liked music when I was their age,” she says with a rather trembling voice.

Conversely, Gatobo Dusa of about the same age doesn’t believe that music is a good obsession nowadays. "I hear that musicians of these days smoke dope and sleep with people of their sex-your music is not good son,” he says.

Gatobo’s views call to my mind the fact that modern music is dubbed almost the mirror image of immorality by many fanatics. And they support their reason with the fact that most of the earth’s famous artists shamelessly sell off their sex tapes or frequent jail for drugs which increases immorality day to day.

Such people would be bluntly right if only they considered the fact  that there are always the dark horses and the good horses in the lot.

Such celebrities make errors just like anybody else could but are so unlucky to be media targets. Besides that, they are tempted by large sums of money laid for their nude pictures. This has grown their acts into a normal footing for everyone else.

Our culture could also halt the negative influence of modernity if we laid emphasis on the music portion in it.

With sweet cultural melodies playing everywhere around us, culture would grow up-to-date even to the liking of the ‘controversial’ youth.

Ends