Didactic and pedagogical dimensions of Igbo oral children’s songs

Abstract

Abstract There is a sharp decline in the performance of Igbo oral songs by children in recent times. Unlike in the days gone, children of nowadays rarely gather in groups in the evenings or during moonlight nights to play and perform some dramatic and musical renditions which are informal forms of education. Parents now encourage their children to watch home-movies and some channel programmes in the comfort of their homes; they encourage them to embark more on some in-door games while advancing security reasons as the basis for not allowing them to participate in various forms of open communal recreation. Such attitude deprives children of the essential moralistic and educational values expected to be imbibed from the rendition of native songs in playful groups. This paper which is based on a fieldwork carried out in 2018 in Umuawuchi, an Igbo community in Imo State Nigeria, investigates the instructional values of Igbo oral children’s songs. Reiterating the moral-imparting attributes of Igbo children’s songs, the paper applies Performance Theory to investigate the thematic standpoints of Igbo children’s songs while gauging the extent to which they can be applied to impart and extrapolate on key moral values of the Igbo. The paper restates certain measures that can be activated to incorporate children’s songs into mainstream educational and mass-communication media to avert the complete loss of such rich literary repertoires.