Music as a pedagogic tool and co-teacher in African dances: Dissecting the reflections and practices of teachers of cultural heritage dances in Uganda

Abstract

The subject of the inseparability of music and dance in African artistic experiences has preoccupied scholars and researchers in the field of ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology, and musicology. Commonly, music is conceptualized as an accompaniment to dance. Moreover, the existing literary perspectives frame the inseparability of music and dance in African communities in aesthetical, structural, functional, and semiotic terms. This article provides an intellectual excursion that locates music as pedagogy of dances in African practices. It offers a critical examination of how teachers of cultural heritage dances in nonacademic environments in central Uganda engage music as a pedagogic aid. I draw on the idea of choreomusicology and social learning theories to locate the place of music in dance not just as an accompaniment, but also as a teaching and learning aid. A total of eight dance teachers were engaged through storytelling, interviews, and inquisitorial observation for a period of nine months to elicit their reflections on and interpretations of application of music as a pedagogic stimulus in teaching cultural heritage dances. The findings revealed that elements of music such as songs, mnemonics, instrumental sounds, body percussion, and drum rhythms are key drivers in guiding and framing the teaching and learning processes of the dances. Through music, the dance teachers provoke learners to individually and communally embody, experience, question, abstract, experiment with, concretize, and conceptualize kinesthetic and historicized movement knowledge and skills of the dances. Music scaffolds and staircases learners into kinesthetic journeys of embodied knowing, experiential agency, constructive thinking, creative and reflective imagination, socialized connectivity, and corporeal action. The article provides insights into how music and dance practitioners in Western and non-Western traditions can leverage music to facilitate holistic pedagogic and creative processes of dance.