Creating Love for Reading via Inclusion of African Talking Drums in School Library Media Centre Activities

The African drum is an important instrument of communication in traditional African societies which serves as the voice of the whole community and it communicates desired information. Children that do not come to the school library media center can be attracted through the inclusion of African drums in her activities. This paper discusses ways through which children could be attracted to the school library media centers for her readership campaign programs through the use of the African talking drums. African drums can be used through role plays, songs, dances and dramas of literature such that children would get interested in reading accessible books in their library. The paper talks about who plays the drum and the indigenous African stories that include the use of drums as a medium of communicating story themes. The paper also highlights some activities carried out by a school library media center in Nigeria (with graphic details) on how some of these drums were utilized. Pictorial examples and presentation of the African drums would be presented during discussions. The African Drum should be seen as a significant technique that could be used in attracting children back to read in the school library media center.

Street-Level Multiculturalism: Cultural Integration and Identity Politics of African Migrants in Hong Kong

Multiculturalism is about co-existence of diverse cultures. Current literature on multiculturalism mostly uses a top-down approach to examine how the governments adopt different policies to manage cultural diversity. However, how the migrants use their own culture including music to enhance integration is often neglected. This paper uses the experience of African migrants in Hong Kong to reveal an alternative account of multiculturalism. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation with African drummers, this paper examines the role of African drum as a means of cultural integration. It raises the concept of “street-level multiculturalism” for analysing how African migrants experience and negotiate cultural difference on the ground. It argues that African drum music promotes intercultural contact by arousing curiosity and creating friendly atmosphere. Africans’ engagement in identity politics is based on their marginal status. Their ability to negotiate their African culture and their Hong Kong experience is a politically conscious process.

I drum, I sing, I dance: An ethnographic study of a West African drum and dance ensemble

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to investigate the Montclair State University’s West African drum and dance ensemble. Analyses of the data revealed three themes related to individual participants and the “lived reality” of the group as a whole, and to the social-cultural teaching–learning processes involved: spirituality, community-as-oneness, and communal joy. My motivation for undertaking this inquiry arose from the fact that, beginning in the 1960s, music education scholars in the United States have been concerned about the widespread marginalization of non-Western musics in American music teacher education programs. This situation is still a major concern because American undergraduate and graduate music teacher preparation remains overwhelmingly dominated by Western classical styles. This situation runs contrary to the massive social, cultural, situational, and musical diversity of American students’ lives. As one small effort to advance musical diversity in my own university music school context, I developed the proposal for and initiated the Montclair State University’s West African drum and dance ensemble.

When the Drum Speaks

This article explores the instrumentality of traditional African drums in influencing human behavior, and debunks view-points held by some critics that these drums are mere instruments for entertainment, voodoo, or rituals. It argues that as cultural artifacts, the drums are a primal symbol (a speech surrogate form qualified as drum language) used for rhetorical purposes to influence social behavior, to generate awareness, and to prompt responses for the realization of personhood and the formation of group identity. This ascription of rhetorical functionality to the African drum-dance culture provides interesting insights into the nature of rhetorical performance in the non-Western world.