​ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ONDO TRADITIONAL SONGS AS CARRIERS OF CULTURAL LEGACIES: ​ EXTRAPOLATING CULTURE FROM SONG TEXTS

Abstract

​Every musical work, recorded, and/or performed as pre-planned live or spontaneously staged, is decorated, in-filled and typified by cultural trait-values. These values may be typically embedded, direct, reflective, borrowed or mixed. In the light of the aforementioned, this paper seeks to explore Ondo traditional songs as a template towards extrapolating the Ondo people. Anchored on ethnomusicology theory propounded by Nketia (2005, 83), the research used Ondo traditional song repertory, interviews and bibliographic modes of enquiry to achieve its goals. The result showed, through the employed means, that every culture is duly represented in the lyrics of their song text and that such cultures could be comprehended through these songs. The paper concludes that these traditional songs carry more contents than just melody and any other musical properties or direct meaning of text. Hence, the songs, put together, are carriers of cultural legacies and a veritable tool to extrapolate a people for cultural traits, values, ethics, beliefs and practices.

Keywords

• cultural study
• traditional african songs
• song text analysis
• cultural legacies
• trait-values
• ondo people