MUSIC

These courses can be fulfilled through Pitt-Recognized or Exchanges. 

The course is designed to introduce students to the nature and characteristic features of West African performance traditional arts that totally cover music, and other art forms such as dance, drama, masquerade, drama and theater, which are combined with music in performance. It seeks to provide students with an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the diversity, dynamism, and complexity of these performing arts in the region, and the role that these arts plays in social, cultural, political, and economic lives of the societies. In a broader context, the course traces the shifting styles, forms, and content of these performing arts in relation to larger social, cultural, political and economic conditions experienced by the people. It analyzes the underlying discourse of artistry as expressed in these art forms, by examining the nature or the characteristic features of the arts, and how they are used with music as social and artistic mediums of communication, or as spontaneous dialogue to dramatize themes drawn from everyday social lives of the people. It shows how the use of these performing arts by the communities, as an avenue of communication, has continued to exist as ‘African cultural memory’ generally among the communities and has subsequently led to cultural self-determination and self-transformation among the societies. The course finally shows, in conclusion, how these West African performing art traditions have historically and culturally formed part of the heritage of the Afro-Diaspora musical traditions, as they are normally expressed through cultural performance