Abstract
Traditional African music is full of stylistic diversity that helps connect contemporary culture with musical awareness. Various heritages across the musicological spectrum continually recast the African traditional musicianship, developing its origins and historical roots into various musical expressions integrated into the African diaspora and its diversified musical vocabulary. Musical awareness in music education is crucial to achieving a differentiated and balanced music curriculum, with various cultures necessitating representation within the pedagogical range (Zou and Gong, 2025). The current research project focused on the contemporary music appreciation oeuvre that amalgamates different creative expressions in the studied heritage, intending to promote and progress the repertoire selections in the quest to develop an awareness of underrepresented music knowledge within the K-12 pedagogy since more academic research is necessary to understand the influence of African traditional music in the artistic context and evolving music curriculum. This research analyzed a selection of musicological and ethnomusicological examples utilizing ‘liquindi’ as a performance technique among non-pitched percussion instruments, seeking to extract pedagogical symbolism in the ‘water drumming’ style and its use of the natural environment as a medium for artistic diversity and creative expression.
Presenters
Xuanyuan JinMusic Intern and Research Assistant, North America International School, Shanghai, China
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
African Diaspora, Ethnomusicology, Liquindi, Music
