Scholar promotes traditional music

Harold Ayodo

Professor Charles Nyakiti is a seasoned nyatiti player who believes music enhances academic performance.

The Kenyatta University scholar, who has plucked the eight-stringed lyre for close to 30 years, credits music for grades.

"Music should be a compulsory part of the curriculum for candidates to perform better in national examinations," says the 61-year-old artiste and scholar.

The scholar, who played the nyatiti before a United Nations delegation in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1984, believes music has a role in the development of the brain.

"Renowned scholars and philosophers like Plato, Pythagoras and many others studied Mathematics, Music, Astronomy and Medicine," Nyakiti stresses.

Pythagoras, famed for the Pythagorean theorem in Mathematics and referred to as the ‘father of numbers’, also discovered the octave in music.

Souvenir

Nyakiti is currently supervising Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) and Masters students in Music from Kenyatta and Maseno Universities.

He graduated with a PhD from Queensland University, Belfast in Northern Ireland and recalls giving his former supervisor, Prof John Blacking, a nyatiti as a souvenir.

The scholar has written 10 books on Kenyan music and presented several research papers at international forums.

"Developed nations take music seriously. For example, in the United States students pursuing medicine have Music in their syllabus," says Nyakiti.

He cites top schools in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations, saying they have music in their curriculum.

"Starehe Boys Centre, Alliance High School, Strathmore and the like study music as an examinable subject," says Nyakiti.

Classical instrument

The nyatiti — usually played with the oporo (a curved horn) — is a classical instrument used by the Luo people of Western Kenya, typically in Benga music.

He confesses playing the lyre in his office, arguing good artists should practice regularly to achieve perfection.

"I also listen to assorted genres of music as that is what a good musician or artist should do," he says.

Nyakiti, whose name coincidentally sounds similar to nyatiti, says the three-foot-long lyre, was originally bigger. However, he says, in the colonial days Luos who attended mission schools in Kisiiland modified the obokano of the Abagusi.

"Students from Nyanza who attended Kabaa Mission School came back home and tuned the nyatiti an octave higher after they learnt to play the guitar," says the scholar.

The Portuguese settled at the Coast, he says, introduced the guitar into the country.

Nyakiti insists the word ‘nyatiti’ is derived from the sound the instrument makes as it is being tuned.

The scholar, who won several awards in the 1970s for training primary school pupils to sing at festivals, says music is in his lineage.

"My maternal grandfather was a renown nyatiti player, and so was one of my maternal uncles. I may have taken up the mantle from them," says Nyakiti.

He trained as a teacher at the then Siriba Teachers College before he was posted to Chiga Primary School and later Manyatta Primary School in Kisumu.

"I was admitted to Kenyatta University as a student of Music and English where I realised that I was talented in playing nyatiti in 1979," he says.

New tracks

"We were taught to play instruments from the West, Asia and Africa. I stuck with one from Africa — the nyatiti — to be specific," he recalls.

Nyakiti has three new tracks, which he is contemplating recording.

"The songs are Atero Odundo, Olum Fanuel and Ochola Ologi, which I believe are excellent works of art," he says.

The scholar says he and his colleagues are in the process of decolonising students at Kenyatta University by insisting on focussing on music from Africa.

"We Africans have our own rich instruments and Western ones, such as the piano, should play second fiddle," argues Nyakiti, a former don at Maseno University.

He says both the nyatiti and piano are the same in class as they are what he terms ‘tribal instruments’.

"Music is a very important part of our cultural heritage and should not be let to die. We have to keep playing our instruments," he says.

The polygamist, whose children have followed in his academic footsteps, believes music from Africa is here to stay.

"Instruments like the nyatiti, orutu and ohangla are being incorporated by contemporary artists in their work, which is not a bad idea," he says.

Nyakiti says the flute was not traditionally used when performing Ohangla, but has been brought on board by the likes of Tony Nyadundo.