Emphasise national values in music at schools' fete

Kenya: Schools and colleges have converged in Mombasa this week for the annual National Music Festival.

The theme is Nurturing Creative Talent for Prosperity.

Music is an arrangement of sounds in a pleasing sequence or combination to be sung or played on instruments, according to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.

It has been used since time immemorial to pass messages, entertain, welcome kings, soothe the souls of listeners and nourish the soul due to the power it has to influence the body, mind and spirit of listeners.

Messages could be accounts of historical events, censure of social evils or deviant behaviour, cementing social fabric or praise for our Creator or heroes.

If quality and merit were the benchmark for selecting students from county and regional music festivals to this national event, then students performing in Mombasa have talent one can count on.

The students are set mentally, physically and emotionally to display complex skills.

Their level of readiness to take up particular tasks in music is high.

The National Music Festival provides an opportunity for every student to perform and measure his or her level of knowledge and skills against fellow students, and learn from adjudicators. This helps them to adjust and modify their musical prowess.

The students must have discovered their innate talent in music and are developing value for it.

Music as a non-academic education programme in school is concerned with awakening curiosity, developing proper interest, attitudes and values, and building psychomotor skills and capacity in students to think and judge for themselves.

Students begin by imitation, trial and error under the guidance of teachers to discover the right way of singing and performing.

They do it again and again; learnt responses in music become habitual, helping them gain confidence to sing with proficiency.

At this formative stage, national values should be carefully but surely infused progressively into the music where there are missing. These values include integrity, equity, national unity, human dignity and patriotism.

The values shape the behaviour of an individual. When the behaviour is seen to be good by members of society, one is emulated as a role model.

For students, as complex musical skills are developed with time, enabling them sing and perform almost automatically, national values will be properly grounded in them.

Their behaviour in performance will be guided by these values.

On acquiring creative skills to manipulate and vary voices, patterns and rhythm to fit special requirements of a particular issue in society, the national values will automatically be displayed and they will do it with ease.

The ability to create new songs with elements and movements based on phenomena in society begins to dawn on them.

At this point, both economic and social objectives of education begin to be realised as opportunities in the world of music professionally are discovered. Their music will be fashioned by cherished values.

These students ought to be told that the world of music has been infiltrated by immorality, right from nudity to obscene messages. This has irritated many and even caused some to shun music.

Adults do not want their children to be involved in such music, which signifies a society rejecting a deteriorating value system when it comes to music.

However, if our students would embrace national values when their philosophy of life is being developed in school, it would be possible to nurture good musicians.

Listeners would enjoy their music as the same values are imparted and influence their lifestyle.

The social foundations of the nation would then be shaped by this music for better cohesion among individuals as music brings people together.