Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://localhost:4000/handle/20.500.12504/56

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Browsing Journal Articles by Author "Isabirye, James"

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    Can indigenous music learning processes inform contemporary schooling
    (International Journal of Music Education, 2021-02-24) Isabirye, James
    This autoethnographic study investigated possibility of incorporating indigenous pedagogies into Ugandan school music and, possibly, general education. School music education in Uganda currently occurs within a colonial-influenced system that does not connect with learners’ indigenous cultures. The colonial system fosters belief that “western” is modernity and “indigenous” is backwardness that should be erased. School music learning is currently experienced in a teacher-dominated, “banking” (Freire, 1970) school system that disempowers learners and produces graduates who cannot address the musical needs of their worlds. Ugandan government measures to improve music and general education have not improved the situation. Literature on the role that indigenous pedagogies could play in a contemporary music education is limited. Through this study, I sought to understand what might happen when indigenous education pedagogies are incorporated in a contemporary, formal school setting. Informed by relevant literature, I interrogated and analyzed my own learning and teaching experiences in Ugandan communities and schools and found that embedding indigenous learning and teaching processes in music classrooms fostered growth in learner leadership, ownership, agency, and identity in the context of mutually shared participatory experiences that learners found relevant and meaningful—experiences that engendered joyful, passionate, collaborative learning, and reification of reflective practice among learners.
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    Community musicking and musical cognition among adungu music communities of the Acholi people from Awach, Gulu district, Northern Uganda
    (Research Studies in Music Education, 2024-07-31) Isabirye, James
    This ethnographic inquiry investigated the nature of musical cognition that engagements in the Ugandan Acholi people’s adungu music culture engender, what can be understood about musical cognition in nonwesternized oral community music-making experiences, and how this might inform school music education theory and practice. Schooling in Uganda mostly upholds colonial epistemes that separate cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains, and position the arts and culture at the periphery of school experiences. Through a thematic analysis of data from interviews, focus group discussions, and observations of Anyim Lac troupe music community engagements, this study found that sociomusical experiences engender musical cognition where the musical spirit, mind, body, and environment interactions birth musical understanding. Musical cognition was understood as a holistic process of reflecting, creating, recreating, and acting emotionally where these musical spirit, mind, body, and environment interactions are shaped by culture. Since humans perceive, perform, and learn music as the embodiment of the interaction between musical spirit, mind, body, and environment, educators might need to create contexts where learners engage in learning experiences in ways that embed awareness of the intertwined nature of musical spirit, mind, body, and environment in those meaning-making processes.
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    Indigenous music learning in contemporary contexts: nurturing learner identity, agency, and passion
    (Research Studies in Music Education., 2021-02-20) Isabirye, James
    I studied the revival project that involved teaching and (re)learning of a nearly extinct music tradition of the Basoga people from Uganda, to find out what might be learnt about and from those learning processes, and insights that might be applicable in formal educational settings. The revival project activities were documented (with participants’ permission) and publicized through a large number of audio and audiovisual recordings, photographs, and reports from community and school settings. Treating this documentation as extant data, I engaged in a qualitative analysis of the social and musical interactions between and among the two surviving master musicians and the youths to understand the nature and meaning of these learning experiences. Emergent themes reflected that nurturing identity, agency, and joy-filled passion among the learners were the main contributing factors that facilitated a successful transfer of knowledge and skills from the elderly master musicians to multitudes of youths.
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    Namadu drum music and dance as mediation of healing rituals among the Bagwere people of Uganda
    (Taylor& FrancisOnline: Journal of Music Research in Africa., 2021-03-18) Isabirye, James
    This article reports on a study that investigated the namadu healing ritual of the Bagwere people of Uganda. The ritual involves drumming, singing and dancing, as well as sacrificing chicks, birds and animals towards gaining spiritual, emotional and physical healing of afflicted clan members. This music and dance mediated ritual is no longer commonly performed in African indigenous communities, and has not previously received scholarly attention. The current study sought to find out the deeper meaning of this indigenous heritage; what modern society could learn from it; and its viability in a contemporary context. Ethnographic data was obtained through observation, interviews, focus group discussions, and analysis of extant videos and photographs. The findings revealed that the namadu ritual embeds cultural identity, and increases agency in communities. Further, the music and dance have been re-invented into a royal and social entertainment, and a cultural festival for the Bagwere Cultural Union (BCU) and communities, respectively.