Music, entertainment and education
From Never Again
Music can be a useful tool in the promotion of 'never again'.
Longman dictionary defines music as the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. In all African traditional, music is a part of everyday life. Chanting and singing accompany religious rites and festivals, and an oral tradition provides a record of history in most African cultures. Music has for long been used to transmit messages of all kind, it is never missed at functions ranging from cultural festivals, religious, parties and funeral. Music creates social cohesion and strengthens group bonds, such as school pep songs and military songs during the war.
Many assert that the most important function of music is to regulate or influence emotions. Some sequences of notes are happy, some are sad. According to Peter Janata, a brain scientist at Dartmouth College, music offers scientists another way to explore the unsolved mysteries of human consciousness. It can help explain how the brain processes external signals - in this case sound waves - that lead people to perform actions such as toe tapping, dancing and singing. He said: "Music provides a panoramic window through which we can examine the neural organization of complex behaviors that are at the core of human nature.”
Scholars have also indicated that the youth are easily influenced by music and other Edutainment such as movies and radio which explains why some youth have adopted bad behaviors like smoking, bad language, which they try to copy from the music and film stars. Through history, music has been used to transmit both negative and positive messages. Music can be dangerous or very useful in society depending on how it is used. For example, music was used by the Germans to motivate the troops and civilians to attract enemy troops to propaganda programs, to express a vision and nature of their regimes and to promise a better future.
Rap music in US began as a rebellion by the African American who were isolated from other Americans to assert what they were really looking for and could not get from society. In South Africa, music was used against apartheid. We have heard songs like "Together as one" by Lucky Dube, where he called upon all South Africans to unity irrespective of their skin color. In Rwanda many musicians composed and sang songs that planted selfish and awful genocide ideology before and after the genocide. Songs like “Nimuze Tubatsembe”, an anthem that was used by the killers throughout the 1994 genocide calling upon the perpetrators to kill their fellow innocent civilians.
As much as music was used to split Rwandans, it can now play a big role in planting the NEVER AGAIN idea to all Rwandans. Music can be used in Edutainment (the act of learning through a medium that both educates and entertains) with the aim of delivering key messages in an entertaining manner. This can be used to promote the Never Again ideology in Rwanda through treating issues such challenging issues as ethics, morals, the importance of the on going Gacaca proceedings, unity and reconciliation.
Rwandan musicians need to write songs on challenging issues which need to be understood by all Rwandans like Gacaca, Human rights, rural economic development, Environmental protections, women’s emancipation, not forgetting unity and reconciliation, the current dream of all Rwandans and her well-wishers.
According to research, Music attracts one’s attention to listen to the message more than other means like seminars which are attended by few people and where some times people’s concentration is interacted by deferent things leading to poor reception of the message, the melody, instrumentals and the rhythm of a song will attract one’s attention thus following the message given.
Many people will always find it heard to tell the sermons and the scriptures they shared at church or quoting discussants in seminars and conferences but will remember what a music star has said. Those in Rwanda who were in Amahoro stadium when the South African Reggae Artiste, Lucky Dube thrilled Kigali in the Fifth Edition of the Pan African Dance Festival, FESPAD 2006 will testify, all his fans will tell you each ward he said.
I remember a friend of mine who told me he got saved because of a song which always played on the radio describing the horror non believers would face on the judgment day when Jesus comes back. “I would always see a picture of Jesus surrounded by the angels in the sky, the stars falling down from the sky, the earth trembling and the flames of the hell’s fire waiting to consume me whenever I would hear that song playing on the radio. One day walked to church and decided to get saved” he said. Many people had preached to him but he was finally challenged by a song which explains the strength of music in changing behavior.
- TSG Martin
