“All Music is Music”: Reconciling Musical Cultures of Origin with Music Identities in Collegiate Programs of Tanzania

Abstract

Post-colonial Tanzania has not reconciled the significant disconnect in music education between indigenous and Western music experience in higher education. Students with indigenous music experiences from the village struggle to acquire the Western-centered formal education as offered in academia. The critical dichotomy between the two learning contexts raised the question: In what ways have higher education institutions in Tanzania embraced the indigenous music and reconciled music-cultures in the attempt to offer musical-arts education? The purpose of the study was to understand how Tanzania is responding to the quest for musical cultures reconciliation by exploring the relationship between students’ indigenous music education and the experiences at two institutions with varying curricula models. Therefore, a phenomenological method was used to investigate students’ lived experience. The findings indicate that the current music curricula are the replica of Western curriculum models where music students find themselves in curricula that constitute abstract intellectual territory. The nature of musical knowledge transmission requires graduating music students to relearn in the village in order to face their musical world. Acknowledging the significance of students prior musical experiences and Western music in the academia, the need for a curriculum that bridges disparate music cultures and provides a constructivist approach to learning is central in Tanzanian higher education. The community-integrated music curriculum is proposed to close gaps in student learning experiences.