ABSTRACT
Over the past four decades, a pervading theme in the impressive bevy of intellectual musings on African music education has been the need to decolonise the African music curriculum. To this end, various arguments have been marshalled for the ‘Africanisation’ of the music curriculum through the ‘curriculumisation’ of African music. Scholars, mostly from (ethno)musicological and music education backgrounds, have made many propositions which encompass the gamut of developing relevant theories, recognising what ‘music’ entails in African contexts, studying how music learning occurs within African traditional societies and adopting ethnic approaches of teaching music into the classroom among others. The unifying tread is the question of relevance – how to make the most out of music education programmes in Africa. While recognising the importance of these discussions and the internal merit of the arguments, this chapter proposes a ‘pause-to-reflect’ stance, carefully questioning the utility of these myriad of propositions for incorporating African music into the music programmes in Africa.
