ABSTRACT Music composition – whether folk, art or popular – has inestimably enhanced knowledge and immensely contributed positively to society building throughout the ages in scores of ways. It transfers history from generation to generation and has been a unifying element, a means of disseminating information and a medium of correcting bad conduct in the society. Ruminations over the conflict situation in Nigeria reveal the necessity of the continuum of music composition (and performance...
In view of (occasional) problems encountered in relating to the aesthetics of primarily oral texts like the ones under study here, I have deliberately tried to give a hint of the general direction of the essay from the outset. The choice of the word "carnivalesque" in the title is therefore geared towards this end; it is meant to embrace the total performance implicit in "carnivalisation,"1 in strict Bakhtinian sense, among others. The overall strategy of the essay is to locate these aestheti...