The role of music in shaping children’s self-knowledge and identity: Perspectives from an African setting1

Abstract

Music-making is a natural childhood activity. This is evidenced by the increase in research and scholarship covering diverse aspects of children’s interaction with music. This keynote address invites us to reflect on the ways in which music shapes young children’s self-knowledge and identity by considering their musical needs, their interactions with music, what they and their adult caregivers experience as they participate in musicking and how this entire encounter may nurture their growing musicality. Acknowledging the influence of context in nurturing musical childhoods, four settings of home, school, church and the community activity of Isukuti performing arts are examined through lenses of social and cultural psychology and African Indigenous knowledge systems. The discussion ends with a call for educators, researchers and practitioners to consolidate ongoing and future efforts in nurturing musical childhoods, particularly by adding the sub-Saharan Africa perspective to the kaleidoscope of global activities that constitute children’s musical journeys