1. World Alliance for Arts Education (WAAE) 3rd Summit
Theme: Towards a paradigm of creative education for 21st Century
Coercing creative enterprise in the academy – students’ responses and
testimonies
Every intellectually unimpaired person possesses innate capability for narrative
creativity from babyhood. Ultimately, narrative epistemology marks the musical arts
in indigenous Africa. Current sophistication of upbringing and classroom pedagogy
inhibits the blossoming of natural creative faculty. The classroom is the
contemporaneously viable forum for transacting the soft science of the musical arts
(symbiotic sonic, choreographic, dramatic and material theatre) as primary agency
that stimulates creative imagination and functionally manages polity. The
functionality theory underpinning African musical arts creative intentions generates
an intangible force that could be proactively applied to contain current societal
atrocities resulting from disabled spirituality globally. Recent practical theory and
research illustrate that given motivation, and spared hegemonic control theories and
regimens, the average learner at any level of schooling musters original creative
capability by employing narrative-scholarship, oral or scripted. The control regimens
that mark institutionalized classical musical arts education, for instance, intimidate
and thereby atrophy the innate creative and performance potentials of masses.
Narrative creativity and epistemology, if re-instituted, shall reinstate the neglected
humanity imperatives of the knowledge domain, and channel creativity and
performance experiencing of the musical arts in schools and communities towards
positive societal goals.
Creativity has marked human being-ness since the ages, and it has been basic human
nature to continually advance and query the objectives and standards of creativity.
Creativity has the dual orientation of being virtue/value-driven or diabolical.
Scholarship has been contriving literacy creativity theories that do not always take
cognition of the fact that philosophical-theoretical grounding, performed not
necessarily verbalized or written, has always underscored creativity in indigenous
cultures. Indigenous advancements of purposive creative aspirations and grammatical
frameworks were normatively pragmatic, not a theoretical or radical fancy.
How much original, practical creative enterprise that challenges the innate creative
imagination of students is stimulated in the normal, tertiary music education sites? Do
contemporary college music education philosophy and practices inhibit, intimidate
and disable creative capability, originality and disposition among students? My
practical research experience is that, given motivation, an average music student is
capable of manifesting creative individuality (oral or literacy) without necessarily first
undergoing courses and control in classical compositional, choreographic or dramatic
theories. Curricula and course requirements do not normally sensitize musical arts
students to aspire for purposive creative explorations that would be active in
championing societal ethos.
My hypothesis is that given the freedom or incentive, the average music student or
learner is an intuitively capable creative personality and could render unique creative

2. expressions when the creative tools and processes are not unduly mentally
circumscribed, intimidated or repressed/inhibited by mentor-pressure/interference.
Contrived and restrictive curricular rules and boundaries of creativity, performance
and evaluation also inhibit and intimidate creative resourcefulness.
The above arguments have informed my applied classroom creativity experiment in
the Music Department, University of Pretoria, South Africa since 2001. The primary
course requirement for second year African music (ethnomusicology) Module coerces
students to create and present original musical arts items in groups for evaluation.
Successive outcomes in seven years of the course requirement have demonstrated that
students are generally capable of original creative inspiration that often re-visit the
pristine indigenous principle of integrated and purposive conceptualization of the
musical arts. The primary assessment criterion for the year course is the production of
terse, original total theatre acts created and performed publicly in small groups. The
productions activities subtly engineer spiritual-social bonding of learners and
audience irrespective of culture. The themes independently determined by the
students address perceived societal issues, thereby evoking the original meaning of
the musical arts as the proactive conscience of society. The Module sensitizes that
creativity must transcend current, global virtue-devoid entertainment, and reinstate the
original meaning of the musical arts by awakening and instilling humanity
consciousness and concerns such as tolerance, socialization of wealth and alleviation
of contrived mass deprivation and poverty among other deafening ills that conflict
contemporary global societies.
The class is required to independently form themselves into groups of from five to
seven members. The only guide to creative aspiration is that the works must
demonstrate multiculturalism, and capture the human-social sensibilities of the
African environment of the learners whose formal musical sensitization has been
almost exclusive European classical music knowledge and practice. For one semester
of their first year study they undergo a course on African music that introduces them
to the philosophy, theory and practical experiencing of African music that entails
class performance of a modern inter-cultural composition for African and European
instruments. Each production group must independently organize to create, rehearse
and perform original musical arts creation of about five to ten minutes duration that
must be staged in public as a primary score component of the year-course evaluation.
The evaluators’ first encounter with the group creativity and productions is during the
public performance. Every year the result has been stupendous as the music students
create and perform remarkable works that entail integrated musical arts theatre of
music, dance, drama and sometimes costume art. Assessment focuses on the student
groups’ finished products as well as written reflections on their creative and
performance experiences.
Three snippets of the creative guidelines the student groups independently formulated
to underpin their respective group-creative processes and the exhibited final products
are reproduced:
Title of piece: “The world on one stage.” (6 students)
Our aim is to bring across the concept of unity in diversity. In South Africa we have a
collection of cultures and our aim is to show that there can be unity as well as
diversity both in our country and the world. Our piece is in ternary form. We start off
by singing the South African National Anthem … to show unity through song as well

3. as show the diversity within South Africa… (In) Section B … we move from the drums
to … do a synchronized pattern of body percussion showing that although we are very
different there are also similarities between us. This is also emphasized by the two
dances that are performed. By playing a Chinese theme on xylophone over body
percussion and dance we are able to fuse different cultures as well as musical
aspects. We have a section of conversation between the Chinese culture and the
Australian culture … With the use of dynamics in (A2) we build to a climax, and end
off with confidence that different cultures and individuals can work together to form a
powerful entity …
Title: “Survival of the Metropolitan Kwela”. (5 students)
Our group decided to combine a variety of musical styles and genres to demonstrate
the potential of overcoming very different ideas, displaying the magical unifying
element of music. The title of our piece … not only served as a combinatory phrase
regarding the existing compositions we used, but represented the lives of Africans
today – often being consumed by our technology – and luxury-dominated world, yet
fighting to hold on to our moral and artistic roots … In the last section of the
composition we ventured with full force into ethnic musical ways – with everyone
joining in on a unified rhythm on the drums … each member of the group was allowed
to express their inner self and their unique musical style and emotions through a solo
on their drum …
Title: “Pink Panther” (5 students)
Our group used the story of an African leopard who woke up one morning only to
make the shocking discovery that he has turned pink over the course of the night. The
story develops through three phases: morning, afternoon and evening. It is set in
African where the Pink Panther is part of an ethnic community, surrounded by other
leopards and a village counselor. The Pink Panther is ridiculed and rejected by the
tribe of ‘normal’ leopards, and he turns to the village counselor for help. After the
village counselor tries to figure out why the leopard is pink, he explains that everyone
is an individual, special creature who is meant to be the way he or she is, regardless
of what might be so-called ‘socially accepted’. When the Pink Panther returns to his
tribe they ask forgiveness for their judgemental behaviour and they show their
acceptance by means of a celebration festival … Our performance is an expression of
different emotional states that can be experienced in a tribe or society: shame,
rejection, self-pity, guilt, joy and the feeling of being accepted. The tribe is a
representation of how a society thinks that certain norms are more accepted than
others and how they use rejection to get rid of elements that they don’t approve of ...
in modern-life issues concerning discrimination against sex, race or culture ... The
lesson is that everyone has the right to be loved and accepted, regardless of the
circumstances.
[A DVD of the students’ creations will illustrate the presentation.]