Nigerian Circle Game


While I don't know the title of the songs the children are singing, both songs are about dancing, and  "dance your mama dance, dance your papa dance" is heard about halfway through. The performers are children in Nigeria, and the instrumentation is their voices.

 The children in the above video appear to be having a great deal of fun, but there is also learning taking place. According to Campbell & Lew (2005), play is a "vehicle for cultural learning" (p. 58). Through play, children learn about there own cultural norms, everything from social skills to hierarchy. Originally, there are six children holding hands in the circle, taking turns moving to the center. Another child comes to join, and the others direct the child to a spot for a future turn. They seem very welcoming to all children of a similar age group. Later, younger children are standing nearby, and one is accepted moving into the middle of the circle. The woman standing and watching them play never speaks to the children, but she is smiling. Nettl (2015, p. 381) says that "activities involved in learning can tell what is valued in music." The children sing about dance (and their parents' dancing) and take turns improvising dance movement during the play. That leads me to believe that dance and music are interconnected in this culture.

References

Campbell, P. S. & Lew, J. C. T. (2005). Children's natural and necessary musical play: 
         Global context, local applications. Music Educators Journal (91)5, 57-62. 

Nettl, B. (2015). The study of ethnomusicology: Thirty-three discussions [ebook 
         version]. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. doi: 10.1353/not.2016.0103

Comments

  1. BrianNovember 26, 2017 at 4:21 PM

    Hi Lisa,

    Good example of musical play and socialization in this video. You do a good job of describing the social interactions that take play during the musical game. It looks like these children are learning some social norms where everyone is included and encouraged to participate. I thought it was also interesting how even though it is a social game that obviously has rules and a set way of being played, kids were also encouraged to be unique and express themselves individually when they were in the middle of the circle. These individual dances were all encouraged by the other kids. I also thought the adult supervising was another way in which cultural norms were enforced in this game, I am assuming that if the kids were not playing it correctly or were being exclusionary that the adult would have encouraged them to include everyone.

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  2. UnknownNovember 26, 2017 at 7:26 PM

    I like that you mention the rules that children set when they play games. You mentioned that another child joined and was directed where to stand. A couple of years ago in a moment of end-of-year burnout I played a song and told students to respond to it however they saw fit. I found the results so interesting I tried it with several classes. Students tested boundaries. Some students migrated to different instruments and props (streamers, bean bags, etc.) and I decided not to restrict what they used. One of the interesting phenomena I observed was how students worked together. In one group, an ensemble emerged with a leader. On my blog, I included a link to a different example in my school where I walked in on students creating their own song while working on an assignment in another class.

    I have other experiences of seeing students teach and learn from one another. I have embraced this as a valuable aspect of music learning. I also considered it a good informal assessment of what skills my students understood and were able to apply on their own.

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