Breaking barriers and stimulating dance accompaniment to popular music in Nigeria

Abstract

Dances are part of our socio cultural identities in Nigeria. They are performed for different purposes and at different settings such as home, social gatherings, religious centres, schools, concert halls, dance halls and theatres. Some dance steps are peculiar to certain ethnic groups within each geo-political zone in Nigeria. These peculiarities of dance steps are seemingly going into oblivion. This paper seeks to find out reasons for the erosive state of these dance steps and reasons for the consequent emergence of modified dance steps. Primary data were collected through oral interview of selected dance groups in Ile-Ife, Ibadan, Ijaw, Calabar, Istekiri and Jos metropolis. Secondary data were collected by reviewing works of scholars in published books and articles from national and international journals. The findings reveal that the emergence of modified dance steps has now become an accompaniment to popular music as against the conventional concept of music as an accompaniment to dance. These dance steps become more popular than the traditional dances and adapted as homely dances in all the selected geo-political zones in Nigeria. The paper concludes that the emergence of modified dance steps has eroded and sniffed the dance peculiarities of these towns as a result of popular music artiste’s quest for identity and unity of dance steps to their music.