Orality, Literacy, and Musical Notation: Rethinking Music Transmission in Nigerian Traditional Education Contexts

This research undertakes a theoretical and empirical reconsideration of the relationships between orality, literacy, and musical notation systems in the context of traditional music transmission in Nigeria. Western staff notation has been the dominant framework through which Nigerian music education institutions conceptualise and teach music reading and writing; however, its imposition on predominantly oral musical traditions has produced significant pedagogical tensions, cultural erasure risks, and exclusionary effects for students whose musical backgrounds are grounded in oral learning systems. This study examines four different indigenous music transmission systems operating across Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Ijaw traditions, mapping their epistemological structures, memory technologies, apprenticeship architectures, and social learning dynamics through ethnographic fieldwork in four geopolitical zones. A second empirical phase investigates how Nigerian university music students with different oral-literate learning backgrounds perform across notation-based and non-notation-based musical tasks, using a mixed-methods comparative assessment design. The theoretical framework integrates Walter Ong's orality-literacy theory, Vygotskian sociocultural learning theory, and African education philosophy. An original typology of music transmission modalities contextually appropriate to the Nigerian educational landscape is developed. Findings will inform transformative music pedagogy that values oral and literate traditions equally. Keywords: Oral tradition, music notation, music transmission, Nigerian education, indigenous pedagogy.