Functions of Children Satirical Songs: The Oyo-Yoruba experience (original) (raw)

In any Yoruba society, music performs numerous functions in entertainment, religious/ritual, festivals, traditional rites, folklore, education, as well as moral function of social criticisms in form of satirical songs, which control excesses in behaviour and mock or condemn non-conformist with the norms and values that depicts the moral standard of that society. The major obsession of this paper is to examine the Children Satirical Songs as a musical phenomenon among the Oyo-Yoruba with the aim of investigating into the musical practice and content in an attempt to collect, analyse and identify the forms and relevance of the musical genre in the Yoruba society. This paper therefore relies on sociological and functionality theories as compass in term of research dimension; and oral interviews of children within the ethnographic scope of this study and also the bibliographic method of data collection which will exploit the use of participant observatory tools for the purpose of musical analysis. The findings shows that children between the ages of 8 and 13 having being implanted by the norms and tradition values of the society through oral tradition and other forms of formal moral instructions, composed these satirical songs and used them as a checks to unruly or immoral behaviours among their peers and some adults regardless of their status, whether an adult is present or not. These satirical songs contain words that lampoon the deviant behaviour among the children. It was also discovered that children also composed and perform satirical songs to just mock others for their own enjoyments' sake or self-entertainment as well as in games and sports. The musical analysis further reveals that most of the satirical songs are spoken verses in call and response form with short poetic structure. This paper concludes that Children satirical songs have been significantly able to correct unruly behaviours especially among the children because children hates being publicly disgraced before their friends and since corporal punishments both at home and schools has been discouraged due to likely accidents and dangers it might afflict upon the children; but the major treat is that this genre of music is gradually fading out as a result of children being discouraged to speak Yoruba at nursery and primary schools and at home by some parents.