BOUESTI JOURNAL OF PERFORMING ARTS

This study explores sacred rituals and their performance aspect in relation to formal academic space. Specifically, it focuses on an African music ensemble examination in a Nigerian university as an example of ritual music being brought into an academic setting and analyzed within an ethnomusicology framework. Data for this study were collected through participant observation to examine the extent to which the musical performance constituted merely a theatrical representation or, conversely, a transcendental spiritual experience rooted in Osun ritual music. The writers concentrated on several points such as ritual authenticity, spiritual embodiment, gendered ritual roles, and trance phenomena which they observed during the performance. For example, a devotee who was ritually initiated became the lead priestess and shortly afterwards, an Arugba (ritual votary) went into a trance. This points to unexpected intersections between performance, belief, and spiritual reality encountered in the African Traditional Religion (ATR) context that merit further discussion. This study posits that religious knowledge systems rooted in local cultural contexts are so closely intertwined with performance practices that, even young people who have received a formal education are unable to separate the two, thereby showing the continued existence of ATR in the face of such external forces as globalization, modernization, and the main religions Christianity and Islam. Taking this incident as a case study and raising it to the level of performance theory, embodiment, and indigenous knowledge systems, this paper adds to the existing, though still limited, body of work on African ritual music, religion, and the survival of traditional cosmologies in modern institutional settings. The study notes that African ritual performances cannot always be considered only as aesthetic displays since they serve purposes as locations of spiritual experiences, the expression of identity, and cultural continuity.

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