The resilience of labrosones in coastal communities bordering the Indian Ocean

Kolawole, Gbolahan Cornelius

The resilience of labrosones in coastal communities bordering the Indian Ocean

Master Thesis

2020

Abstract

The resilience of labrosones bordering the Indian Ocean is an investigation that has gathered and presented both findings and arguments from related scholarship that highlight the distribution of labrosones along the research region and emphasizes their socio-musical significance in sustaining cultural traditions that have helped to define these communities. Conclusions drawn from the distribution study further uncovered the religious, cultural, and social significance of labrosones. These findings were engaged in order to broaden the systematic approach of organology to form a contextual, culturally situated, and inclusive organology for labrosones. The central objective of this thesis was to provide a theoretical lens through which labrosones were viewed and studied by engaging; Bates' concept of the social life of instruments (2012), Doubleday's gendered nature of instruments (2008), Binford's analysis of material culture (1972), and Kartomi's argument for contextual organology (1990). Though previous scholarship in musicology and ethnomusicology have engaged these themes for music instruments in general, this thesis applies a geographically and culturally specific analysis for labrosones in particular. Through archival research of primary and secondary sources, the research was able to intellectually situate and acknowledge the labrosone beyond a static sound object and present it as a sound-producing object with a social life, significant to cultural practices and symbolic of cultural communities. This research has the potential to contribute to scholarship, both in labrosone organology and pedagogy at tertiary level.

Keywords

music

Reference:

Collections

Masters

Full item page