Integrating Instrumental Dimension of Ukele Ensemble into Church Music in Ogume, Delta State, Nigeria

Abstract Church music in Nigeria reflects the country’s history of Christianity as the transatlantic effort of foreign missionaries who founded, sponsored and regulated the religion in Nigeria from the middle of the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Part of the regulation was the prohibition of the use of Nigerian traditional music in Christian liturgy. To them, church music forms were Western chants, masses, hymns, and anthems, and not the traditional music of the converts. Even after the return of the foreign missionaries, genres of African traditional music remain in shrines and traditional festivals, even in Ogume, Delta State. One of such music is the Ukele. Ukele, a traditional music ensemble in Ogume, remains solely used in traditional festivals and trado-religious worship, in spite of its percussive, communicative, educative and liturgical potentials. In this ethnographic research, I use non-participant observation and interview of seven select ukele ensemble practitioners from the seven quarters of Ogume to investigate the strategies for integrating the instrumental dimension of Ukele into church music in Ogume, Delta State, Nigeria. Findings indicate that ukele is rooted in the history of Ogume; the instrumental aspect of the music is a corpus of time-lining, percussive, and interactive rhythms that can be used in church music through procurement of the traditional musical instruments, dedication, practice and rehearsal of its music and combination with indigenous church songs. This is crucial for the contextualization of Christian liturgy in the area. Keywords: Ukele, Church Music, Music Culture, Ogume