The IGBA Dance of IJELE Masquerade and the Role of ONYE OJA (The Flutist): A Musical Note and Sculptural Representation

Abstract

A festival is a friendly event that presents a variety of performances and exhibitions at different venues or at one venue but at different times. The duration of festival may be one day or many eventually span to days or weeks depending on the content and sponsorship (Mokwunyei, 2005). Virtually, every festival has its characteristics or associated music and dance which can be found to occur along with other ubiquitous music and dances to give colour and tone to the festival. It appears that the issue of some of our cultural heritages are going into extinction and gradually becoming a thing of the past. At present, we find a lot of people especially those living in urban cities, travelling back to their various home towns to take part and celebrate festivals like the new yam festival, traditional masquerade festival, marriage ceremonies among others. As various scholars clamored for cultural revival, less emphasis or attention is given to the analyses of these cultural display, especially the Igba Ijele masquerade dance festival activity and the flutist who add pep to the igba dance, which also contains the total summary of the philosophy of the northern Igbo Anambra world view. The flutists adds flavor to the dance, this is what inspires this gentle giant to move, dance and glide freely as the spirit thrills the audience and spectators. It was also discovered that during the Ijele’s performance, less attention is always placed or given to the Igba Ijele, also known as Igba memo (dance of the spirit). No other masquerade dances to the Igba Ijele except only the Ijele. The paper seeks to analyze the music derived from the Igba Ijele and what makes it different from other Igba dance, while It also creates a miniature sculptural piece of the flutist. The nature of reportage would be analytical, descriptive, and also more of documentation.