Abstract:
Operationally, thenotion of ‘Otherness’ refers to the negative implications of Western-oriented art music scholars’ opinions that are associated with the tendency to suppress the multiformity of knowledge types in popular musicas strange, odd, dissimilar, trivial, and lowbrow. This negation amounts to segregation and isolation for mere pedantic excuses which, eventually, stultifies the intrinsic function of the arts as a humanizer of the society.This study, by contesting the extremes of the politics of the ‘Other’, argues the rationale for isolating the aesthetic (art music) and segregating against the more multi-cultural utilitarian (popular music) angles to music studies. The argument is based on facts gleaned from general literature in music studies accessible in Nigeria.
