GOSPEL MUSIC COMPOSITIONS AND ISSUES OF CONTEXTUAL LANGUAGE EXPRESSIONS AS AGENT FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY

Composition as an area of specialization is quite vast regarding the divergent genres it covers be it art, sacred, traditional, secular or popular forms. Regardless of a composers interest in the aforementioned, there are basic parameters expected to be met by the composer be it textual or musical criterion. These cover a lot of area with the former taking care of the textual/literal or implied meanings as totality of the language expression and the later employing suitable pitches conforming to the tonal inflexions‟/diacritic to synergize the totality of the music for clear communication. But it is observed that a statement of reverence in one custom is rather considered derogatory in another custom making the meaning of a song text to become contextual and ambiguous. As the adage says
“one man‟s meat is another man‟s poison”, this is exemplified between the Jewish and the African cultures. The paper therefore investigates this problem to find out if it is a cultural bias, peculiarities or belief system/myths between continents. The aim of the paper is to discuss communication expressions, challenges, its enhancements and amelioration including implied meanings while its objectives are to identify suitable tonal inflections in the music that conveys the true message, musical parody and transliteration, implied undertones of culturally perceived expressions, speech sentences of understanding and finally word paintings. The qualitative design was the research method used while Literary materials were been employed as well integrating the participant observation approach and analysis to evaluate the validity of the selected song data that were used. Additionally, recommendations were made to contribute to knowledge.