Forms and Style of Chamba Leko Oral Songs Performance: An examination of Nakenyare Festival Songs

Abstract

The Chamba Leko songs are orally expressed art and could be regarded as a living   culture. They are in from of chants and performed before an audience by either an individual or as a group which are accompanied most times by backup chorus signers as well as drummers and dancer. The overwhelming intrusion of western religious practices and modernism has gradually emasculated Chamba Leko of her hitherto rich traditional song performance. This paper will examine the war and circumcision songs of the Chamba Leko. Showing how, the dying artistic form of the people culture exist within their society and can be re-directed towards achieving the contemporary needs of the people. This provides the focus using the performance theory of which the arts require the feasibility of either trained or skillful performing artist. This theory becomes imperative as the Chamba Leko performance is of the both trained and skillful performing artist. The interest the work intends to generate is to throw up question on how bad has the intrusion of western religions and culture on the Chamba Leko folksong performances. This paper discover that, in sustaining Chamba Leko oral performances as part of continuity for the Chamba Leko oral traditions, such   performance should be done on a communal basis all over Chamba Leko lands. The custodians of Chamba Leko performance should identify those who are well-versed in this oratory to grace social events where great numbers of Chamba both old and young are present, so as to keep its spread.