Traditional Dances and Musical Instruments: A Case of AmaMpondo in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The acculturation and hegemony brought by the European settlers divided and consequently vanquished the African pride embedded in traditional music and dances in the AmaMpondo communities. This study aims to revive the AmaMpondo socio-cultural practices, reflected in their attire, language, and traditional practices, to preserve their legacy for future generations. Vygotsky’s theory, which focuses on how humans arrange and express their thoughts to learn and communicate, underpins this study, concluding that human learning necessitates social contact. This study used the interpretivism paradigm, encouraging the author to seek firsthand experience and explore various interpretations of specific social contexts to advance the research. The author explored a qualitative ethnographic approach to encourage open responses from the focus groups to the semi-structured and open-ended questions, allowing for the sharing of perspectives for recording and documentation. A narrative analysis was used to describe, interpret, and analyse the collected data, allowing the author to closely read and express individual experiences and social realities from the participants’ perspectives. Findings indicated that by stimulating a variety of traditional practices, with songs and dances sung during the ritual performances, the amaMpondo heritage can be revitalised. Furthermore, these practices contribute to instilling morals and values in the younger generation, and the preservation of cultural identity. The author recommends that AmaMpondo should instil symbiosis and syncretism in their children from the elementary stage, encouraging them to collaborate with teachers at school. Therefore, the author advocates for the convergence of diverse cultures. Keywords: Socio-Cultural Practices, Traditional Instruments, amaMpondo, Revitalisation, Syncretism.