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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Is Music a Civilising Force?

The Essay: Is Music a Civilising Force?: Episode 3: Professor Kofi Agawu

Episode 3

Episode 3: Professor Kofi Agawu

Is Music a Civilising Force?

Professor Kofi Agawu

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Professor Kofi Agawu examines the civilising force of music from an African perspective.

Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University looks at western assumptions about the civilising force of music and suggests an African response might be a little more nuanced.

Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University provides the third in The Essay series running in parallel to the BBC TV series Civilisations. Once again he is responding to the question of whether or not music is an entirely civilising force, and he does so having just returned from a visit to west Africa. Prof Agawu wonders how the musicians of the Asante kingdom, the sophisticated drummers, poets and singers, might respond to the idea that what they do is civilising, but he also tackles the colonial notion that the music of the colonisers was somehow superior to indigenous music and with that civilising. It's not a theory that stands the test of time when he recalls the four-part Lutheran hymns he remembers from his youth with the highly sophisticated rhythmic and poetic structures of Asante music which are now used in serious and popular music around the world.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Guests debate the notion whether music is a civilising force

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