Music is often discussed as entertainment, artistic expression or a marker of identity. Yet in many communities, it also helps organise social life: people gather around it, pass on knowledge through it, affirm relationships and negotiate what matters to them. These roles make music relevant to wider conversations about social cohesion, cultural resilience and sustainable development.

This essay draws on my doctoral research, “Exploration of Applied Ethnomusicology in the Sustainability of Bura Gulum Performance in Hawul L.G.A. of Borno State, Nigeria”. The research examines gulum, a traditional three-string lyre associated with Bura communities, and considers the cultural practices and relationships that sustain its performance. It is not an evaluation of music’s direct effects on conflict resolution. Rather, it offers a grounded perspective on the cultural conditions that can enable music to remain meaningful and socially available, including in communities affected by insecurity and disruption.

Gulum is more than a musical instrument or a performance style. Its place in community life is connected to storytelling, social commentary, praise, education and communication, as well as weddings, communal activities and everyday settings. Particular musical practices can also be bound to culturally significant occasions and understandings of wellbeing. In this sense, music operates as a kind of community infrastructure: it creates occasions for people to meet, listen, remember, learn and participate.

Thinking of music as infrastructure broadens the policy question. It is not enough to ask whether a tradition has been recorded or whether performances still take place occasionally. We should also ask whether the relationships, skills, spaces and resources that allow the tradition to function are being sustained. A recording can preserve sound, but it cannot by itself maintain the social relationships through which music is taught, performed and understood.

One concern emerging from the research is the fragility of intergenerational transmission. Where learning has depended largely on family relationships, apprenticeship and regular participation in community life, continuity can be affected when young people have fewer opportunities to learn, when experienced practitioners become older or pass away, and when performance occasions decline.

Safeguarding therefore requires more than documenting repertoire or instruments. It calls for practical ways for experienced musicians to teach, for young people to learn by doing, and for communities to decide what forms of continuity are meaningful to them. Apprenticeships, school and community workshops, intergenerational performances and support for local practitioners can help create these conditions without assuming that every tradition must remain unchanged.

Traditions are difficult to sustain when practitioners have limited opportunities to perform, earn income or receive recognition for their expertise. Cultural policy should therefore consider the economic and practical conditions of musical life: fair payment for performances and teaching, commissions, accessible rehearsal and performance spaces, and support for community-led events.

These forms of support should not reduce cultural value to commercial success. Rather, they recognise that practitioners need time, resources and viable opportunities to continue their work. Regular spaces for performance can also make participation visible and create occasions for audiences to encounter local music as a living practice rather than solely as a heritage object.

Recording, digital distribution and contemporary music production can help traditional music reach new audiences, especially younger listeners and people living away from their home communities. Adaptation can be a means of continuity rather than evidence of cultural loss. New rhythms, amplification, collaborations or production approaches may offer musicians ways to keep a tradition active in changing circumstances.

However, digitisation should be guided by the rights and priorities of the people whose cultural knowledge is being recorded and shared. Communities and practitioners should have a meaningful role in decisions about access, attribution, consent, use and potential benefit. Digital visibility is valuable, but it should complement—not replace—local performance, learning and community control.

Policies designed without the participation of musicians and cultural bearers risk misunderstanding the role a practice plays in everyday life. Community participation should therefore be built into the full process: identifying priorities, designing interventions, deciding how resources are allocated, and reviewing what has changed.

Participation also means recognising diversity within communities. People may differ by age, gender, language, locality, religious outlook or preferred musical style. Cultural policy should create space for these differences rather than treating a community as culturally uniform. At the same time, shared musical activities can offer opportunities for people to encounter one another across differences, where participation is voluntary, respectful and locally meaningful.

The relationship between music and peacebuilding should be approached with care. Music can create settings for expression, encounter and shared activity, but it does not automatically resolve disputes or remove the causes of violence. The Bura gulum research supports a more measured proposition: sustaining cultural practices helps preserve the capacities, relationships and opportunities through which communities express identity, transmit knowledge and participate in collective life.

In settings affected by insecurity, these capacities may matter to broader efforts to rebuild social and cultural life. But claims about reduced violence, reconciliation or improved security need evidence designed to assess those outcomes directly. Cultural vitality and social cohesion can be connected policy concerns without treating one as proof of the other.

First, protect cultural diversity while supporting opportunities for connection. National and international frameworks should recognise that musical practices carry meanings specific to particular communities. Policies can also support voluntary exchanges and collaborations that allow people to find common ground without erasing difference.

Second, invest in transmission. Support community-led apprenticeships, intergenerational learning, youth participation and practical teaching opportunities alongside documentation. Programmes should be shaped with the practitioners who know how the tradition is learnt and used.

Third, support the conditions for sustainable practice. Fair fees, commissions, accessible performance spaces and modest grants can help musicians continue to teach and perform. Funding should recognise the time and expertise required to sustain cultural activity, not only the production of a final event or recording.

Fourth, enable responsible digital innovation. Provide training and resources for recording, archiving and contemporary production, while establishing clear expectations around consent, attribution, access, cultural ownership and benefit-sharing.

Fifth, make community participation substantive. Cultural bearers, younger participants and relevant local organisations should be involved in setting priorities, managing activities and assessing results. Consultation should influence decisions rather than simply endorse plans already made.

Sixth, use flexible, long-term support and culturally appropriate evaluation. Possible indicators include the number and continuity of learning relationships, opportunities for young people to participate, the frequency of community musical activities, practitioners’ access to paid work, and community assessments of whether a practice remains meaningful. These indicators should be developed locally and should not be treated as a substitute for direct evidence when evaluating peacebuilding outcomes.

Interested in learning more? Gideon can be reached through his Hub Profile.