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A Report on the Development of African Performance Awards and Assessments (DAPAMA) Initiative

An increasingly mobile and globally employed workforce results in the inter-dependence of systems of educational qualifications and issues relating to equivalences. Increasing correspondence between systems drives a need for accreditations and standards to have international as well as national recognition. At the same time globalisation has led to an increasing awareness of national identities and cultural independence and a tension between the need for equivalences and the need to assert national or local identities and cultures. This paper reports on the Development of African Performance Awards and Assessments (DAPAMA) Initiative which seeks to give recognition to the skills developed (ofteninformally) by African musicians, whilst ensuring that the resulting qualifications and awards are acknowledged as having similar value to those of Western Art Music. The authors describe a process which draws upon the development of awards for Chinese Music and a meeting of African musicians and educators held at the University of Pretoria in March 2010. Concerns with Western-type structuring of non-Western cultural principles are considered, the authors describe an alternative paradigm for assessments and for the structuring of awards in ways that seek to address issues arising from a need for both local and international recognition.

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