This study attempts to provide a theoretical framework for
the appreciation of music among the Benin, a strategic ethnic group in Nige-
ria. It investigates how concepts such as folk and popular song, music, noise,
speech and sound find their relevant expression and place in the socio-
cultural, economic, moral and even psychological setting of the Benin world.
Finally, it is discovered that a conceptual approach is crucial, not only to the
situation of the Benin oral literary values within a Western ideological con-
text, but also in the facilitation of an objective evaluation of critical aspects of
the life of people