Professor Akụma Kalụ is popularly known as Ticha Akụma (“Ticha” is Igbo word for teacher) and his title is “Ọhamadike NdịIgbo.”
Ticha Akụma was born on 16th June, 1946. He is from Akanụ-Ọhafịa, Abịa State. He has a B.A in Music from the University of Nigeria, Nsụka, M.A in Historical Musicology from Michigan State University, USA. He has two (2) PhDs in Ethnomusicology and Folklore from the Indiana University with PhD minors in Anthropology and African Studies. Since 1992, he has been teaching courses in World Music, Folklore, Ethnomusicology, Peoples and Culture of Africa, Cultural diversity in the United States, Diversity in the Workplace, Continuing Community Traditions in the Global World in the Western Kentucky University, USA.
Before accepting a teaching position at Western Kentucky University, he had taught in Colleges and Universities in Michigan, Indiana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
He is a great researcher with notable scholastic works. His research work entitled “Pilgrimage to Arochukwu in God’s Own State” has traced the Igbo slave journey to one of their very beginning points in the Arọchukwu Cave, which has been nominated and is on the preliminary list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
He published a dialectal anthropological work entitled: “Ama Erika nụ na Ama Erika: (Space Abounds in Erikaland).
His research work “Issues and Process in African Music, Art-Composed Music in Nigeria” appeared in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 1: Africa pages 22 (New York: Taylor&Francis Group. Routledge, 1997).
His work “Establishing Igbo Community Tradition in the United States: Lessons from Folklorists appeared in the “Journal of American Folklore. Vol. 125. No.497 (Summer 2012), PP. 327-342 published by: University of Illinois Press.
