Nigerian Art Music: with an Introductory Study of Ghanaian Art Music (review)

Nigerian Art Music, with an Introductory Study of Ghanaian Art Music, by Bode Omojola. Ibadan: Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique, University of Ibadan, 1995. (Also available from the author.) 169 pp. Bibliog., index. $25. ISBN 9782015385

Bode Omojola's book titled Nigerian Art Music is a timely publication that seeks to clarify the extensions of Western art music in Nigeria; it also discusses the various ways in which Nigerian composers project their common and individual approaches to composition. The author first presents a brief overview of the social, cultural, religious, and indigenous musical background, with emphasis on the significant influences of the colonial experience and the creative but reactionary tendencies in the early African church. The musical roots of a majority of African composers can thus be traced, in part, to the church, which also prepared them for a midway carrier as highlife (a type of West African popular music) musicians (for example, the composers Akpabot Ndubuisi, and Sowande). This formative influence of the church on both popular and (or later) art music composers parallels the African-American experience in many ways. The colonial and missionary factors (including formal education in music) cannot, therefore, be easily ignored in the examples of composers studied in Nigerian Art Music.

The list of composers discussed begins with the older generation and includes T. K. Ekundayo Phillips (1884-1969), Ikoli Harcourt-Whyte (1905-77), Fela Sowande (1905-87), Samuel Akpabot (1932- ), Ayo Bankole (1935-76), Akin Euba (1935- ), Lazarus Ekweme (1936- ), Meki Nzewi (1938- ), Okechukwu Ndubuisi (1939- ), Adam Fiberesima (1926- , very briefly noted), and Joshua Uzoigwe (1946- ). Sowande, whose African Suite has been widely performed and played on radios in the Western hemisphere, "marks only the beginning of an era in the history of Modern Nigerian Art Music" (49). Omojola also devotes chapter 5 ("Orchestral Works") of the book to a detailed analysis (structural, thematic, tonal, rhythmic, texture, and sources of influence) of Sowande's Folk Symphony. The lack of professional orchestras and established instrumentalists is just one of the situations discouraging full experimentation and large orchestral works among African composers, and this is why chapter 5 is limited to one work.

One can summarize the catalogue of compositional elements and resources identified among the composers thus: inclusion and creative use of indigenous musical instruments, improvisational and aleatoric procedures (e.g., Euba and Ndubuisi), ostinato, diatonic and modal harmonies, combination of tonal and atonal procedures, word painting, imitative devices, cross-rhythm, complex rhythmic structures, call-and-response, serial techniques (Euba), mirroring of speech contours in melodic patterns, and general percussive orientation in texture and dynamics. However it is important for readers to note how some of these devices and procedures derive variously from indigenous musical traditions, and the author is quite careful in establishing these relationships: "[T]he use of traditional African elements represents one important way through which these composers have captured the spirit of their traditional culture as they understand it" (166). But evidence of a successful approach to merging African and Western musical ideas is located in Euba (who has written extensively about art music in Africa): "Euba's experiments at fusing European and African elements are typified by a commitment and articulation which exceed that of any other Nigerian composer" (67).

One of the most interesting part of the book concerns Euba's concept and practice of what is he calls "African pianism." As confirmed by Euba himself, this notion refers to a certain approach to piano performance and interpretation and, particularly, the treatment of the piano as an African instrument, such as the drum or xylophone. Omojola reexamines this concept in chapter 4, titled "African Pianism," and through the analysis of Euba's piano work Scenes from Traditional Life. Rhythmic textures (Omojola does not pay attention to the so-called "standard" 12-unit [or Yoruba] time-line), motivic manipulation, form and texture are analyzed, but more so to...