Tone Realization and Register Transformations in Nigerian Art Music: A Formal Analysis of Èkwúèmé and Olúrántí

Tone Realization and Register Transformations in Nigerian Art Music: A Formal Analysis of Èkwúèmé and Olúrántí Aaron Carter-Enyi (bio) Introduction Since J. j. ransome kuti in 1923, Nigerian composers have carefully considered and developed the art of setting texts in Niger-Congo tone languages to music. Writings on the compositional process of Nigerian composers includes early contributions by Phillips (1952) and Ekwúèmé (1974) up to recent contributions by Euba (2001) and Olúrántí (2012). Ethnomusicologists and linguists have also provided theory and analysis on the topic but have conventionally limited their analysis to adjacent contour comparisons and traditional and popular music. This article considers the writings of Nigerian composers, ethnomusicologists, and linguists on the subject of “tone and tune” and applies formal analytical methods for studying musical scores by living Nigerian art music composers. Special attention is paid to two secular choral compositions based on indigenous proverbs, “Óbì [End Page 31] Dìm̀kpà (1980) by Laz Ekwúèmé and “Ọmọlúàbí” (2018) by Ayọ̀ Olúrántí. Together, these works illustrate the relevance of contour and transformational theory to highly articulate settings of tone language texts. Speech Tone in Niger-Congo Languages (West Benue-Congo Branch) Many of the languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa are tone languages of the Niger-Congo family. Ìgbò and Yorùbá are the focus here, but there are hundreds of others. Example 1 is a map of Africa from the World Atlas of Language Structures (Maddieson 2013). Out of a sample of 68 languages in sub-Saharan Africa, 63 (93%) are tonal, wherein pitch is a contrastive feature along with other phonemes (vowels and consonants). There is a cluster of tone languages in Cameroon and Nigeria, an area with some of the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. Click for larger view View full resolution Example 1. A MAP WITH A SAMPLE OF 68 LANGUAGES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA FROM THE WORLD ATLAS OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURES (MADDIESON 2013), WITH AN ADDED BOX INDICATING THE REGION THOUGHT TO BE THE SOURCE OF THE BANTU EXPANSION (ADDED BY THE AUTHOR) [End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution Example 2. MAP OF LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN REGIONS SPANNING BENIN, NIGERIA, AND CAMEROON (WIKICOMMONS; ULAMM 2007)2 Click for larger view View full resolution Example 3. MANDARIN /MA/ HOMOGRAPH3 [End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution Example 4. YORÙBÁ /IGBA/ HOMOGRAPH BASED ON ABRAHAM (1962) [End Page 34] In historical linguistics, it is thought that the ethnolinguistic cultures of the region between the Niger and Congo rivers are the source of the Bantu expansion. In contrast, Swahili1 is also a language in the Niger-Congo family but is not tonal, likely because of substantial influence from Afro-Asiatic languages, such as Arabic. The creator of the map, Ian Maddieson, categorizes tone systems based on the number of tones: a simple tone system has “only a two-way basic contrast” and a complex tone system has “a more complex set of contrasts” (2013). This categorization places Ìgbò, with two tone levels and down-step, in the simple category, and Yorùbá, with three tone levels, in the complex category. However, this is not the only gauge of the level of tone activity in a language. Both Ìgbò and Yorùbá have extensive tonal activity within the lexicon, with tone alone being responsible for semantic differences between substantial portions of the vocabulary. Carter-Enyi (2016) presents an empirical assessment of dictionary data, finding that 48% of disyllable words in a Yorùbá dictionary can only be differentiated by tone, thus forming minimal pairs based on tonemes. The proportion of disyllable words which form minimal pairs based on tone contrast alone in an Ìgbò dictionary is even higher—60%—which questions the commonly held belief that Yorùbá is “more tonal.” In both languages, tone carries a very high functional load, similar to Mandarin in which the importance of tone in conveying information is roughly equivalent or even greater than that of vowels (Surendran and Levow 2004). Example 2 is a zoomed-in map...