Title: Yorùbá music in the twentieth century : identity, agency, and performance practice /
Authors: Omojola, Bode
Year: 2012
Subjects: Yoruba (African people) Music History and criticism.; Music Africa, West History and criticism.
Abstract: From the primeval age of Ayànàgalú (the Yorùbá pioneer-drummer-turned-deity-of-drumming) to the modern era, Yorùbá musical traditions have been shaped by individual performers: drummers, dancers, singers, and chanters, who express self-mediated visions of their social and cultural environment. Yorùbá Music in the Twentieth Century explores the role of the performer and the performing group in creating these traditions, contributing to the ongoing reorientation of scholarship on African music toward individual creativity within a larger social network. Drawing on extensive field research conducted over the course of two decades, Bode Omojola examines traditional Yorùbá genres such as bata and dundun drumming as well as more contemporary genres such as Yorùbá popular music. The book also addresses a spectrum of social issues, ranging from gender inequality to the impact of Christianity and Islam on Yorùbá musical practice. Throughout, Omojola emphasizes the interrelatedness of the different components of the Yorùbá musical landscape, as well as the role of specific individuals and groups of musicians, who have continued to draw from indigenous Yorùbá musical resources to create new musical forms in the process of engaging the social dynamics of a rapidly changing environment. -- Back cover.
Contents: Yorùbá drumming : performance practice and the politics of identity -- Talking and stammering : toward an analysis of Yorùbá drumming -- Songs of the king's wives : gendered and social identities in Yorùbá vocal performance -- The aírégbé song tradition of Yorùbá female chiefs -- Yorùbá music in the Christian liturgy : notation, performance, and identity -- Yorùbá music in Christian worship : the Aládǔrà church -- Yorùbá popular music : hybridity, identity, and power -- Yorùbá Islamic popular music.