'The Music of Fela Sowande' by Prof. Bode Omojola, is reference source for AfriClassical.com

[The Music of Fela Sowande: Encounters, African Identity and Creative Ethnomusicology; Bode Omojola; MRI Press (2009)]

On May 28 AfriClassical posted a birthday tribute to Fela Sowande: “Nigerian Composer Fela Sowande, Born May 29, 1905; 'The Music of Fela Sowande' by Prof. Bode Omojola.” The book is readily available from online retailers. We mentioned that the biography would be used to revise the AfriClassical.com page on the composer.

The scholarly research and writing of Prof. Bode Omojola have enabled us to add many facts to our biographical page on Fela Sowande. For example, we were able to give a fuller picture of Sowande's Nigerian mentor and teacher, T.K.E. Phillips, including the fact that the musical principles of Phillips were compiled in a 1953 book, Yoruba Music.

The page now identifies two people who were role models for Sowande in Britain, the expatriate Americancomposer Edmund Thornton Jenkins (1894-1926) and the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), whose music was sung by Sowande in school in Nigeria. Another interesting point is the composer's view of the nature of sound.

The book tells us that Sowande's first orchestral work to be performed was Africana, and that it was performed by the BBC Orchestra in 1944, conducted by Sowande himself. The author reports that Fela Sowande's known compositions number more than 100, and that many have not been published. We congratulate Bode Omojola on his documentation of the life and music of one of Nigeria's earliest and most important classical composers.

Fela Sowande, Called 'Father of Nigerian Art Music' by Bode Omojola, Born May 29, 1905

[Fela Sowande (1905-1987)]

The Nigerian composer, organist and Professor Olufela Sowande was born in Oyo, Nigeria on May 29, 1905 and is profiled at AfriClassical.com. Bode Omojola, Ph.D., chronicles his life and career in the 1995 book, Nigerian Art Music, in which he observes: “Fela Sowande is undoubtedly the father of modern Nigerian Art Music and perhaps the most distinguished and internationally known African composer. The most significant pioneer-composer of works in the European classical idiom, his works mark the beginning of an era of modern Nigerian Art Music.” Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma has posted an excerpt on Fela Sowande from a manuscript on Black composers: http://www.africanchorus.org/Artists/Sowande.htm Prof. De Lerma's biography of the composer includes a detailed Works List and a Bibliography.

The African Suite (24:52) of Fela Sowande was recorded on CD in 1994 on CBC Records SMCD 5135. The CBC Vancouver Orchestra is led by Mario Bernardi, Conductor. The liner notes outline the history and composition of the work: “The African Suite, written in 1944, combines well-known West African musics with European forces and methods. For the opening movement, Joyful Day, Sowande uses a melody written by Ghanaian composer Ephrain Amu, as he does in the fourth movement, Onipe. In Nostalgia, Sowande composes a traditional slow movement to express his nostalgia for the homeland (in itself a rather European idea). At the centre of the work is a restive Lullaby, based on a folk original. The finale of the Suite, Akinla, traces a very singular musical history. It began as a popular Highlife tune - Highlife being a pungent, 20th-century style, combining colonial Western military and popular music with West African elements and a history of its own.”

Organ music of Fela Sowande was performed by organist Douglas Brown in Richmond, Virginia on Oct. 8, 2009 as part of The International Year of the Organ, observed by the American Guild of Organists and its Richmond Chapter. Frequent media references, particularly in Nigeria, attest to the enduring significance of the role of Fela Sowande in the classical music of Nigeria, Africa and the world.