AYO BANKOLE: INFLUENCE OF HIS CHROMATICISM TECHNIQUES ON YORUBA CHORAL STYLE

Abstract

Music in Africa is part of life and highly diversified. Among the several categories of music in Africa are traditional, art and popular. Each of these is divided into various musical genres within and outside its immediate environment. In considering therefore African art music, Adegbite (2001) submits that, the cross- fertilization of African and Western musical elements has resulted in a type of musical synthesis called „African art music‟. Omojola (1995) had earlier identified three main factors as directly responsible for the emergence and growth of Nigerian contemporary art music. These factors are: 1. The emergence of a western educated African elite and the consequent creation of a viable atmosphere for the practice and consumption of European music, which was vibrantly sustained in the nineteenth century by economic and political factors largely dictated by Europe; 2. the eventual frustration of the Westernized African elite who had hoped to gain more political and economic power from their European counterparts; and 3. a spirit of cultural awakening, when the educated African elites in Nigeria, who initially distanced themselves from the local populace and traditional Nigerian culture, later realized that political and economic independence needed to be preceded by a greater awareness of their own culture. The foregoing factors made way for the emergence of Nigerian contemporary art music and national identity.