Music
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/7693
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Item Song Melody and Speech Tone Conflict in Translated Yoruba Christian Hymns(Yoruba Studies Review 7(1):1-18, 2018-07-11) Owoaje, T; Adegbola, TThis article engages song melody and speech tone conflict in translated Yoruba Christian hymns between the late 19th and early 20th century. In their effort to make early Yoruba Christian converts sing Christian hymns in the church, European missionaries translated English hymns to Yoruba, and sang them to the original European hymn tunes. Yoruba being a tone language, requires a significant level of correlation between song melody and speech tone, for the words to retain their original meaning when sung. The tripartite constraint of aligning melody, meter, as well as meaning, posed a major problem to the hymn translators. Having given priority to melody and metre, the translators therefore, tend to compromise on meaning, thereby producing Yoruba hymns that will sound interesting melodically, and correlate metrically with the metre, but producing hardly meaningful words when sung. This study utilized samples from Iwe Orin Mimo, being the Yoruba translation of a range of hymns in Hymnal Companion, Hymns Ancient and Modern, and some other hymn books popularly used by the Church Missionary Society (CMS). The work presents a graphical illustration of the disparity between the hymn tunes and the speech tone of the Yoruba language. It also highlights the efforts of indigenous composers in correcting the perceived error through re-composition of the first stanza of selected hymns, to which they wrote more stanzas that align with the theme of the first stanza. The inappropriately translated Yoruba hymn books have remained strong institutions within the church and have therefore, continued to promote the use of the translated hymns in the Yoruba church.Item Rhythm and musical instruments of early Yoruba native airs in christian liturgy(2018-09-01) Owoaje, TRhythm is a central element in African music. The concept of rhythm in European music differs from that of African music. To the Africans, rhythm is engaging and interactive. Therefore, rhythm elicits dance. Drums and percussion instruments play a key role in establishing a rhythm in Yoruba musical ensembles. However, Yoruba drums were associated with idol worship and a relationship with paganistic practices by the European missionaries. Hence, the prohibition of drumming and dancing for several decades in the early Yoruba church constituted a musical challenge to the early Yoruba Christian converts. Within the atmosphere of cultural nationalism of the late 19th and early 20th century, certain churchmen decided to seek alternative indigenous musical idiom to replace the unsatisfactory European type of music with which Christianity was introduced to them. They evolved a distinctive brand of music known as Yoruba native airs. This article is anchored on the theory of intercultural music, as propounded by Euba and Kimberlin, which addresses the phenomenon of musical works deriving from more than one culture. Wọ́rọ̀ rhythm is the most common rhythm employed in the early Yoruba native airs. It is based on a 12/8 compound time signature which produces a graceful rhythmic flow usually associated with Yoruba aristocracy and royalty. The musical instruments employed by the three selected composers are intercultural, which cuts across the four classes of musical instruments used in African ensembles, as well as those utilized in European church music.