Diversifying the Repertoire pt. 1 : African Composers
The year 2020 has brought on many challenges for piano teachers as we have worked to protect the health and well-being of our students, families, and ourselves while navigating the world of online teaching.
One positive development has been a massive uptick in teachers and students looking for piano music outside of the standard, Euro-centric repertoire. For the last five years I have hosted regular online events on “The Art of Piano Pedagogy” dedicated to exploring the keyboard repertoire. From July through September our theme was piano composers from Africa and of the African diaspora (the mass dispersion African people due to the slave trade of the 16th-19th century). The wealth of teaching material that was shared was remarkable.
What I learned from this project
A common refrain among teachers resistant to teaching composers of color is, “Music has no color or gender. I teach music based on its quality.” Another common refrain is: “classical music was created by white, European composers and there isn’t enough quality music for me to teach by composers of color.”
The belief that music should be chosen based exclusively on its merits is a noble one, but it withers under closer examination.
In joining with other teachers to compile a listing of repertoire by African and African Diaspora composers I learned a few things:
- The majority of piano teachers are unaware of more than one or two black classical composers (Joplin and sometimes Price), although this is changing
- It is relatively easy to get a hold of music by Latin American composers (a previous event was dedicated to this theme). Music by African and African diaspora composers is often hard to find or out of print
- There is a wealth of fabulous teaching material available
- Much of it is superbly written
- It contains rhythms, harmonies, patterns, and forms that will enlarge our students’s musical worlds
William Chapman Nyaho
This project would have been impossible without the existence of William Chapman Nyaho’s five volume series “Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora,” which ranges from late elementary through advanced repertoire. Chapman has superbly edited, compiled, and recorded dozens of pieces of the highest quality, many of which are otherwise hard to find or out of print.
Although the series was originally published in 2007-2008, it has become enormously popular this year, topping bestselling lists on SheetMusicPlus and elsewhere. After quickly running out of stock, Edition Peters appears to be currently meeting demand with new reprints.
African Composers
This search for repertoire proved so fruitful that I’m splitting it into three posts:
- African Composers
- Composers of the African Diaspora
- African American Ragtime/Turn of the Century composers
For ‘African Composers’ I have included composers born and raised in Africa who now live elsewhere.
Robert Mawuena Kwami (Ghana)
Robert Kwami (1954-2004) served as Professor of Music, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Visiting Fellow, University of London Institute of Education; Director of Centre for Intercultural Music Arts, London; and as Director of Music Technology of the Pan African Society of Musical Arts Education.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2989/18121000409486696
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh (Egypt)
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh was an Egyptian American composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who had a career spanning six decades. He is particularly known as an early pioneer of electronic music. In 1944 he composed one of the earliest known works of tape music, or musique concrète. From the late 1950s to early 1960s he produced influential work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
Isak Roux (South African-German)
The South African born composer, Isak Roux, relocated to Stuttgart, Germany in the 80’s when local political tensions made it impossible for him to realise his ideal of reaching towards an integrated musical genre. The cosmopolitan nature of African folk music fascinated Roux from an early age. In the past number of years township music has exercised a salient influence on his work. This can be attributed to the close co-operation with African musical legends such as Jake Lerole and Joseph Shabalala with his Ladysmith Black Mambazo ensemble. The collaboration with the latter resulted in the album “No Boundaries”, which was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2006. The première of his gospel cantata “Coming Home” in May 2008 in Johannesburg received a standing ovation. Subsequent performances were received with critical acclaim. In 2006 penny whistle group Kwela Tebza performed some of his compositions and arrangements with the Bern Symphony Orchestra in Bern.
Roux sees his work not only as bridge between African and European traditions, but as a cultural contribution towards reconciliation in view of South Africa’s turbulent past.
Ayo Bankole
“Ayo Bankole’s musical style takes a line from the cautious approach of Fela Sowande although later in his career he also, like Euba, saw the need to lessen the stylistic bond between his works and European classical music. Like Sowande, he maintained close links with European conventional practice in the use of forms and formal procedures such as the sonata, the fugue and the cantata.
Despite the relationship between his works and those of Sowande, Bankole’s style is defined by a personal approach to reinterpreting elements of traditional Yoruba music and their fusion with European idioms. Thus although his harmonic style generally remains within the bounds of tonality, it is frequently characterised by features such as whole-tone scales, modality, the interval of the tritone and much use of chromaticism, often within a tonal language defined through repetition and emphasis rather than orthodox harmonic procedures.
The affinity between these features and the impressionistic and folklorist works of Debussy and Bartok is clear. But their use in Bankole’s music is also often governed by considerations which emanate from nationalist intentions.
Bankole’s career follows a similar pattern to that of Sowande — the Church being the most important factor in his creative output. Born in 1935, in Lagos, his father was the organist of St. Peter’s Church, Faji (in Lagos) while his mother taught music at Queen’s School, Ede, Western Nigeria.
The musical family into which he was born provided necessary encouragement for the beginning of a musical career that was to produce one of Nigeria’s leading composers. On his father’s suggestion, he became a chorister and a student under T.K.E. Phillips at Christ Church, Lagos. In the same year, 1945, he entered the Baptist Academy Secondary School (also in Lagos) where he also received music lessons.
In 1954 he became a clerical officer at the Nigerian Broadeasting Corporation and it was there that he met Fela Sowande who gave him advanced organ lessons. Bankole’s contact with the most important African composer of the day, at that stage of his career, is significant. Sowande’s works, in their nationalist orientation, provided immediate motivation and inspiration for Bankole. By the time he was leaving for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, in 1957, he had started to compose.
These compositions include two piano works, Nigerian Suite and Ja Orule.18 Like the organ works of Sowande, some of which Bankole had already played, these pieces make use of simple Yoruba folk tunes and rhythmic patterns. In their modally inflected harmonies, pedal notes and ostinati, important stylistic features were established, and these recur continuously in his works.
47During the three years that Bankole attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama he studied piano, composition and organ for the G.G.S.M. — the graduate diploma in teaching. In 1961, having distinguished himself as an organist, he was awarded a scholarship to study music at Clare College, Cambridge. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in music in 1964 (and was awarded a Master’s three years later). In addition,
Bankole also obtained the FRCO in 1964, the second Nigerian to obtain this highest British professional qualification for organists, a great achievement. Bankole’s greater exposure to the works of European composers while in England and his insight into Yoruba music are reflected in the wide range of experiments made in his works at this period.”
(early advanced)
Fred Onovwerosuoke (Nigerian-American)
Fred Onovwerosuoke is an American composer born in Ghana of Nigerian parents. He is a multiple winner of the ASCAP Award, among other awards such as the America Music Center Award, Brannen-Cooper Fund Award, and the Minnesota Orchestra Honorable Mention.
Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia
Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia, GM, MSG (22 June 1921 – 13 March 2019) was a Ghanaian ethnomusicologist and composer. Considered Africa’s premier musicologist, during his lifetime, he was called a “living legend” and “easily the most published and best known authority on African music and aesthetics in the world”, with more than 200 publications and 80 musical compositions to his credit.
click the photo to read his NYTimes obituary:
Andre Vindu Bangambula (Congo-China)
Andre Vindu Bangambula (1953-) currently lives in China! He was born in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and his music—mostly chamber and piano works—has been performed in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. He is currently based in Shanghai, where he has taught music privately at the Shanghai American School since 1998.
Christian Onyeji (Nigeria)
http://www.unn.edu.ng/internals/staff/viewProfile/MTIyMA–/
Professor Christian Onyeji joined the Department of Music, University of Nigeria, Nsukka as a Graduate Assistant in 1992, being the best graduating student in his class. He rose through the ranks to become a Professor of music in 2009. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from the University of Pretoria, Republic ofSouth Africa, a Master of Arts degree in composition, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music as well as a Diploma in Music Education from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Christian is an internationally recognized music composer, educator and scholar from Nigeria who specializes in Research-Composition, a compositional approach that applies ethnomusicological procedures in the composition of modern African art music that is a logical continuum of African traditional music. His numerous compositions for different media have been performed within and outside Nigeria and have been well received. He is a researcher on African music as well as composes from the African stock. He has made contributions to modern African art music for symphony orchestra, drummistic piano style of modern compositions for the piano, choral compositions, solo voice and piano compositions.
Joshua Uzoigwe (Nigeria)
Joshua Uzoigwe was a Nigerian composer and ethnomusicologist. A member of the Igbo ethnic group, many of his works draw on the traditional music of that people.
Uzoigwe was born in Umuahia, Abia State (formerly Imo State), Nigeria. He began his education at the village primary school in Umuagu. Most of his early life was spent with his older brother, Sunday Uzoigwe, who was then employed at the University of Ibadan. For his secondary education, Joshua attended King’s College, Lagos before going on to International School Ibadan to study for his Advanced Level Certificate.
From 1970 to 1973, he was at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he began his studies in music. He completed his undergraduate degree (1973–77) at the Guildhall College of Music, London, and from 1977 to 1981 he attended Queen’s University Belfast, attaining both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology.
Gamal Adel-Rahim (Egypt)
Gamal Abdel-Rahim was an Egyptian classical music composer, educator, and pianist. His best-known work is the symphony Osiris.
Abdel-Rahim was born in Cairo to a musical father, and began playing the piano at an early age. His early musical studies were supported by the Music Society of the Faculty of Arts of Cairo University (then called Fuad I University), graduating with a degree in history. In 1950 he began university studies in musicology at the Musikhochschule of Heidelberg in West Germany, deciding on a career as a composer. From 1952 to 1957 he studied composition with Harald Genzmer (a pupil of Paul Hindemith) at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.
In 1959, Abdel-Rahim was appointed to teach theory and harmony at the newly opened Cairo Conservatory of Music. He was later appointed head of the composition department there (the first of its kind in the Arab world), which he founded in 1971. Abdel-Rahim was quite influential among Egyptian composers of the next generation, as the majority of them studied with him during his time at the Cairo Conservatory.
Abdel-Rahim’s style fuses traditional Egyptian musical elements with contemporary European elements, focusing on Egyptian materials in his later works more than in his earlier works. He composed many works for orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensembles, as well as songs and music for film, theater, and ballet. He was awarded the State Prize for Composition, as well as the Order of Arts, from the Egyptian government.
Akin Euba (Nigeria)
Olatunji Akin Euba (28 April 1935 – 14 April 2020), was a Nigerian composer, musicologist, and pianist.
Born on 28 April 1935 in Lagos, Nigeria, Akin Euba studied composition with Arnold Cooke at the Trinity College of Music, London, obtaining the diplomas of fellow of the Trinity College London (Composition) and fellow of the Trinity College London (Piano). He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1962. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied with Mantle Hood, Charles Seeger, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Klaus Wachsmann, and Roy Travis. He held a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Ghana, Legon (1974). While at Legon, Euba’s doctoral work was supervised by Professor Nketia, and his dissertation is entitled “Dundun Music of the Yoruba”.
Euba was professor and director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos, and also served as a senior research fellow at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria. He served as head of music at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation for five years. He was a research scholar and artist in residence at IWALEWA House, the African studies center of the University of Bayreuth in Germany between 1986 and 1992. He was the Andrew Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh between 1993 and 2011 and until his death, was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Emeritus in music; the founder and director of the Centre for Intercultural Music Arts, London (founded in 1989), and director emeritus of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
Euba’s scholarly interests included the musicology and ethnomusicology of modern interculturalism. He organized regular symposia on music in Africa and the Diaspora at Churchill College, Cambridge as well as the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. These events featured such notable composers and scholars as J. H. Kwabena Nketia and Halim El-Dabh. With his Elekoto Ensemble, he brought together musicians from Nigeria, China, India, Germany, Malta, and the United States.
His compositions involve a synthesis of African traditional material (often from his own ethnic group, the Yoruba people) and contemporary classical music. His most ambitious composition is the opera Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants (1970), which blends West African percussion and atenteben flutes with twelve-tone technique.
Bongani Ndodana-Breen (South Africa)
Bongani Ndodana-Breen, is a South African-born composer, musician, academic and cultural activist. He is a member of the Xhosa clan. He was educated at St. Andrew’s College and Rhodes University in Grahamstown and also studied composition in Stellenbosch under Roelof Temmingh.
Visit his website:
Emmanuel Gyimah Labi (Ghana)
Emmanuel Gyimah Labi is a Ghanaian composer, conductor, and music professor. He is a graduate of the Achimota School and a former conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra Ghana.
https://peoplepill.com/people/emmanuel-gyimah-labi
Ali Osman (Sudan-Egypt)
Ali Osman Alhaj was a Sudanese composer of contemporary classical music. He was active in Egypt’s contemporary music scene and a specialist of Sudanese music. He also played the guitar, drum kit, and double bass.
Growing up in Sudan, Ali Osman was a self-taught rock musician playing drums and guitar. Feeling he got to a point where he couldn’t progress by himself, he planned to move to Canada but settled in Cairo in 1978 where he was supposed to get his Canadian visa. He studied with Gamal Abdel-Rahim, Bertold Hummel and Robert Woshborn at the Cairo Conservatoire (1978-1986), and learned the double bass with Rodney Slatford. He wrote a thesis on traditional Sudanese and Arabic music.[1] He obtained a Bachelor of Music in composition and music theory, and a Master of Music in arts. He then post-graduated in analysis, counterpoint and music history with Awatef Abdel Karim (1986-1990).[2]
He taught music at the Cairo Conservatoire since 1990, and at the Arabic Higher Institute of Music in Cairo since 1999.
In 2001, he became the artistic director and principal conductor of the Al Nour Wal Amal (Light and Hope) Orchestra which consists of visually impaired and blind women musicians.[3] In 2000, he traveled to Switzerland where the Swiss Radio recorded his first full CD.[1]
On March 30, 2002, he performed for the inauguration of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.[4]
Coming Soon!
In my next post I will focus on 20th/21st Century composers of the African Diaspora. If you have recommendations of piano music by African composers I have not listed, I’d love to add them in future updates!