📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
This research undertakes a comprehensive critical examination of postcolonial hybridity and musical modernism in Nigerian art music, with particular focus on the compositional legacy of Akin Euba and the intellectual-artistic movement generated by the Ife Music Symposia of the 1970s and 1980s. Euba's concept of creative ethnomusicology and his practice of synthesising Yoruba musical philosophy with Western compositional modernism represent one of Africa's most theoretically sophisticated responses to the postcolonial musical condition. This study combines close musicological analysis of selected Euba compositions, critical intellectual history of the Ife Symposia and their documented proceedings, comparative analysis with the compositional modernisms of contemporaneous African composers from Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa, and interviews with surviving participants of the Ife cultural circle. Postcolonial theory, musical modernism scholarship, and African aesthetic philosophy inform the critical framework. The study also examines the reception and legacy of this movement in contemporary Nigerian art music composition and university music pedagogy. Original archival research at the Ife Symposia documentation collections and Euba's personal archives held at the University of Pittsburgh supplements published sources. Findings will produce the most comprehensive account of this foundational episode in African art music history and theorise its continued relevance for contemporary Nigerian music composition. Keywords: Akin Euba, African art music, postcolonial hybridity, musical modernism, Ife Symposia.
Need Complete Chapters of the Above Topic?
Get high-quality, Zero-AI research materials with current citations.
Request via WhatsApp 💬