Fela Sowande's World of Music - by J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Emeritus Professor and Director, International Centre for African Music and Dance, University of Legos, Accra Ghana.

Musical Profile
... Fela Sowande perhaps needs no introduction. To refresh your memory and also for the benefit of the younger ones ... who may not be familiar with his creative career, permit me to mention a few important factors that shaped his orientation as a musician and defined his world of music.

Musical Training in Nigeria
Born in 1905 at Oyo, the formative period of Sowande's musical life began quite early at school and in church as his father was an Anglican priest who taught at Andrews College , Oyo, a mission teacher training institution.

Sowande believes that it was the early musical training given by his parents and the western musical life in Lagos that made him want to study European music properly in later life. There was so much of it around in contemporary settings that is settings in which linkages beyond those of ethnicity form the basis 9f social and musical life. Such linkages were established through membership of churches, schools and other contemporary institutions and organizations such as political parties, professional associations, trade unions and sports clubs. It is from these that performers and audiences for western church anthems, popular music and art music as well as composers who tried to create their own African alternative emerged.

Fela Sowande's education in Western music took a more formal turn when T. K. E. Phillips described by Sowande as "the first Nigerian musician to really study music abroad - in London returned to Nigeria . A. C. Coker had of course studied music in Germany 40 years earlier, but to Sowande it was Phillips who made the big difference to musical life in the church and the community. He was his role model, for he was organist and choirmaster at Christ church in Lagos, a position that Fela was also. to assume later in London. The transition was not a difficult one, for as Fela tells us.

The anthems were the same as those sung in London . But Phillips also directed a choir which had units from all of the Anglican Churches in Lagos, plus people outside the choirs who could sing or were interested, and we would perform things like Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha, and things by Handel, Bach; So at a very impressionistic age. I got thrown into that. Phillips was meticulous about getting things just right. In a choir of 200 or 300 voices, he could spot the exact voice that was singing incorrectly. He was a fantastic director and a fine artist. I used to listen to his playing of Bach, Rheinberger and others, and I hoped that some day I could play like that. Phillips gave me my first introduction to European music.

Thus although Western music was a colonial or "received" tradition in Nigeria , he pursued it with vigour along with others in church and school and also in the entertainment world where he played jazz, for as he himself points out, at that time, nothing that was Yoruba was good. Somehow anything traditional was linked to paganism, heathenism, and it couldn't possibly have any good thing about it. So everybody was trying to get himself "brainwashed".

Fela Sowande tells us that he was no exception, although I doubt whether he was conscious of this at the time, for he would have reacted strongly against it in the way Ephraim Amu did in Ghana in the 1920's when he suddenly became aware of the loss of his own cultural identity in the music he had been writing. He tried to deal with it - not through the use of selected "folk" songs, the strategy of Sowande, but through a study of the vocabulary of traditional music so that he could create his own songs that would be authentic idiomatically in melody and rhythm. He simplified the harmonic texture of his music so that it would not be a stumbling block to his audiences.

Accordingly he used the parallel third structures of traditional music and their inversions wherever the progression or the relationship between two parts allowed it. There is no doubt therefore, that it was the African quality of Amu's songs published by Sheldon Press in 1933 that attracted Fela Sowande when he used some of them as thematic material in his African suite.

In doing so he probably believed that he was carrying Amu's work forward by transforming the songs from their simple choral forms into a more complex orchestral format which allows for the use of techniques of variations and development and more varied or sophisticated harmonic textures, for his models were those of European Composers of National music. The two composers –Amu and Sowande - had one thing in common; namely the objective of creating new African art music that has some African touch. It is this that influenced the use of African and Africania by Sowande as part of the titles of some of his works.

Sojourn in London
In 1934 when Fela Sowande decided to further his education, he decided to go to the United Kingdom to study civil engineering and not music perhaps because he was already an accomplished jazz musician in Lagos and did not need formal training to become a professional in this field. Indeed his musicianship and the experience he had accumulated in Nigeria were enough to put him on the path to citizenship in the world of jazz.

He met several African American musicians in London whose styles he had been able to imitate or was able to do so by listening carefully to recordings of their music. He also sought the help of a professional British Jazz musician whose jazz keyboard techniques he greatly admired. Hence he continued to play jazz in London, for that was the only way he could make a living and also pay for his academic courses. He became a leader of a seven piece band, the members of which were mostly West Indians.

So good was he as a performer that some people mistook him for an African American and could not believe him when he denied being American. Indeed he mentioned an instance when someone scolded him for being ashamed of revealing his African American identity.

It was probably the reception he received as a performer and the stimulus that this gave him to broaden his knowledge and techniques that led him to change his study plan from civil engineering to music. Having entered the jazz world of music through what he brought with him from Lagos, he was pretty sure that his background studies in European music with Phillips in Lagos could also put him on another path - the path to citizenship in the world of European classical music. This, however, was a long and arduous path that required diligent studies with teachers of the organ, his favourite instrument, and composition with George Cunningham, George Oldroyd and Edmund Rubbra.

He turned out to be a brilliant and very talented student. In 1943, nine years after settling down in London and registering on an off as an external student, he passed the Fellowship diploma of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) with distinction and was awarded three prizes: The Limas Prize for theoretical work, the Harding Prize for test at the organ and the Read Prize for the highest aggregate marks in the whole examination. He also received the Fellowship diploma of the Trinity College of Music, London (FCTL) and a Bachelor of Music of London University.

It is no wonder, therefore, that he was appointed Organist and Choirmaster in the West London Mission of the Methodist Church, at Kingsway Hall, one of London 's major churches. It was in this context that I first heard about him in London in the 1940's when I was an assistant and student at the School of Oriental and African Studies and simultaneously also a student at Birkbeck College and Trinity College of Music. My British friends who were always getting me tickets to concerts and other events told me about a Nigerian who plays every Sunday at Kingsway Hall and added that many people go there just to hear him.

No doubt there were others who went there as. a matter of sheer curiosity, for the sight of someone from the colonies playing the organ and conducting the choir at a major place of worship was a rarity in those days. When I went there, I could only catch a glimpse of him from where I sat but I felt very proud of his achievement because I was also in music and knew what it meant to get to that point.

My admiration of his talent greatly deepened when I heard his African Suite (1952) and its reminiscences of familiar tunes form Ghana . It had been preceded by his town poem Africania (1944) recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by himself. Somehow I always had a dual evaluation of composers, and Sowande was no exception. For me a well crafted piece of music could reflect not only a person's aesthetic sensibility but the quality of his mind or his modes of musical thought.

My impression was that Sowande had the quality of mind that should enable him to make integrations beyond the use of quotations of folk songs. Perhaps that was the next stage of development that would be reflected in his music since he already had great command of a wide range of techniques, or the music of his successors.

I had the feeling that this "haunch" was true when we met in 1966 at Northwestern University where he was trying to catch up with current theories in Ethnomusicology, some of which he had much to quarrel with. I played the first two numbers of my Suite for Flute and Piano written in 1960 to illustrate a point he and I were discussing. The pieces immediately caught his imagination because I had developed my own way of treating the African idiom within a framework of limited harmonic textures which clarified the structures. He kept the recording for three days and later told me that he had listened to it over and over again as he had founded style interesting. he was particularly fascinated by the use I made of the bell pattern. in the fifth number of the suite.

Return to Nigeria
When Sowande returned to Nigeria after nine years of service as organist and choirmaster at Kingsway hall; London, to become head of the Music Section of Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, the compositional challenges of the African idiom as exemplified in the traditional materials he heard in the field struck him and progressively loomed large in his mind, indeed so large that he stopped writing music for a while after the commissioning of the Folk Symphony which he wrote to celebrate Nigeria's independence from colonial rule and which was premiered in 1960 by the Bournemouth Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves.

He very much wanted to return to his roots, but the journey did not seem to be an easy one because he was grappling with its spirituality and not its surface structures. he made different compilations of his recordings and deposited some of them with Columbia Broadcasting Service. But the urge to compose was no longer as pressing or as oppressive as it used to be.

Sowande's encounter with Ifa was perhaps the last straw. He became more and more philosophical as he grappled with problems of meaning and communication in traditional music, while the absence of the same sort of performing environment that he had in London did not seem encouraging, for as organist and choirmaster at Kingsway hall, writing music to be sung (by solo voice with organ or orchestral accompaniment or organ pieces was part of his way of life. The creative spirit rested for quite some time, while the critical and reflective side of his life took sway as he accepted Academic positions at the University of Pittsburgh and Kent State University, Ohio .

The publications that emerged from his work in these positions are not many, not because he did not write but because his metaphysical approach to music and the many strong views he expressed in reaction to "wrong" or inaccurate statements made by other scholars could not always be accommodated by current thinking in the field since the very people with whom he strongly disagreed were often those who had to act as referees for publishers. Accordingly he wrote far more than he ever got published. Now and then one manages to get hold of a copy of his unpublished lecture notes because he freely distributed them to friends and students.

In spite of such frustrations, Fela Sowande still remains a shinning example of African achievement and potential as far as the creative and artistic aspects of his career are concerned. As Akin Euba points out with particular reference to his career in London from 1934 to 1952, in those days, the combination of classical, jazz and light music by the same man I must have been a rare occurrence in Great Britain ".

'It is well known that he was acclaimed in West Africa, Europe and the US for his orchestral and organ works. He commanded great respect from the African-American community not only because of his use of Negro spiritual in his works but because of his accomplishment as organist and composer, and the manner in which he closely identified with their aspirations.

He had his friends and a host of admirers. Eileen Southern (1976), the eminent African American musicologist, gave him the designation High Priest of Music, for his world of music and intellectual perspectives were shaped and defined not only by his nurture and his personal experience of African traditions in later life when he had opportunity of doing field recordings and research, but also by his total immersion in European music as a "received" tradition, his encounter with African American music which he wholly accepted as extensions of his own culture and his active interaction with a large number of African American musicians widely acclaimed as leading exponents of different genres of African American music.

My own personal interest in Fela Sowande and the high esteem in which I held him and still do arose from my encounters with him and the fact that he stands shoulder high among musicians of his generation in the particular areas in which he specialized. Of course this was also a physical fact as those of us who knew him can testify, but that is not my point except that he seemed to have good use of this physical endowment as an organist. I tried to understand and appreciate his music not from the perspective of my own nationalist orientation inspired largely by Ephraim Amu, my predecessor (see Nketia 1986 1995), but from the perspective of his own world of music and the time period and environment of his active performance and creative career in the Western world.

If, as a composer, his major works reflected more of European traditions than his own African traditions, it is because these were the areas in which he had formal training or the advantage of role models he could emulate. Accordingly he used African tunes in the same manner as European nationalists used folk songs of their respective countries: to add flavour and nuance as well as some distinctiveness to the manner in which texture is treated.

In a sense just as nationalist composers used folk songs to free themselves from the domination of the German tradition (see Vaughan Williams 1963, Schoenberg 1975), so did Sowande free himself a bit from the stranglehold of the European tradition through the use of African tunes. This process did not always lead to creative integrations that would be idiomatic of his personal-style and not just the idiom of the medium for which he wrote. Every strand in his world of music and the creative use he made of it contributed to the stature he attained in the wider world of music, and which it is now our privilege to celebrate.

Sowande's Legacy
Since this is the first of what we all hope will become an annual Fela Sowande Memorial Lecture, permit me to say a few words about some of, the ways in which the musical and intellectual legacy of Fela Sowande could be explored by the present and future generations of African musicians through this lecture series.

As the memory that most of us have of Fela Sowande is his individuality as a composer, we can of course always honour his memory in concerts of his works (see appendix) and those of composers who may have been inspired by him. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, St. Philip's Episcopal Church in New York decided to dedicate its Twentieth Annual Festival of Sacred Music to Fela Sowande. As Eileen Southern (1976), tells us

large numbers of musicians and students gathered from near and far to pay homage to this great man, to attend the workshops and the concluding concert of Sowande music.

This event made a tremendous impact on him. He told an interviewer afterwards in a characteristics Sowande style. ,,} could hardly keep my fingers from my eyes. Ah, such a. beautiful performance".

As Fela Sowande was both a composer - performer and an academic who spent most of his last and reflective years in a number of institutions abroad as a university teacher, in addition to honouring his memory in concerts and experiencing his music or those of colleagues, we can also giving ourselves the opportunity of getting to know him as a person as we share some of this thoughts and preoccupations which cannot be inferred from his music. A discussion of the instinctual basis of his works, or some of the problems and issues in the specific fields to which he applied himself could be enlightening.

Since he was concerned with the future of the arts of Africa and makes references to their processes and communicative strength now and then in his writings, some lectures could focus on such problems with particular reference to the arts of his own country, Nigeria , or West Africa . topics related to specific fields such as verbal arts and dance, or the creative implications of celebrations such as festivals would be appropriate, particularly as he encountered these in his recording trips and field studies.

Taking into account the authors, he quotes or cites as well as the inspiration he draws from works on education, history, psychology, philosophy y and religion that corroborate his own thinking or enable him to develop his own interpretive paradigms, one could similarly examine various aspects of music and cognate fields in the humanities or the social Sciences that issue from his writings. His paradigms, particularly those emerging from his fascination with the metaphysics of African music or the symbolic interpretation of African praxis could be examined.

Since the milieu in which a creative person operates is important for understanding both the general and specific aspects of his style, choice of materials and techniques, modes of thought, and the directions of development he envisages when this becomes evident in his discursive writings, the cultural context of creativity and by extension, the particular circumstances and role of Fela Sowande's creative output can also be examined.

In this connection there is also room for a critical discussion of issues in musical aesthetics that contemporary African composers of art music need to be aware of as they grapple with intercultural processes in their creative work, for while creativity is universal in human cultures, its application in music is guided by different philosophies.

Where as a result of a particular historical development, emphasis is laid on the cultivation of music for enjoyment and appreciation for its own sake, conscious development of sophisticated techniques of composition applied to the creation of musical pieces as works of art may be the rule, as in Western art music which is distinguished from the music of other cultures by its focus on multi-voiced, multi-textured hierarchical structures., and whose aesthetic theories are, in the main, theories of works of art rather than cosmological, moral or social theories.

Where music is viewed not only for its beauty but more so as a vehicle. of contemplation, stress may be laid on modes of expression that enable the I individual to be at peace or in "harmony" with the cosmos or reach out beyond the physical awareness of himself. Emphasis may be laid not only I on the creation of individual pieces conceived as works but also on the creation of sets of melodic structures, tunes, tune families rhythm formulae and musical genres as well as on the quality of the expressiveness I of the individual interpreter who is expected to approach his task as a creative performer. .

In contrast, there are musical cultures that lie at different points within, the continuum of these two poles: the pole of multi-voiced art music with its hierarchical structures and aesthetic philosophy of art for art's sake, and the pole of monodic or heterophonic art music with its expressive melodic formulae and structures that give scope for improvisation and spirituality· as a quality of performance and creativity. The orientation of many of these I cultures that lie between the two extremes is of course not art for art's sake, but a" an art historian once put it art for life's sake, because music is cultivated both as something that may be enjoyed in itself in the context of leisure and as an integral part of social and religious life. Accordingly the integration of artistic, social and religious values is common practice.

Most the contemporary African composer of art music confine himself to the creative philosophy of the Western world as Sowande did in his own works composed in that environment, or explore other philosophies, including those implied in the organization and use of materials of African music? We can go to the writings of Fela Sowande and search for his views on this and similar questions that he was not "able to deal with during his sojourn in London. Indeed particular statements he made (see Bibliography) such as the following could also be selected for critical discussion.

In view of Africa's preoccupation with economic scientific and technological development Fela Sowande reminds us that "the soul of a Nation is not to be found in her scientific or technological achievements but in her art". The development of art and culture must also be given attention by modem Africa . He does not tell us precisely how this is to be done. He leaves it as a challenge to the present generation.

As far as the colonial legacy and its effect on creativity is concerned, he blames African musicians (including himself) for their docility and not the colonialists. He writes.

For upwards of three decades we have permitted ourselves to be so hypnotized by what we think the West has to offer, and by her apparent superiority in so many fields, that we have bent over backwards in our hurry to disentangle ourselves from anything that did not have the stamp of approval of western civilization.

I am not saying that Britain palmed it on us when we were not looking. I think we ourselves pitched it from their baggage when they were not looking ... and we are still hugging it close when we are free to let it go if we choose to do so.

The possibility of developing a national tradition of music appealed to him. However, because of the frustrations he met on his return from London to Nigeria with bright ideas for the development of training programmes and institutions for music which did not materialize, he was both critical and pessimistic:

We cannot develop a national tradition of music in Nigeria without Nigerian creative musicians. How do we ensure that they will not fall by the way?

Sowande also saw the problem as a philosophical issue, for developing national music means going back to the African roots of music which, in his view, was very desirable.

It is easy to talk about a national tradition of music in Nigeria . The question is, how have we got what it takes to do it? For in reality what we are saying is that we want to set out to re-establish direct and intimate connection without ‘collective consciousness" as Africans in order to take from it everything we need for creating music in this century that will have meaning, purpose, and direction for the African, and will be recognized as such by the African ....

One thing is certain. An artist does not stand the chance of becoming truly creative - a man with a vision and a spiritual awareness of Life and the purpose of Life-unless and until he has reconciled himself with his traditional pre-historical past.

How many Nigerian musicians do we have that can face this kind of ordeal? For on this journey, what we acquired from our textbooks, our grasp of harmony and counterpoint, of musical history and executive ability on musical instruments ... these become useless lumber until after we shall have reached the end of our quest. Then and not till then will they become useful instruments ready to hand and necessary to us for our work. And this work will be concerned with one thing and one thing only: The Nigerian type of' African music and its restatement in the 20th century terminologies for 20th century Nigeria .

By 20th century terms apparently he did not mean writing in the style of 20th century avante garde European music.

It seems to me that if the Nigerian music "modern" in his handling of Nigerian melodic and rhythmic forms, if he becomes a slave to the artistic chaos and the jungle of cacophonic noise of the 20th century atonal music, if he pleases himself with a dispensation which permits him to "make" his own scale on the understanding that under no circumstances may it have a tonal centre, he can only hope to discover when it is too late, that he has become parched inside arid dry brittle, and that the success and the acclaim he may have collected from the outside world en route do not and cannot offer any solace for the emptiness that he feels inside. Long before this, he will have been written off by the average Nigerian. Why? Because he ceased to communicate.

As an alternative to this kind of 20th century style which in his view-fails to communicate, he suggests that the Nigerian musician "restating" his traditional music in "20th century terms" draws his model of communication from traditional music as he writes in a contemporary style; for

Whatever African music mayor may not be, one thing about it is that it communicates .... Although on the social level it communicates with men and women of· the society, on the ritualistic and religious levels, it communicates with the gods and the goddesses of the group's pantheon ... What makes this music what it is ... let us call it the Psychic; Energy of African music in its pristine state.

Sowande does not tell us how one preserves this psychic energy or realizes it in compositional terms in the 20th century Nigerian national music he envisages.

The foregoing are only a few of the strong views that Fela Sowande expressed and which may be examined for what they are worth. Some of them are speculative pointers to the future while others refer back to unresolved issues and challenges he was not able to meet himself as- his world of music extended from the traditions and techniques of the Westin which he had his formal training to the materials and metaphysical challenges of African traditions he learned to appreciate and admire in later life.

The beauty of a Memorial Lecture lies of course in the freedom it gives to individuals to use the forum not only for critical reviews and discussions but also for sharing whatever they consider relevant or appropriate to its frame of reference. It is our hope that this will be true also of the Fela Sowande Memorial Lectures and that they will enable us to draw some inspiration from the stature attained by Fela Sowande as he responded to the pressures and challenges of his world of music.

This article is culled from African Art Music in Nigeria
Fela Sowande Memorial
Edited by M.A. Omibiyi-Obidike.