The Pipe Organ in African-American Worship: Symposium at the University of Michigan

The history of church choirs in Nigeria is interwoven with the arrival of Christianity in Nigeria, which dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. The early missionaries from the United States and Europe settled mainly in the southwest (Yoruba) and southeast (Igbo) regions of Nigeria. The conversions of the local indigenes encouraged the missionaries to build several churches for worship and to continue the propagation of the Gospel in Nigeria. It was in these churches that the converts were first exposed to English hymns in four-part harmony.

Worship at the Cathedral Church
The Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, was founded in 1867 by a group of Christian worshipers from St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Faji, Lagos, where services were conducted only in Yoruba language. These worshipers were Sierra Leonians who spoke mainly English and wanted to have services in English. Hence, it was agreed that services at the Cathedral Church would be conducted exclusively in English. Consequently, the congregation at the Cathedral Church strictly committed to having all worship in English, including the sermons, hymns, announcements, and all special musical renditions by the Cathedral Choir. Another reason for embracing worship in English was that the church was designed to cater to the musical and spiritual needs of the cosmopolitan Lagos society as well as visitors from outside the country, foreign diplomats, and the various ethnic groups in Nigeria who communicated fluently in English. In other words, the congregation at the Cathedral Church comprised the elite, the well-educated, intellectuals, upper-middle-class, the affluent and apparently the cream of the Lagos society. I remember my days at the Cathedral Church as a chorister between 1980 and 1994: almost everyone communicated in English during choir rehearsals and services. Occasionally, one might hear people communicate in Yoruba, but it was always some few sentences and they would quickly switch to English.
While the Cathedral Church of Christ has received criticism for adopting a complete English service within a Yoruba state and in one of the most populous African countries, one could argue that this decision was worthy, considering the pluralistic nature of the indigenous languages in Nigeria. Linguistically, Nigeria is widely diversified, with three major ethnic groups—Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. In addition, there are multiple subdivisions of the major languages, known as local dialects that include hundreds of tongues. With such extensive linguistic diversification, the government had to adopt English as the official language of the country after independence from Great Britain in 1960 in order to unify the diverse ethnic groups. To elevate one of the local languages over another would have caused internal dissatisfaction and deep division.
Interestingly, the Cathedral Church of Christ was one of the few pan-ethnic and pan-African congregations in Nigeria. Membership in most other churches was made up of one major ethnic group; hence, services were conducted there in the indigenous language of the group. But at the Cathedral Church of Christ, there are Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, as well as descendants of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, and other West African countries who migrated to Nigeria in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the mother church of the Anglican diocese in Lagos, the Cathedral Church of Christ is always busy with services and other benevolent activities throughout the week:
Sunday Worship
7:15 am—Holy Eucharist (Communion service without choir)
9:15 am—Choral Mattins (Cathedral Choir sings)
9:15 am—Contemporary Praise and Worship (Every fourth Sunday)
9:15 am—Cornerstone Fellowship (Youth/college students)
9:15 am—Children’s Church (Sunday school)
11:15 am—Holy Eucharist (Communion with or without the Cathedral Choir)

Sunday Evening Worship
5 pm—Evensong with the Cathedral Choir (first and second Sunday)
5 pm—Community Hymn Singing (third Sunday)
5 pm—Time of Refreshing (fourth Sunday)
5 pm—Psalmody (Whenever there is a fifth Sunday)

Weekday Worship
6 am—Mattins
6:45 am—Holy Eucharist

Saturday Worship
7:15 am—Mattins
11:15 am—Holy Eucharist

Cathedral Choir and Masters of the Music
The Cathedral Church of Christ Choir is the oldest choir in Nigeria, with an average membership of about fifty male voices, half of whom are boys who sing the treble part. However, that number has recently exploded to over eighty strong and dedicated voices—treble (37), alto (18), tenor (13) and bass (15). The first choir was organized by Robert Coker in 1895, comprising young men and women. Coker was acknowledged to be the first indigenous organist and choirmaster in Nigeria, and apparently the first to occupy this lofty position at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos. Prior to his appointment as organist at the church, he was sponsored by the Cathedral Church to travel to England to study music in order to form a good choir suitable for Christ Church, which was later elevated to a cathedral status in 1923. Coker was regarded as a musical genius of his time. He was the first indigenous musician to attempt the performances of Western classical music in Nigeria, notably Handel’s Messiah. Coker died on February 9, 1920.
The choir was later reorganized during the tenure of N. T. Hamlyn, a British musician and pastor of the church. Hamlyn replaced the women of the choir with boys and young men, following the tradition of most British cathedrals. The choir made tremendous progress that established it as a model for other church choirs. Hamlyn provided the choir with surplices and erected choir stalls at the east end of the church. A strict disciplinarian, Hamlyn was always keen on regular and punctual attendance, and was thus able to set a high standard that has been maintained to this day. After the era of Hamlyn, there was a brief period of short appointments of organists such as that of D. J. Williams, J. G. Kuye in 1904, and later Frank Lacton, a Sierra Leonian who served until the appointment of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips in 1914.
Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969) was appointed Organist and Master of the Music after completing his musical training at Trinity College of Music, London (1911–14). Prior to his appointment at the Cathedral Church, he was organist at St. John’s Anglican Church, Aroloya, and St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos. Phillips’s tenure was a remarkable turning point in the history of church music in Lagos and Nigeria as a whole. He built a solid foundation on which the present choir stands firmly today as one of the best cathedral choirs in Africa. He retired in 1962 after serving in the music ministry at the Cathedral Church for forty-eight years (Trinity Sunday 1914 to Trinity Sunday 1962).
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips was succeeded by his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips (1919–2007), as the Organist and Master of the Music; he faithfully served the church for exactly three decades (Trinity Sunday 1962 to Trinity Sunday 1992). Charles Obayomi Phillips was born on September 28, 1919, in Lagos. After attending C. M. S. Grammar School, Lagos, he proceeded to Durham University, England, receiving a bachelor’s degree in commerce with distinction in June 1946. Phillips started taking private lessons on piano when he was only four years old with Nigeria’s most celebrated international musician, Fela Sowande, and as a choir boy at the Cathedral Church received organ lessons under the tutelage of his father. At age fourteen, Phillips had already started assuming leadership roles in music; first, he rose to the enviable position of school pianist at C. M. S. Grammar School and was later appointed by his father as the assistant organist of the Cathedral Church in 1933.
Charles Obayomi Phillips studied organ with J. A. Westrup at Durham University, and with Christopher Idonill in 1976 at the Royal School of Church Music, London. During his tenure as Organist and Master of the Music at the Cathedral Church, Phillips maintained the tradition of the Cathedral Choir and developed new ideas that made the choir soar in standard. In spite of the tremendous economic upheavals in the political, social and religious life of Nigeria since independence in 1960, music at the Cathedral Church continues to be the center of inspiration and worship.
In addition to his strenuous tasks at the Cathedral Church, Charles Obayomi Phillips served as president of the Union of Organists and Choirmasters in Lagos, an organization that oversees the maintenance of high standards of music in all Anglican churches in the Lagos diocese. He was the Emeritus Organist at the Cathedral Church of Christ until his death in May 2007. After Phillips’s retirement in 1992, Yinka Sowande, Fela Sowande’s younger brother who had been Substantive Organist under Phillips for several years, was temporarily appointed as interim Master of the Music; he retired on December 31, 1992.
History was made on January 1, 1993, with the appointment of Tolu Obajimi as the first female Organist and Master of the Music of the Cathedral Church of Christ. She is the first woman to be appointed to the position of organist and music director in any Nigerian church. Obajimi is also the first Nigerian female organist to play recitals on the pipe organ. In addition to playing organ and piano recitals all over Lagos, she had accompanied several standard choral works such as Messiah, Elijah, St. Paul, Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, and Thomas Ekundayo Phillips’s Samuel.
Tolu Obajimi certainly deserves special recognition and commendation for daring to step into the very shoes that even men found to be extremely challenging. Since 1993, she has expanded the music ministry of the Cathedral Church to the delight and with the support of the choir, clergy and the entire congregation. One of her most remarkable accomplishments was the creation of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir Orchestra, which was launched at the 80th anniversary of the choir on November 22, 1998. The other two significant programs added to the Cathedral Church ministries under her leadership are Community Hymn Singing and Psalmody: Chanting the Psalms of David.
Tolu Obajimi’s successful activities at the Cathedral Church are not surprising to those who knew her before she began at the Cathedral Church. She brought into the church’s ministry several years of experience as a professionally trained musician. Obajimi studied music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, in the 1960s; on her return to Nigeria, she taught music at Queen’s College, Lagos, for several years, and she also founded and taught at her own Tolu Obajimi Conservatory of Music, Lagos. Obajimi is presently assisted by Richard Bucknor as Choirmaster, Sina Ojemuyiwa (the best and most famous Cathedral Choir tenor) as Assistant Choirmaster, Jimi Olumuyiwa (former Cathedral Choir Librarian) as Assisting Choirmaster, and Tunde Sosan as Substantive Organist.
It is important to mention that the Cathedral Church of Christ has a rich and rigid tradition of appointing someone from within the choir to the leadership position of Organist and Master of the Music. Charles Obayomi Phillips received organ lessons from his father, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, and gave Tolu Obajimi her first lessons in organ and trained her to the proficient level necessary for appointment as the Cathedral Organist. Even though Obajimi was never a member of the Cathedral Choir, she had been a member of the church for several years and she began by playing piano for the 7:15 am Holy Eucharist during Charles Obayomi Phillips’s tenure. She was later called upon to accompany the choir at rehearsals during the week, and she participated in several concerts such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Handel’s Messiah in the late 1980s.
Tunde Sosan started off as a choir boy, and he was trained on the organ by Tolu Obajimi before he went to study at the Trinity College of Music, London. Other notable musicians who have served as honorary organists, substitute organists and/or recitalists at the Cathedral Church include Fela Sowande (musicologist and organist-composer), Ayo Bankole (musicologist and organist-composer), Modupe Phillips (a son of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, he played the organ at the age of twelve), Samuel Akpabot (musicologist and composer), Kayode Oni (concert organist and choir director), Godwin Sadoh (organist-composer, choral conductor and ethnomusicologist), Kweku Acquah-Harrison (Ghanaian organist and music educator), Albert Schweitzer (German musicologist and organist), and Ian Hare of King’s College, Cambridge, England.

Choir Training
The outstanding musical standards of the Cathedral Choir today can be traced back to the hard work and foundation laid by Thomas Ekundayo Phillips. Phillips emphasized strict discipline, regular and punctual attendance at choir practices, correct interpretation of notes, voice balance, articulation, attack, comportment, reverence in worship, and utmost sense of good musicianship. His expectations were very high and certainly demanding, but the choir always rose to his standards. During choir practices, as the conductor, Phillips was very sensitive to intonation. He would detect and correct any faulty notes emanating from any section of the choir. He would also call to order any chorister who did not hold his music book correctly, such as covering the face with it or placing it on the lap while seated. The present arrangement where choristers placed their books on the raised desk did not exist then.
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips was known to be very meticulous and thorough in everything he did—whether he was dealing with twelve probationers or with his augmented choir of over one hundred voices. One of the criteria to join the Cathedral Choir or his augmented choir was the ability to sight-read music. Furthermore, the singer must have had a very good voice to be able to sing under Phillips’s direction. Consequently, his choir learned anthems, hymns, chants, and other standard choral works in a very short time. One of the ways he tested his choir to see if they had mastered a work was with the accompaniment. Often, at the last rehearsal of an anthem before Sunday worship, he would start the choir off with the organ, and then suddenly stop playing right in the middle of the piece; if the choir faltered and stopped, he would ask, “suppose the organ broke down during the performance on Sunday, are you going to stop singing?” His choir did not know an anthem, as far as he was concerned, until they could sing it convincingly and confidently without any accompaniment and without dropping in pitch. Honorable Justice Yinka Faji, who began as a choir boy under Charles Obayomi Phillips and now sings alto, recounts the benefits of the discipline instilled in him as a Cathedral chorister:

Membership in the choir disciplined me. To me discipline is synonymous with the choir. It is now a personal taboo for me to miss Sunday services—Mattins and Evensong. Choir practice at 6 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a choir boy and now as a choir man, no side talks during rehearsals, team work, orderliness, and mutual respect; these and more have been and still are the norms of the choir. The choir made me bold. I remember one Holy Eucharist Sunday service that I was to sing a solo. It was the Agnus Dei. When it was time to sing, I stood up and opened my mouth. As soon as I started singing, everyone in the congregation looked up and my heart started beating fast. I then said to myself, “Yinka, they are looking at you, will you fail?” I almost stopped singing; one way or the other, I completed the solo and sat down. Since then, I have become very bold to address a large crowd; in fact, I can address the entire nation. Other good virtues I picked up include comportment during worship, improved speech control and good manners generally.
Before a choir boy or man can be admitted into the choir to sing in Sunday worship, he must first go through the rigorous probationary period that normally last several months. The probationary period of choir boys is eight months, while that of adults is around three months. I remember my probationary period in 1980 while I was still in high school. I attended the choir practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Sundays I would sit in the congregation for worship and was never allowed to sing with the choir until I completed my three months of probation. It felt so good in those days to put on my beautiful cassock and surplice and sing tenor in the most famous Anglican Church choir in Nigeria.
Whenever the boys completed their probation, they would be formally admitted into the Cathedral Choir at a special service in which their parents would assist them to put on the white surplice over the black cassock. This was always a moment of joy and pride for the parents. Each week, the choir comes into the church at least four times with a total time of about eight hours. The Organist and Master of the Music usually devotes thirty minutes to the junior boys or those on probation from 6 to 6:30 pm before the main choir practice begins. He/she trains them in sight reading of music notation, vocal exercises, and theory of music. All this training ultimately leads to the boys taking the external examinations of the Trinity College of Music, London. Successful candidates would receive certificates if they passed the exams.
The older members of the Cathedral Choir were never left out of continuous training. Some prominent senior members of the choir were occasionally sponsored by the Cathedral Choir to the Royal School of Church Music, London, refresher course training as the funds were available. This normally took place during summer when the choir was away on vacation in June or July. On return, the choir member would give a report of all he learned, paying particular attention to the new innovations in church music as practiced in England—in the form of new anthems, hymns or hymnals, latest techniques of chanting the Psalms or singing regular church hymns and sacred concerts.

Choir Ministry
The role of the choir in the ministry of the Cathedral Church of Christ is immense. The choir leads the congregation every Sunday in hymn singing, versicles and responses (antiphonal prayers set to music), special settings of liturgical music such as Venite, Benedictus, Te Deum, Nunc Dimittis, Magnificat and the Ordinary of the Mass. The Master of the Music uses the choir to teach the congregation new music.
The Master of the Music is always attentive to how the congregation sings church hymns. In order to boost the standard of congregational singing, Tolu Obajimi introduced a Community Hymn Singing service slated for the third Sunday of each month. This was designed to encourage members of the Cathedral Church to attend Sunday evening worship. Apart from the roster for church societies and individuals, families are also encouraged to sponsor the service. In this service, the Master of the Music writes out the background information or history of the hymns to be sung in the program. There is no sermon; however, one or two Bible lessons are inserted into the program as epilogue. The service opens and closes with prayer. The format of the service is simply an alternation of readings with hymn singing. The historical background of the hymns is read by individual members of the congregation, while the choir and congregation sing the hymns. Before the last hymn is sung, the sponsors and committee members of the service are usually acknowledged.
Whenever there is a fifth Sunday in a month, the Cathedral Choir presents special evening music entitled “Psalmody: Chanting the Psalms of David.” This was also one of the creative innovations of Tolu Obajimi. Similar to the Community Hymn Singing, Psalmody is simply the alternation of readings, in this case the Psalms of David, by members of the congregation, with the chanting of the actual Psalms done by the congregation and/or the Cathedral Choir. The reader presents an historical background of the Psalm—who wrote it, the occasion, why, when and where the Psalm was likely written. This approach helps the congregation to have a better understanding of the theological underpinning of the Psalm, which inevitably would enable them to sing with understanding and energy. Through this medium, the Master of the Music and the Cathedral Choir teach the congregation the latest techniques of chanting the Psalms of David, thereby helping them to correct some performance errors during rendition.
Interestingly, some Yoruba Psalms set to music as anthems by Thomas Ekundayo Phillips are always included in the service. Presently, this is one of the few avenues in which Yoruba songs are performed in worship at the Cathedral Church of Christ. According to the Master of the Music, the use of Yoruba versions of the Psalms in this program showcases works of talented Nigerian composers in sacred music and Psalmody/hymnody in particular. Special settings of the Psalms were normally performed by the Cathedral Choir only, while the congregation listened with dignified attention. Examples of works in this category include Thomas Ekundayo Phillips’s Emi O Gbe Oju Mi S’Oke Wonni (I Will Lift Up My Eyes Unto the Hills–Psalm 121) and Nigbati Oluwa Mu Ikolo Sioni Pada (When the Lord Turned Again the Captivity of Zion–Psalm 126). Interestingly, during the tenure of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, the evening services on the last Sunday of each month were always in Yoruba. The Cathedral Choir would dress in their red cassocks and surplices, augmented by the voices of the Choral Society with the ladies dressed in white buba and alari costumes (traditional gowns). The two choirs would perform Phillips’s Yoruba compositions in these services.
The Cathedral Church of Christ truly proves itself to be a unique culturally blended congregation in terms of hymnals used for worship. The church exemplifies the nature of an interdenominational faith-based organization with the use of hymn books from diverse churches. The hymnals used for worship include Ancient and Modern, Ancient and Modern Revised, Songs of Praise, Methodist Hymn Book, Hymnal Companion, Baptist Hymnal, Saint Paul’s Cathedral Psalter, Church Hymnal, Alternative Service Book, New English Hymnal, Redemption Hymnal, Broadman Hymnal, Sacred Songs and Solos, More Hymns for Today, and indigenous hymns written by Thomas Ekundayo Phillips as well as other members of the choir.

Concert Performances
The Cathedral Church of Christ Choir is well known throughout the southern regions of Nigeria for its seasonal concert performances. The choir sets the tone and standard of music through its exceptional renditions of standard classical works. Thus, the extremely rigorous schedule of the Master of the Music is further laden with concert activities. Apart from the weekly routine of choir practices in preparation for Sunday worship, the Master of the Music must prepare the choir for concerts, which include sacred masterworks, instrumental pieces, and organ recitals. The concert performances are in the form of an Annual Choir Festival, Advent Carol Service, Festival of Lessons and Carols, Easter Cantata, and other types of variety concerts throughout the year.
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips inaugurated the Annual Choir Festival at the Cathedral Church of Christ in November 1918, to celebrate the musical accomplishments of his lovely choir and to showcase the expertise of the group. The festival is traditionally scheduled for the Sunday nearest to St. Cecilia’s Day (November 22), and takes place in the two main morning services (Choral Mattins and Choral Eucharist) and Evensong. The choir sings hymns, versicles and responses, Psalms, and beautiful anthems. The evening festival opens with a short organ recital or a variety concert of solo and chamber music that lasts twenty-five minutes, and it usually closes with an organ voluntary (postlude). The organ recital is played by one of the Cathedral organists or by a guest organist such as Kayode Oni and Kweku-Acquah Harrison.
It is noteworthy that on the occasion of the eighty-first Choir Festival in 1999, the Cathedral Choir marked the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips with the publication of some of his compositions in book form, Sacred Choral Works: English and Yoruba. The book contains several anthems, hymns, descants for hymns, versicles and responses, settings for canticles and Psalms, and chants for canticles and Psalms.
The Cathedral Church of Christ is British in every aspect of its worship, ranging from the use of the English language to the order of service and the music selections. In fact, all the organists have been directly or indirectly trained in the schools of music in London. Hence, there is a tremendous influence of the British worship system at the Cathedral Church. Furthermore, most of the composers of the music used for worship are British—John Ireland, William Byrd, John Stainer, Bernard Rose, David Willcocks, John Rutter, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Samuel Wesley, Thomas Attwood, and Charles Stanley. However, in fairness to the Organists and Masters of the Music, compositions from other European nationalities are occasionally used. These include the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Schubert.
To augment the works of foreign composers, the Cathedral Organist and Master of the Music uses the music of selected indigenous Nigerian composers, notably past and present choir members and organists. The Master of the Music has always been very careful not to promote and glorify the compositions of indigenous musicians who have no direct connection with the Cathedral Church Choir. Among the famous Nigerian musicians or choir members whose works were often performed include the father of the choir himself, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, Charles Obayomi Phillips, Fela Sowande, Yinka Sowande, Lazarus Ekwueme, Tolu Obajimi, Sina Ojemuyiwa, and Tunde Sosan. I am looking forward to the day when my own compositions would be included in the music repertoire at the Cathedral Church.
The choral and organ compositions of Fela Sowande provided a musical and cultural link with the United States because some of Sowande’s pieces are based on African-American spirituals. The texts of the spirituals share a common theme with the Nigerian songs of liberation written in the 1940s through the 1960s during the era of the nationalist movement that fought for the independence of Nigeria from the British colonialists. The Cathedral Choir could see the spiritual connection between African-American slavery and the colonial experience in Nigeria, which lasted over a century (1840s–1960). The pain, suffering, anguish, and the hope for liberation from the imperialists are some of the commonalities in the themes of the songs. Even though Nigeria obtained her independence from the British government in 1960, the influence of British culture is still very strong today. It permeates every aspect of Nigerian existence, from cultural life to politics, social life, education, and Christian worship as observed at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.
Following the choir festival is the Advent Carol Service in December. The choir performs selected and tuneful carols and hymns with themes that talk about the coming of Christ. The carols and hymns are interspersed with the reading of six Bible lessons that tell the story of the promises of the coming Messiah. The lessons are mostly taken from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, with two short ones from the New Testament.
The Festival of Lessons and Carols has always been the climax of the Cathedral Choir musical performances for the year. Therefore, the choir is always at its best, singing with clarity, tenacity and excellence. The festival takes place on the last Sunday in December of every year even if it were after Christmas Day. This allows other parish churches to have their own Christmas services earlier, so that choirs from all over Lagos could converge on the last Sunday of December to hear the Cathedral Choir.
The Easter season is another high point in the musical activities of the Cathedral Choir. The Cathedral Church of Christ Choir is popularly known for its annual evening concert on Easter Sunday. This can take the form of the performance of an Easter cantata or the performance of a major choral work such as Handel’s Messiah as performed on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1981, and on March 31, 2002. The Cathedral Choir traditionally performed the entire three parts of Messiah once every three years during the tenure of Charles Obayomi Phillips; but the choir performed only parts two and three in 2002. Another Easter cantata took place on Sunday, April 7, 1996, with the performance of the entire three parts of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips’s Samuel. There were some few instances when the choir staged a concert on Good Friday, such as John Stainer’s The Crucifixion under the direction of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips in 1916. According to the Cathedral historians, this was the first Good Friday cantata concert in Nigeria.
There are other times in the year that the Cathedral Choir performs concerts in and outside of the church. Notable oratorios, cantatas, and orchestral works have been performed by the choir, such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah (performed in 1989), Hymn of Praise, and St. Paul; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (performed in 1953); Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast; Handel’s Ode to Joy, Judas Maccabaeus, and Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (performed in 1998); Haydn’s The Creation; Stainer’s The Daughter of Jairus and The Crucifixion (performed in 1916); Walford Davies’ The Temple; and Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance performed by the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir Orchestra at the 80th anniversary of the choir on November 22, 1998.
These concerts featured solos, choral and instrumental music. The concerts often attract dignitaries, professional musicians, and students from far and near to the Cathedral Church. The venues of the concerts were either the Cathedral Church, Glover Memorial Hall, or other concert halls in Lagos. The hall was always packed to capacity. Many visitors to the Cathedral Church have commended the outstanding singing of the choir and even remarked that it could favorably compare with the cathedral choirs in England in terms of quality. Gerald Knight, former Director of the Royal School of Church Music, London, once remarked that the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos, is second to none in the whole of West Africa.
Some of these concerts were specifically organized to raise funds for either the Cathedral Church or to buy a new organ. For example, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips presented several concerts with the Cathedral Choir in various parts of Lagos to raise funds for the building of a new pipe organ. He later embarked on a concert tour with his choir to Abeokuta on August 24, 1930, and later to Ibadan, to raise funds to build a new pipe organ for the Cathedral Church. In these concerts, the Cathedral Choir performed mostly Thomas Ekundayo Phillips’s Yoruba songs to the delight of the natives of southwest Nigeria. The concerts were a huge success because the choir alone was able to raise more than half the cost of the organ. In fact, in 1927, Phillips went as far as England to appeal to British citizens for money to build the pipe organ. He was able to raise a substantial amount of money through the successful rendition of some of his Yoruba compositions by the St. George’s Church Choir on Sunday, October 23, 1927. The Yoruba songs were recorded by H. N. V. Gramophone Company in London, and the royalties from the sales of the recording were all credited to the Cathedral Church of Christ’s account in Lagos, towards the purchase of the 1932 organ.
The 1932 organ, which was later refurbished in 1966, is now in a very sorry state. In spite of regular servicing and replacement of deteriorated parts since 1966, the organ has reached a stage whereby no amount of repairs could restore it to its greatest glory. In 2005, in order to let everyone in the church realize the deplorable condition of the organ, the Master of the Music refused to send for the repairer when some faults developed. The situation got so bad that they had to stop playing the organ, using piano instead, much to the dissatisfaction of the congregation, including the provost (senior pastor of the Cathedral Church). The provost had to issue a directive that the faults be attended to immediately. The idea to build a new modern pipe organ for the church was originally conceived by the Women’s Guild Auxiliary of the Cathedral Church, and a committee was later set up to achieve that purpose. The Women’s Guild Auxiliary was able to raise some money. However, the funds could only cover the first installments for the purchase of the organ.
In view of the magnitude of the amount required and the importance of the new organ project to the history and development of the Cathedral Church, the Standing Committee decided to step in, and an organ fundraising sub-committee was inaugurated in 2006 to raise the proposed amount of 164 million Naira ($1,640,000 USD). Members of the Cathedral Church, societies, families, individuals, the choir, and corporate bodies were enjoined to participate in the organ project in order to maintain and preserve the tradition of musical excellence that the Cathedral Choir is noted for. Since 2006, the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir has embarked on several campaigns and concerts to raise money to build a new four-manual organ with 64 stops and 3,658 pipes. On Sunday, January 20, 2008, the provost of the Cathedral, Very Rev. Yinka Omololu, announced to the entire congregation with great joy, that they had realized the proposed amount. This feat was made possible through the generous donations of the Cathedral congregation and non-members from all over the country and around the world.
The Cathedral Choir has performed before renowned dignitaries. The choir performed before the British Royal Family, first in April 1921 at the foundation laying ceremony of the Cathedral Church of Christ by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. In January 1956, the choir performed before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip when they worshiped at the Cathedral Church, and finally, on October 2, 1960, at the Independence Day service of Nigeria, attended by Her Royal Highness, Princess Alexandra. On Advent Sunday, 1972, the Cathedral Choir performed with the King’s College Cambridge Choir, during their visit to Nigeria. The first broadcast by the Cathedral Choir on the British Broadcasting Corporation was aired on December 12, 1951.

Recordings
The Cathedral Choir’s musical activities have never been restricted to only live performances at services and concerts. The choir has been involved in recording some of their favorite repertoire. During the tenure of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, the choir recorded two of his songs—Emi O Gbe Oju Mi S’Oke Wonni (I Will Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills–Psalm 121) and Ise Oluwa (The Work of the Lord) for the BBC series “Church Music from the Commonwealth.” In 2006, under the leadership of Tolu Obajimi, the present choir released its first recording in the twenty-first century, Choral Music: Volumes I & II. The two CDs contain a selection of the most famous hymns, anthems, Psalms, Te Deum, and Jubilate that the Cathedral Choir have been performing over the years. Composers of the selected works as usual are mostly British with the exception of the Cathedral Choir musicians, in particular, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips.

Choir Picnics
As the saying goes, “all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy;” and in keeping with this, the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir does not only engage in rigorous rehearsals and performances throughout the year, but also have their moments of relaxation, partying and enjoyment. These are called the “choir picnics” or “choir treats.” These are annual events organized for the choir by the older members of the choir, choir patrons and/or patronesses or other affluent members of the congregation. It is a way for all those who enjoy and appreciate the outstanding work of the choir to express their gratitude. Choir treats have always been social gatherings held in a very relaxed and congenial atmosphere, mostly in the homes of the sponsors. There would be plenty of food, salad, desserts, and drinks. And for the younger choir boys, there are always indoor and outdoor games to play. A typical picnic day was and still is an occasion to display the football (soccer) prowess between the ‘Dec side’ (right side of choir stall) and the ‘Can side’ (left side of the choir stall) boys.
Some selected members from other parish churches are always invited to celebrate with the Cathedral Choir. This is not the only occasion in which choirs from other churches, even outside of the Anglican church, are invited to the Cathedral Choir program. There is a combined choir concert that takes place once a year. For this program, two to three members from various denominational churches would be invited to join the Cathedral Choir to form what is known as the Augmented Choir. The Augmented Choir, which normally comprised both male and female in the size of one hundred voices or more, would rehearse once a week and finally close this glorious event with a big concert at either the Cathedral Church or one of the churches in Lagos.
Another avenue of collaborative work with other churches occurs when the Cathedral Choir goes on their compulsory new year holidays in January or the summer vacation in June. Some of the church choirs in Lagos come in to sing for four weeks at the Cathedral Church. These collaborative endeavors date back to the era of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, and subsequent Organists and Masters of the Music have kept up the tradition.

Ex-Choristers
In the ninety years of its existence (1918–2008), the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir has produced some of the most brilliant, outstanding and famous Nigerian musicologists, pianists, organists and composers. Historically, the choir has become a ‘school of music’ in which budding composers have had their formative years. Many of the talented musicians belonging to the Cathedral Choir family moved to successful musical careers, some at the international level. The products of the choir have brought immense pride and esteem to the pioneer choir in Nigeria. All these musicians, including myself, give the credit to Thomas Ekundayo Phillips’s work as the founding Organist and Master of the Music. The musical training, performances, discipline, and exposure to a variety of standard choral and instrumental works had a great impact in shaping the musical taste and career of the ex-choristers. Indeed, the Cathedral Choir is a breeding ground for future generations of talented Nigerian musicians. I cannot close this essay without highlighting the profiles of some of the musical giants produced by the Cathedral Choir.
Fela Sowande (1905–1987) came under the leadership of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips in the early 1900s as a choir boy. Under the mentorship of Phillips, Sowande was exposed to European sacred music and indigenous Nigerian church music. He received private lessons in organ from Phillips while singing in the choir. Sowande claimed that Phillips’s organ playing, the choir training, and the organ lessons he received had a major impact on his becoming an organist-composer. It was Thomas Ekundayo Phillips who exposed Sowande to the organ works of European composers such as Bach, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Guilmant, and Dubois. Sowande went on to study music in England, where he became the first African to receive the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) in 1943 with distinction. He was a broadcaster, musicologist, organist-composer, and music educator. Sowande taught as a professor of music at several institutions in Nigeria and the United States, including the University of Ibadan, Howard University, University of Pittsburgh, and Kent State University. He composed several choral and solo songs, orchestra works, but he is most famous for his sixteen wonderful pieces for solo organ.
Christopher Oyesiku (1925–) had his earliest musical training as a choir boy at the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir under the tutelage of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, who gave the young Oyesiku his first lessons in the theory of music, musicianship, and voice. Phillips also prepared Oyesiku for the external examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London. During his days as a chorister at the Cathedral Church, Oyesiku rose to become one of the leading trebles and later became the best bass in the choir. In the late 1940s, he was the leading bass soloist in some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas such as Trial by Jury, H. M. S. Pinafore, and The Mikado. Oyesiku later went on to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, from 1955 to 1960. Oyesiku returned to Nigeria in 1960, and in 1962 was appointed to the position of Assistant Director of Programs at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Lagos (now Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria). He served in this capacity until 1981. Oyesiku taught music and directed choirs at the Oyo State College of Education, Ilesha, from 1981 to 1987, and the Department of Theater Arts, University of Ibadan, from 1987 to 1994. He was well known in Nigeria, West Africa, and Great Britain as an extraordinary bass singer. He is popularly referred to as “Tarzan” at the Cathedral Church Choir for his deep and beautiful bass voice. Oyesiku performed the bass solo in several cantatas, oratorios, and variety concerts. One of the high points of his career was the opportunity given him to perform before several dignitaries in Nigeria and the Royal Family in England. He was also an outstanding choral conductor as well as music educator. He is presently retired from active music career and now lives with his wife in London, England.
Samuel Akpabot (1932–2000) was a choir boy at the Cathedral Church under Thomas Ekundayo Phillips in the early 1940s. Akpabot received a most significant introduction to European classical music as a chorister at the Cathedral Church. Akpabot sang many standard choral works such as Messiah and Elijah at the Cathedral Church before going to England to study music. He did advanced studies in music at the Royal College of Music, London, Trinity College of Music, London, the University of Chicago, and Michigan State University, where he received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. He was a composer, ethnomusicologist, organist, pianist, trumpeter, and music educator. Akpabot was the author of five books and several scholarly articles on Nigerian music. He taught at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the University of Ibadan, and the University of Uyo, where he retired as a professor of music and eventually died there. He served as organist and choir director in several churches in Lagos, including St. Savior’s Anglican Church. Akpabot composed choral and vocal solo songs, and orchestral works.
Ayo Bankole (1935–1976) was a choir boy at the Cathedral Church of Christ in the early 1940s. It was Bankole’s father who encouraged him to join the renowned Cathedral Choir. Bankole became a private organ pupil of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, and also studied organ with Phillips’s protégé, Fela Sowande. Bankole rose to the position of school’s organist at Baptist Academy (one of the famous high schools in Lagos) at the age of thirteen, in 1948. In the late 1950s, Bankole went on to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, University of Cambridge, London, and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1963, Bankole became the second Nigerian to receive the Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO) diploma. He was an organist-composer, ethnomusicologist, pianist, and music educator. Bankole was a lecturer of music at the University of Lagos, and organist/choir director in several churches as well as several high schools in Lagos. Bankole composed mostly sacred music for choir, solo voice, organ, and orchestra.
Lazarus Ekwueme (1936–) is a Nigerian musicologist, composer, choral conductor, singer, and actor. He is one of the pioneer lecturers of music in Nigeria. As a scholar, he has authored several articles and books on African music and the diaspora. Ekwueme was a chorister at the Cathedral Church under Thomas Ekundayo Phillips in the 1940s. He studied music at the Royal College of Music, London, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and Yale University, where he obtained the Ph.D. degree in music theory. In the area of composition, he is well known for his tuneful choral works based on Igbo idioms and African-American spirituals. As a music educator, Ekwueme taught at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the University of Lagos. Ekwueme retired as a professor of music from the University of Lagos in the early 2000s; he is presently a traditional ruler in his home town in the southeast region of Nigeria.
Godwin Sadoh (1965–) joined the Cathedral Choir as an adult to sing tenor in 1980 under Charles Obayomi Phillips, and he was a chorister until 1994. In 1982, Phillips appointed Sadoh as an Assisting Organist, gave Sadoh private lessons in piano, organ and general musicianship, and prepared Sadoh for all the piano and general musicianship external examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London. Sadoh became the Organist and Choirmaster of Eko Boys’ High School, Lagos, at the age of sixteen in 1981. He occupied this position until he graduated from high school in 1982. Sadoh later studied music at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, where he became the first African to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance in 2004. He studied organ and composition at Louisiana State University. Sadoh taught at the first three institutions mentioned above and also at Golden West College, California, Thiel College, Pennsylvania, Baton Rouge College, Louisiana, and LeMoyne-Owen College, Memphis, Tennessee. He was appointed professor of music at Talladega College, Alabama State, in 2007. Sadoh is the author of several books and articles on modern Nigerian music, church music, ethnomusicology, and intercultural musicology. He is one of the leading authorities on Nigerian church music and African art music. In the area of composition, he has composed for every genre—vocal solo and choral works, piano, organ, electronic media, and orchestra. Sadoh’s compositions have been performed all over the United States, Europe and Nigeria; some of his works have been recorded on CDs. He has been a recipient of the ASCAPLUS Award in recognition of the performances and publications of his music since 2003 to the present. Sadoh has served as organist and choir director in several churches in Nigeria and the United States.
Recently, the Cathedral Choir has proudly given two more graduates to the professional world of music. Jimi Olumuyiwa, who now sings bass, joined as a choir boy in the early 1970s. Olumuyiwa was the librarian of the Cathedral Choir for many years, and he has participated in several grand concerts including singing the bass solo in Messiah. In addition to his strenuous schedule at school and the Cathedral Church, he directs the Golden Bells Chorale Group, in Lagos, a choir founded by Godwin Sadoh in the 1980s. Olumuyiwa was a former Choir Director of Eko Boys’ High School, Lagos, from 1982 to 1983. Olumuyiwa recently received the Bachelor of Arts degree in music from the University of Lagos, and he rose to the position of Assisting Choirmaster at the Cathedral Church. Tunde Sosan joined the Cathedral Choir as a choir boy under the leadership of Charles Obayomi Phillips in the late 1980s. He continued singing with the choir after Tolu Obajimi took over the baton in 1993. In addition to singing and accompanying the choir, Sosan received private lessons in organ from Obajimi. Sosan’s faithfulness to rehearsals, services and concerts by providing piano and organ accompaniment when there was no one else to do so has earned him favor with Obajimi, who has blessed him with several promotions: from Assisting Organist to Assistant Organist and presently Sub-Organist. Sosan will be completing his studies at Trinity College of Music, London.

Conclusion
As the premiere choir in Nigeria, the accomplishments of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir are immense, and it has played a major role in shaping the direction and development of church music in Nigeria, especially in the Anglican Church. The choir continues to play a leading and model role in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole. The magnitude of musical excellence filtered into the ears and minds of the Lagos congregations is felt not only in the Anglican church, but in other denominations as well. The annual choir festivals, Advent carol services, festival of lessons and carols, variety concerts and the choir picnics continue to attract choristers and music enthusiasts from the Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, African, Evangelical, and non-denominational churches from different parts of the southwest regions of Nigeria to the Cathedral Church of Christ. The choir rightly connects the American culture with Nigeria through the use of spirituals in the compositions of its ex-choristers and their musical training in American universities. As they celebrate their ninetieth anniversary in November 2008, they can certainly look forward to many more years of outstanding and meritorious accomplishments in the Nigerian church music ministry.

The author is grateful to his very good friend, Jimi Olumuyiwa, for providing most of the documents used in writing this essay.

Photos are used with kind permission of Christopher Oyesiku.

<p>Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian church musician, composer,
pianist, organist/choral conductor and ethnomusicologist. He received his
Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance and composition from
Louisiana State University in May 2004, making him the first African to earn
the DMA degree in organ performance from any institution. His extensive
research on Nigerian church music, organ building, composers, African art
music, and intercultural musicology is published in The Diapason, The Hymn, The
Organ, Composer-USA, Living Music, Africa, Organ Encyclopedia, and Contemporary
Africa Database. His organ and choral works, as well as hymn book, E Korin
S'Oluwa: Fifty Indigenous Church Hymns from Nigeria, are published by Wayne
Leupold Editions. Sadoh's book, The Organ Works of Fela Sowande: Cultural
Perspectives (New York: Zimbel Press, 2005), will be in print in spring 2006.</p>

Fela Sowande's (1905-1987) centenary is being celebrated all around the
world with various types of music festivals in 2005. He was born one hundred
years ago into a musical family in Lagos, Nigeria. Although Sowande belongs to
the second generation of Nigerian composers, he can be regarded as the father
of modern African art music. The first generation of Nigerian composers comprised
mainly church musicians who wrote mostly hymns and choral pieces for worship.
It was Sowande who expanded Nigerian art music from the church arena to public
concert auditorium. He introduced art songs for voice and piano, sacred and
secular choral pieces as well as orchestra works to the repertoire of Nigerian
modern art music.

Sowande is also the father of the 'Nigerian organ school' because he
propelled the musical genre to an unprecedented height through his extensive
compositions and publications for the organ. There has never been any Nigerian
composer who has written such a significant body of organ works as Sowande. His
compositions for organ outnumbered his works for other genres. Today, Sowande
is the most celebrated Nigerian musician of international repute with his
career covering areas of music education, composition, performance, research,
broadcasting, as well as traditional religious practices.

Compositions

Fela Sowande composed for almost all the music media: voices and piano/organ
accompaniment, organ, and orchestra. He wrote three major works for orchestra:
Four Sketches for full orchestra (1953), African
Suite for string orchestra (1955), and the Folk
Symphony for full orchestra (1960). The
three works utilize Western conventional harmony, tonality, form, and
instrumentation. Elements of African traditional music in these pieces are
limited to the use of indigenous folksongs, ostinati, and selected Yoruba
rhythmic patterns. The Folk Symphony
is based on Yoruba melodies from Nigeria, while the African Suite is based on
melodies from both Nigeria and Ghana.

Sowande wrote several choral pieces of which the most popular in Nigeria are
Oh Render Thanks for SATB and organ,
Roll De Ol’ Chariot for SATBB and piano, Wheel,
Oh Wheel 
style='font-style:normal'>for SATB, and The Wedding Song
style='font-style:normal'> for SSA and piano. Oh Render Thanks
style='font-style:normal'>is a hymn anthem whose texts are derived from hymns
552 and 554 of the British Hymnal Companion. Sowande composed an original
melody for the combined five verses, which are clearly separated with organ
interludes. The first and the last verses are in full unison, while the second
and fourth verses are in four-part harmony. Verse three is a duet for double
tenor and double bass voices. Roll De Ol’ Chariot
style='font-style:normal'>and Wheel, Oh Wheel
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  are
both based on African-American spirituals. Wheel, Oh Wheel
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  is
a cappella and characterized by highly syncopated rhythms. The Wedding Song is
written for two sopranos, alto and piano accompaniment. The melody is borrowed
from a popular Yoruba wedding song with syncopated rhythms. The piano part
supplies a dance rhythm accompaniment to the vocal line. Structurally, the song
is divided into two parts. The opening section is a solo by the bride bragging
about the good qualities of the man of her dream. The second section is a
chorus for three vocal parts (SSA) in which the friends of the bride sing a
song of joy, adoration, and encouragement on her wedding day. Sowande's choral
works are generally characterized by vibrant lively tempos.

Sowande composed seventeen major works for organ. These pieces may be
broadly divided into three main categories for functional purposes in the
church: liturgical pieces, preludes and postludes, and concert pieces. Some of
these works could be placed in more than one group due to their stylistic
characteristics. Fantasia in D, Festival March, Plainsong
style='font-style:normal'>, and Choral Preludes on Yoruba Sacred
Melodies are not included in this
classification because the scores were not available to me at the time of
writing this essay.

Liturgical Pieces

There are nine organ works that are suitable for divine services, either for
the offertory, communion or any meditative aspect of worship. The contemplative
elements in these pieces include slow tempo, short duration, and simplicity.
The thematic materials of these works are mainly borrowed indigenous hymn tunes
from Nigeria and African-American spirituals; this aspect makes them more
appropriate for playing within worship.

The pieces are:

1. K'a Mura. London: Chappell, 1945.

2. Pastourelle. London: Chappell, 1952.

3. Yoruba Lament. London: Chappell, 1955.

4. Kyrie. London: Chappell, 1955.

5. K'a Mo Rokoso (unpublished score).

6. Supplication (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

7. Via Dolorosa (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

8. Bury Me Eas' or Wes' (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the
Negro).

9. Vesper (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

Preludes and Postludes

Six pieces fall within this category and are generally characterized by
moderate or lively tempos, and are of moderate difficulty. These pieces are
loud, moderate in length, sectional, and are mostly based on sacred themes from
the Yoruba church hymns and folksongs, as well as African-American spirituals.
They include:

1. Yoruba Lament. London: Chappell, 1955.

2. Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho. London: Chappell, 1955.

3. Obangiji. London: Chappell, 1955.

4. Prayer (Oba A Ba Ke). New York: Ricordi, 1958.

5. Supplication (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

6. Jubilate (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

Concert Pieces

Sowande wrote most of his organ works for concert performances. Ten pieces
are in this category. These pieces are vividly distinct from others because of
the high level of difficulty, and they are virtuosic, showing the technical
ability of the performer. These are large multi-sectional works, loud and
lively. The thematic materials are derived from Nigerian folksongs,
African-American spirituals and also hymn tunes composed by local organists and
choirmasters. Some compositional forms include fugue, three-part form, and
theme and variations. The titles are listed below:

1. Jesu Olugbala. London: Novello, 1955.

2. Kyrie. London: Chappell, 1955.

3. Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho. London: Chappell, 1955.

4. Obangiji. London: Chappell, 1955.

5. Go Down Moses. London: Chappell, 1955.

6. Oyigiyigi: Introduction, Theme and Variations. New York: Ricordi, 1958.

7. Gloria. New York: Ricordi, 1958.

8. Prayer (Oba A Ba Ke). New York: Ricordi, 1958.

9. Laudamus Te (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>).

10. Jubilate (unpublished score from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'>). 

Yoruba Culture

Fela Sowande belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group of southwest Nigeria;
therefore, it should not be surprising to see elements of Yoruba music permeate
his compositions. Most of Sowande's works are based on melodies borrowed either
from Yoruba indigenous Christian songs or Yoruba folksongs. Some of the songs
are quoted verbatim, while others are slightly modified or varied. In any case,
his Yoruba audience in Nigeria has always been able to identify and relate to
the borrowed songs during concert performances. Indigenous rhythms featured in
Sowande's music are either ostinati or selected Yoruba rhythmic patterns such
as the popular konkonkolo rhythm (also
known as the West African time line) as exemplified in Laudamus Te
style='font-style:normal'> (from Sacred Idioms of the Negro
style='font-style:normal'> for organ). Most of the melodies employed in
Sowande's music are based on the five-note pentatonic scale commonly found in
Yoruba traditional songs.

The titles given to Sowande's compositions express symbolic and imaginary
ideas. The titles of his music have been influenced by the titles of the Yoruba
folksongs and indigenous hymn tunes employed in creating the music. His
experience in Yoruba folklore and mythology enhanced the shaping of the form
and character of the pieces. For instance, Obangiji, the title of one of his
organ works, is festive music meant to praise God the Almighty. Both the title
of the organ work and the original melody convey the same message--singing the
praise of God. Hence, the title informed the nature and character of the music.
In Via Dolorosa, from Sacred Idioms of the Negro, the composer paints the picture of the suffering and death of Christ
on Good Friday. The piece is based on a Yoruba Christian hymn normally sung on
Good Friday services at Yoruba churches in Nigeria. Sowande captures the
painful death of Christ with the expression mark at the beginning of the piece,
Lento con dolore, and the use of excessive chromatic passages on the manuals
and pedals.

Interculturalism

Three cultural groups played a major role in the life and music of Fela
Sowande: [1] the African/Yoruba cultural heritage from Nigeria, [2] European,
and [3] African-American cultures. Sowande was nurtured and brought up in these
cultures. He began his musical training in Nigeria as a choir boy and organist
apprentice at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, under the tutelage of
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, and later went on to Great Britain to study music. He
was more of a university professor, performer and researcher in the United
States of America, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. Moreover,
Sowande was raised in a bicultural environment in Nigeria, where the Yoruba
traditional culture and English cultural values coexisted. Therefore, it should
not be surprising to witness the influence of indigenous African and foreign
cultures on Sowande's music.

It is interesting to observe that Sowande gives bilingual titles to some of
his compositions in English and Yoruba languages. For instance, Prayer (Oba
A Ba Ke) and Oyigiyigi:
Introduction, Theme and Variations on a Yoruba Folk Theme
style='font-style:normal'> for organ are representative of works in this
category. For those pieces based on Yoruba songs, Sowande often writes out the
Yoruba text of the song with its English translation in the composer's notes to
the music. In these compositions, we see the interactions of two major
languages. Another source of interculturalism in Sowande's music is the idea of
borrowing preexisting melodies from Yoruba culture in Nigeria, from Ghanaian
music, and from African-American spirituals. Melodies from Nigeria are present
in all his compositional genres, while a Ghanaian song is incorporated into his
African Suite. African-American
spirituals are employed mainly in his solo art songs, choral pieces and organ
works. Elements of Western classical music are vividly manifest in his choice
of tonality, 19th-century chromaticism, form, and instrumentation.

Nationalism

The wave of nationalism or cultural renaissance in Nigeria began in the mid
1940s and lasted until the independence of the nation from colonial governance
in 1960. This was a period in which the Nigerian elite united to revive the
traditional values and culture of Nigeria over the European imperialism that
was prevalent at the time. Indigenous playwrights, poets, dramatists, theater
artists, sculptors, fine artists, as well as musicians all embarked on a
massive campaign and incorporation of materials from their indigenous culture
into their works.

Hubert Ogunde, popularly known as the father of Nigerian 'Contemporary
Yoruba Theatre' wrote several operas and plays based on Nigerian legends,
myths, politics, socio/cultural life, dances, rituals, festivals, and
traditional musical styles. It is of interest to note that Fela Sowande started
composing major musical works around this period even though he did not return
to Nigeria until the early 1950s. Sowande's contribution to the Nationalist
Movement could be observed in his use of Yoruba traditional songs (either
sacred or secular), rhythms, and the titles given to his music. He was
commissioned by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation to compose the Folk
Symphony for the 1960 Independence Day
Anniversary, although it was not accepted for performance. The work was later
premiered by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1962. This
was also the period in which Sowande embarked on intensive research on Nigerian
traditional music as well as Yoruba folklore for the purpose of dissemination
through the radio system, documentation in books and archives for further use,
and as source materials for his compositions. He used the resulting materials
from his field research to enlighten the Nigerian populace about their own
culture that was being aggressively eroded by Western traditions and values.

Music Scholarship

Fela Sowande contributed immensely to the field of music scholarship through
several documented presentations at international conferences and academic
institutions about Yoruba folklore, Odu Ifa (Ifa divination), the theory and
practice of African music in general, music education in Nigeria, modern
African art music and its composers, as well as the Africanization of Black
Studies in the United States of America. For instance, Sowande presented a
paper, "Nigerian Traditional Music," at the University of Ibadan in
1962. In 1963, he presented a lecture titled, "The Teaching of Music in
Nigerian Schools," at the meeting of the Association of Church Musicians
at Methodist Boys' High School, Lagos. On May 5, 1965, Sowande delivered
another lecture, "The Development of a National Tradition of Music,"
at a seminar under the auspices of the Department of Music, University of
Nigeria, Nsukka. Five years after his erudite presentation at Nsukka, Sowande
read a paper titled, "The Role of Music in Traditional African
Society," at an international conference sponsored by UNESCO in Yaounde,
Cameroon, in February 1970. Sowande wrote and published short essays in
Composer, Africa, World of Music, and African American Affairs. Some of his
unpublished manuscripts include Oruko A Mu T'Orun Wa, The Yoruba Talking
Drum, Children of the Gods among the Yorubas, The Mind of a Nation: The Yoruba
Child, Aspects of Nigerian Music, The African Child in Nigeria,
style='font-style:normal'>and Black Folklore
style='font-style:normal'>.

Fela Sowande is highly respected by the entire caucus of art musicians in
Nigeria. Hardly any professionally trained musician from Nigeria can write or
talk about art music from that part of the world without giving due credit and
respect to Sowande, either by quoting from his literary writings or his
compositions. He laid a solid foundation for modern African art music upon
which subsequent generations are now building. Although in the third
generation, Ayo Bankole (1935-1976) deviated from the traditional conventions
and nationalistic campaign of Sowande, he certainly relied on Sowande's works
as a guide to set him on the right track. Bankole uses mostly 20th-century compositional
devices and tonalities such as 12-tone method and atonality in his organ
works. 

In the fourth generation, I came onto the scene of the 'Nigerian organ
school' to turn the clock back to Sowande's model. Before I started composing
for solo organ, I invested a considerable amount of time studying Fela
Sowande's organ works in order to develop my own personal style. All my
published compositions for organ (Wayne Leupold Editions unless noted
otherwise)--Nigerian Suite No. 1 for Organ Solo, Nigerian Suite No. 2 for
Organ Solo, Impressions from an African Moonlight, Twenty-Five Preludes on
Yoruba Church Hymns--as well as
The Misfortune of a Wise Tortoise for Organ and Narrator
style='font-style:normal'>and Jesu Oba for Trumpet and Organ
style='font-style:normal'> (Florida: Wehr's Music House, 2005), were all
influenced by Sowande's organ works.

Sowande's centenary is widely celebrated all around the world, in the United
States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Nigeria. The Grand
Festival took place in June 2005, in Lagos, Nigeria, where Fela Sowande was
born one hundred years ago. The festival featured presentations of scholarly
papers on the life, contributions, and music of the foremost Nigerian composer
as well as performances of his compositions.

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian organist, composer, pianist, choral conductor, ethnomusicologist, and author of 12 books.  His compositions have been performed around the world. Sadoh has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He is presently professor of music and LEADS Scholar at the National Universities Commission in Abuja, Nigeria.

Experts in the field of intercultural musicology have propounded various definitions of interculturalism. Akin Euba describes music in which elements from two or more cultures interact as intercultural music,¹ as when materials from diverse cultures are combined into a single contemporary composition. J. H. Kwabena Nketia defines interculturalism as the “process of identifying with or sharing in the heritage of other cultures with a view to broadening one’s cultural horizon or one’s capacity to understand and appreciate differences in modes of expression.”² Nketia’s explanation examines the possibilities and challenges associated with modern African compositions. Afolabi Alaja-Browne expounds on the concept from a Nigerian point of view. He stresses that “art” and “intercultural” are synonymous. Modern Nigerian composers look to written and orally transmitted music for creative ideas, sources of sounds, and themes, as well as procedures to expand their modes of artistic expression. Alaja-Browne upholds the view that assimilation of foreign idioms constitutes a good source of inspiration.³ Joy Nwosu Lo-Bamijoko, a Nigerian operatic singer and ethnomusicologist, approaches the intercultural phenomenon in terms of social change in the Igbo community, one of the six geo-political groups in Nigeria. She addresses the dilemma of Nigerian societies torn between new cultural expressions of cosmopolitan cities and traditional values of the villages.⁴ This writer defines intercultural music as the interplay of diverse cultural idioms in a creative work.

Fela Sowande, as a composer and a performer, is rooted in three major continents: Africa (Nigeria), Europe (London), and North America (African-American). Sowande lived, studied, and worked in this tripartite cultural milieu. He was raised in a bicultural topography in Nigeria where the Yoruba traditional culture and English cultural values co-existed. This was a true reflection of post-colonial Nigeria—the fusion of two diverse worlds. The British colonization and Christian missions introduced Western cultural systems, including the English language, to Nigeria from the mid-nineteenth century. Consequently, Nigerians are raised bicultural from childhood to adulthood. Today, multiculturalism permeates every aspect of Nigerian society: dress, food, education, language, architecture, religion, art, music, sports, broadcasting, business, politics, and socio-cultural life. 

Through several years of musical studies and concert performances in Great Britain, Sowande was thoroughly grounded in European classical music. He arrived in the United States in the 1960s, at the peak of civil rights activities, black consciousness, Afro-centric idealism, and black renaissance. Sowande’s contribution to the prevailing ideologies at the time was two-fold: (1) he borrowed several African-American spirituals and incorporated them into his music compositions, as a sign of alignment with the black race in America; (2) he was very instrumental in pioneering the establishment of African Studies programs at various institutions in the United States. Sowande wrote and presented several scholarly papers on the Africanization of Black Studies in the United States. Such papers were read at Howard University, Oberlin College, and Kent State University. Therefore, Sowande could not refrain from the influence of these three major cultures in his organ compositions. This essay is specifically written to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Fela Sowande, March 13, 1987, at a nursing home in Ravenna, Ohio.

Short biography

Fela Sowande was born in Abeokuta, Ogun State, in southwest Nigeria, on May 29, 1905. He represents the second generation of Nigerian composers. He grew up in a musical home; his father, Emmanuel Sowande, was both an Anglican priest and church musician. Sowande received his early musical training from his father and Thomas Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969). He served as a choirboy and assistant organist under Ekundayo Phillips for several years at the renowned Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos. At age 27, Sowande decided to become a civil engineer and travelled to England in 1935 to pursue his dream. Six months into the program, he changed his mind and decided to study music because he could not afford to pay the tuition for civil engineering.⁵ At this point, his only means of livelihood was playing jazz at London nightclubs. Sowande later enrolled as an external candidate at the University of London and received private lessons in organ playing from George Oldroyd and George Cunningham. On January 3, 1943, he received the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), the highest British diploma awarded for organ playing. This feat distinguished him as the first African to earn the coveted lofty diploma.⁶ Sowande briefly returned to Nigeria in the 1950s to work at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (now Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria), the University of Ibadan, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.⁷ Sowande was appointed professor of musicology at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, serving from 1965 to 1968.⁸

Sowande immigrated to the United States in the 1960s, where he spent the last two decades of his life as an African musicologist teaching at such institutions as Northwestern University, Howard University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Kent State University, Ohio, his last place of work as tenured professor. Sowande composed for almost the entire spectrum of musical genres—vocal solo, choral, piano, organ, and orchestra. His most well-known works include African Suite for String Orchestra, Folk Symphony for Orchestra, Roll De Ol’ Chariot for SATBB choir, and Wheel, Oh Wheel for SATB choir. Sowande is best known for his well-written organ compositions—Jesu Olugbala, Go Down Moses, Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, Oyigiyigi, Gloria, Kyrie, Obangiji, Prayer, Yoruba Lament, K’a Mura, and Sacred Idioms of the Negro. It was during Sowande’s era that concert music was introduced to the Nigerian classical music circle. His chamber, orchestra, piano, and vocal songs are mostly secular, intended for performance at concert halls and auditoriums in Nigerian colleges and universities. Prior to his time, his music compositions were sacred, and their performance was restricted to the church. 

Multicultural themes

The organ works of Fela Sowande are based on thematic materials from the Yoruba ethnic group of Nigeria and the African-American musical repertory, particularly spirituals. Most of his compositions for organ use indigenous Yoruba church hymn tunes and Yoruba folk songs. This creative procedure enhances the Nigerian flavor in the music and compartmentalizes the pieces within the framework of modern Nigerian art music. 

In three organ pieces, Sowande employed African-American spirituals as principal themes. Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho is based on a spiritual. The work is a lively piece characterized by syncopated rhythms as found in many African-American spirituals. The melody bounces between the right and left hands and the pedal. Go Down Moses is another piece built on an African-American spiritual. The sustained moderate tempo of this piece lends it to the depiction of the commanding voice of God to Moses in Egypt. The piece fluctuates among diverse tempo markings showcasing the various stages of Moses’ mission before Pharaoh the king and the children of Israel. The brilliant fortissimo closure of the piece and the final introduction of the Picardy third in the last five measures signify the victorious exodus of the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land.

Bury Me Eas’ or Wes’ (from Sacred Idioms of the Negro) is the third and last organ work derived from a black spiritual. It is a short piece characterized by homophonic texture and chromatic passages. It opens very quietly and gradually adds stops and more notes to build intensity. It finally climaxes to fff in the last three measures. The title of the entire collection, Sacred Idioms of the Negro, even has an affinity with the African-American culture and the acceptable lingual parlance of the era. The title reflects the spirituality of the Black race in America where the church became a place of worship, refuge, solace, hope, and socialization for people of color. Bury Me Eas’ or Wes’ can be regarded as an “organ requiem.” The character, mood, tempo, and overall framework of the piece make it suitable for a funeral ambiance. This author strongly believes that Sowande specifically wrote the piece for his own burial, since he particularly requested for it to be played at his funeral service. The title connotes a global dogma that rightly sums up Sowande as a multicultural, multilingual, and multimusical man. He was making a universal statement with this music. In other words, whether you bury him in the East (Africa) or in the West (Europe and America), he is comfortably at home, having spent most of his treacherous life on the three continents. Therefore, Bury Me Eas’ or Wes’ symbolizes musical and cultural unanimity.

Bilingualism

Some of the titles of Sowande’s organ compositions are bilingual. The titles are in English and Yoruba language. Prayer (Oba A Ba Ke), Oyigiyigi: Introduction, Theme, and Variations on a Yoruba Folk Theme, and Yoruba Lament are representative of works in this category. Sowande often provides the translation of the Yoruba titles on the cover page of the music or in the composer’s notes. In the case of Prayer, the subtitle in parentheses is actually the title of the Yoruba melody used in the composition. Oyigi-yigi is also the title of the Yoruba Christian hymn tune employed in the work. The title of Yoruba Lament is symbolic in two ways: (1) the first part consists of Yoruba, the Nigerian language, while the second half, the Lament, is in English; (2) the texture, tempo, mood, as well as nuances of the piece are influenced and dictated by the title “lament.” 

Yoruba Lament was composed in the 1950s at the very peak of the nationalist movement in Nigeria; this movement advocated for the country’s emancipation from colonial hegemony. The struggle for the nation’s autonomy as well as its cultural renaissance began in the mid 1940s and lasted until the independence of Nigeria in 1960. It was the period in which Nigerian elite united to revive the traditional values and culture of the nation from the European imperialism that was prevalent at the time. Nigerian playwrights, poets, sculptors, fine artists, dramatists, theater artists, and musicians all embarked on a massive campaign for the revival and incorporation of materials from their indigenous culture into their works. It was during this period that Hubert Ogunde, popularly known as “the father of Nigerian contemporary Yoruba theater,” wrote several folk operas and plays based on Nigerian legends, myths, politics, socio-cultural life, traditional dances, rituals, festivals, and traditional musical styles. Ogunde captioned one of his Yoruba operas at this crucial time, Yoruba Ronu (Yoruba, Think). In this play, he urged the Nigerian populace to think about their sorry state of external domination by the British and urged them to fight for the revival of their cultural heritage.⁹

One of Sowande’s contributions to the independence of Nigeria in the 1950s was his organ composition Yoruba Lament. It is indeed imperative to note how Ogunde uses his theatrical talent to speak to Nigerians and how Sowande uses his musical compositions to address the same issue. Furthermore, it is of interest to observe titles given to Sowande’s organ works created on Nigerian themes in Yoruba and English languages, while titles given to works derived from African-American melodies are simply in English. The combination of Yoruba and English in the Nigerian-themed pieces reflects the bilingual nature of Nigerian society, while the use of only English in the works based on African-American spirituals could be thought of as an extension of the monolithic language prevalent in America. Therefore, the idea of bilingualism in Sowande’s organ works is a vivid reflection of post-colonial Nigeria.

European traits

Other forms of interculturalism in the music of Fela Sowande are the use of Western harmonic systems and the pipe organ, a European instrument. The organ works of Sowande are strictly based on Western functional harmony, tonal centers with specific keys, and nineteenth-century chromatic harmony. There is evidence of tonal shifting from one key to another in most of his pieces. Modulation is not found in Nigerian traditional music, so it is a Western imprint on his music. However, Sowande did not employ any of the early twentieth-century pitch collections, such as twelve-tone method, octatonic scale, and atonality in his organ compositions. Such contemporary techniques are to be found in the organ works of Ayo Bankole (1935–1976), a generation after Sowande’s era. Although Sowande uses mainly a European style of tonality in his works, he borrowed specific Yoruba rhythms and incorporated them into his music.

At this point, we may then ask, why did Sowande write solo pieces for organ? He was brought up in a Christian home and sang in the best Protestant church choir in Nigeria, which of course had the best pipe organ in the entire country. Sowande received organ lessons from a very tender age at the Cathedral Church of Christ in Lagos. In addition, Sowande observed Thomas Ekundayo Phillips accompanying the cathedral choir and congregation, and saw him playing organ recitals at various churches in Lagos. Apparently, all these exposures to the organ enthralled Sowande and served as a source of inspiration and creative imagination for him. The organ became his most beloved instrument and the best medium for him to express himself as a creative artist.

Performances in many nations

Fela Sowande was the most celebrated composer from the continent of Africa in the 20th century. Most of his compositions—ranging from vocal solos, duets, choral songs, arrangements of spirituals, piano pieces, organ pieces, chamber music, and symphonic works—have been performed and recorded all over the world. Recordings of his music are neatly stacked on the shelves of university libraries and archival centers globally. The organ, being his first musical instrument, compelled him to compose a substantial number of works for that instrument. Those masterworks have attracted the attention of organists around the world, who play them during services and at concerts. Hence, we can affirm that his organ compositions are the most popular of all his creative output.

Ronald Mackay played Sowande’s Pastourelle a number of times in the United States in the 1960s. The New Zealand and Australian Broadcasting Corporation used to play Sowande’s Pastourelle for morning devotion on a daily basis. John Craven, a British citizen currently residing in Nice, France, is an organist at the Reformed Church Cathedral, Saint Pierre d’Arène. He played Obangiji, Go Down Moses, and Yoruba Lament from 1964 onwards. He played all three pieces again in June 2010 and Go Down Moses in November 2010, as well as in April 2015. He also played Obangiji and Kyrie in June 2015. Craven has been playing Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho in the past five years. Ronald George Baltimore has been playing Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho since the 1970s from his student days in a recital, at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey. Marvin Hills, a native of Philadelphia, played Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, first in 1976, at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church, Philadelphia. He has also played Obangiji and Yoruba Lament at various places from the 1990s to present time. H. L. Smith, from New York, with roots in Manchester, United Kingdom, has often played Obangiji. He teaches organ and piano at Community College of Philadelphia. 

Nigerian organist Akin-Ajayi Oluwaseun Collins played Jesu Olugbala Mo F’Ori Fun, Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, and Prayer at Bishop Odutola Memorial Anglican Church, Olubadan Housing Estate, Ibadan, southwest, Nigeria. On May 3, 1987, at the memorial service of Fela Sowande that took place at St. James Episcopal Church, New York, his personal friend Eugene Hancock played Bury Me Eas’ or Wes’ as Sowande had requested. Godwin Sadoh played Jubilate from the Sacred Idioms of the Negro at his second master’s organ recital at Kimball Recital Hall, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, on April 27, 2000. Monty Bennett played Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho in a special concert tagged “Around the World in 80 Minutes,” at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 17, 2010. He replayed the piece at an organ dedication concert of White Rock Baptist Church, Fayetteville, North Carolina, on October 22, 2015. To round up his recital series in 2016, Bennett played Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho again at Resurrection Parish Church, Santa Rosa, California, on October 30, 2016. 

Monty Bennett performed the Middle Eastern premiere of Fela Sowande’s Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho on February 24, 2017, during the Israel International Organ Festival at the Hecht Museum Auditorium, Haifa University, Israel.

Perhaps the most ambitious and elaborate performance project of Fela Sowande’s organ compositions took place between April 3 and September 18, 2016, programmed by Italian concert organist Luca Massaglia. He performed Sowande’s Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho in 12 European concerts. Sowande’s music sounded across Russia, from Western Russia to Eastern Siberia, passing from Tatarstan Republic. The concerts took place in three European nations, Russia, Sweden, and France, as shown in the schedule below:

1. April 3: Kursk (Russia) Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God. 

2. April 10: Moscow (Russia) Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary. 

3. April 12: Saratov (Russia) Concert Hall of the “Leonid Sobinov” State Conservatory. 

4. April 13: Penza (Russia) Organ Hall of the Philharmonic Society. 

5. April 14: Dubna (Russia) Concert Hall of the Choir School. 

6. April 18: Naberezhnye Chelny (Russia) Organ Hall. 

7. April 19: Kazan (Russia) Concert Hall of the “Nazib Zhiganov” State Conservatory. 

8. April 22: Tomsk (Russia) Concert Hall of the Philharmonic Society. 

9. April 23: Krasnoyarsk (Russia) Organ Hall of the Philharmonic Society, 1st concert. 

10. April 24: Krasnoyarsk (Russia) Organ Hall of the Philharmonic Society, 2nd concert. 

11. July 4: Cathedral Lund (Sweden). 

12. September 18: Eglise Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Paris (France). Lund Cathedral hosts the largest organ of Sweden. 

Conclusion

Intercultural elements in the organ compositions of Fela Sowande elucidate the impact of colonization, the Christian church and education, as well as the composer’s experiences in three major cultures where he lived, studied, worked, composed, and performed. Suffice it to say that composers tend to be influenced and informed creatively by their socio-musical milieu.¹⁰ The selected works of Sowande in this essay are derivations of indigenous source materials from Nigeria and African-American spirituals. The themes of the former are taken from Nigerian folksongs and indigenous hymn tunes composed by local organists and choirmasters. Works such as Oyigiyigi, Obangiji, K’a Mura, Jesu Olugbala, and Prayer are all infused with Nigerian melodies. Sowande’s concept of derivative materials is much broader than some of the younger generations of Nigerian composers, in that his themes reflect both African and African-American idiomatic expressions as demonstrated in his arrangements of black spirituals in Bury Me Eas’ or Wes,’ Go Down Moses, and Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho. 

Fela Sowande, like most modern Nigerian composers such as Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, Ayo Bankole, Samuel Akpabot, Adam Fiberesima, Antony Mereni, Meki Nzewi, Joshua Uzoigwe, Godwin Sadoh, Seun Owoaje, Alaba Ilesanmi, Kayode Morohunfola, Vincent Obi, Abel Adeleke, Tunji Dada, Taiye Adeola, Wole Aro, Christian Onyenji, Chijioke Ngobili, Jude Osy Nwankwo, Babatunde Sosan, and Ebenezer Omole, is a modern interculturalist. Sowande’s commingling of Nigerian musical elements, African-American themes, and Western classical theories justifies his organ compositions as intercultural. In this regard, intercultural phenomena could be conceptualized from two perspectives: (1) the composer, a Nigerian, writing in Western classical style, and (2) the intermixture of three cultural expressions—Nigerian, African-American, and European. ν

Fela Sowande’s compositions for organ

K’a Mura. London: Chappell, 1945.

Pastourelle. London: Chappell, 1952.

Obangiji. London: Chappell, 1955.

Kyrie. London: Chappell, 1955.

Yoruba Lament. London: Chappell, 1955.

Jesu Olugbala. London: Novello, 1955.

Choral Preludes on Yoruba Sacred Melodies. London: Novello, n.d..

Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho. London: Chappell, 1955.

Go Down Moses. London: Chappell, 1955.

Plainsong. London: Chappell, n.d.

Fantasia in D. London: Chappell, n.d.

Festival March. London: Chappell, n.d.

Oyigiyigi: Introduction, Theme and Variations. New York: Ricordi, 1958.

Gloria. New York: Ricordi, 1958.

Prayer (Oba a Ba Ke). New York: Ricordi, 1958.

K’a Mo Rokoso (unpublished manuscript).

Sacred Idioms of the Negro (unpublished manuscript).

Discography of organ works

Jubilate, Eugene W. Hancock. American Guild of Organists 0-51, audio cassette (1992).

Prayer, James Kibbie. Organ Historical Society OHS-95 CD. Collection title: Historic Organs of Michigan (1995).

Obangiji, David Hurd. Minnesota Public Radio MPR CD-1003 (2000). Collection title: Pipedreams Premieres: A Collection of Music for the King of Instruments, vol. 2 (2000).

Fantasy in D Major, Festival March, Gloria, Go Down Moses, Nancy Cooper. Richard L. Bond Op. 27, Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Missoula, Montana. Pro Organo CD 7139 (2000).

Yoruba Lament, Lucius Weathersby. Albany TROY440, CD. Collection title: Spiritual Fantasy (2001).

Go Down Moses, Nancy Cooper. Pro Organo CD 7139 (2001), CD. Collection title: The Road Less Traveled (2002).

Obangiji, Brent Weaver. Pipedreams Premiere, Volume 2. Minnesota Public Radio, 2003.

Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, Lucius Weathersby. Great Torrington Parish Church, Father Willis organ; CD IX/27. International Society—African to American Music (2003). 

Oyígìyigi: Introduction, Theme and Variations on a Yorùbá Folk Theme, Pastourelle, Lucius Weathersby. Great Torrington Parish Church, Father Willis organ; CD IX/27. International Society—African to American Music (2003).

Jubilate, Laudamus Te, K’a mó Rókósó, Kyrie, Òbángíjì, Eugene Hancock. n.p. CD.

K’a Mura, Michael Stewart. New Zealand, n.p., CD.

Plainsong, Prayer: Oba a ba ke, Two Preludes on Yorùbá Sacred Melodies (1. K’a múra. 2. Jésù Olugbàlà), Sacred Idioms of the Negro (1. Bury me eas’ or wes’; 2. Laudamus te; 3. Vesper; 4. Supplication; 5. Via dolorosa; Jubilate), Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, Kyrie, Yorùbá lament, Obángíji, Hans Uwe Hielscher. 1863–1982 Walker/Sauer/Oberlinger 4-116, Wiesbaden, Merktkirche; EL CD-016.

Notes

1. Akin Euba, Essays on Music in Africa 2: Intercultural Perspectives (Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies Series, 1989), 116.

2. Cynthia Tse Kimberlin and Akin Euba (eds.), Intercultural Music Volume 1 (Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger, 1995), 6.

3. Afolabi Alaja-Browne, quoted in Kimberlin and Euba, 6.

4. Kimberlin and Euba, 9.

5. A little over two decades after Fela Sowande changed his mind from civil engineering to study music, another fellow Nigerian, bearing similar first name, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, repeated history. Fela Kuti, born on October 15, 1938, was sent to England in 1958 by his middle-class Christian family to study medicine. Upon arrival, Fela changed his mind and went on to enroll at Trinity College of Music, London. Coincidentally, the two Felas were born in the same town, Abeokuta, Ogun State, and their fathers were both Anglican priests.

  6. Godwin Sadoh, The Organ Works of Fela Sowande: Cultural Perspectives (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse Publishing, 2007), 25–26.

  7. The Department of Music at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was named after Fela Sowande for his extraordinary contributions to Nigerian music.

8. Sadoh, 47.

9. Ebun Clark, Hubert Ogunde: The Making of a Nigerian Theater (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 61-62.

10. For further reading on Fela Sowande’s life and music, see Sadoh.

Mickey Thomas Terry, a native of Greenville, North Carolina, holds degrees from East Carolina University in Greenville, and a Ph.D. in Late Medieval and Early Modern European History from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Dr. Terry's principal organ teachers have been Clarence Watters, Charles Callahan, and Ronald Stolk (Improvisation). He is currently the organist and minister of music of St. Rita's Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia. Dr. Terry has concertized throughout the United States and has been broadcast several times on Pipedreams. Dr. Terry has recently been a featured artist at Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and organ recitalist at the Piccolo-Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. In July, 1996, he presented a lecture-recital in St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University as part of the African-American Organ Music workshop of the AGO National Convention in New York. He will be a featured recitalist at the 1998 AGO national convention in Denver. Dr. Terry has taught on the faculty of Georgetown University and has written several articles for both The American Organist Magazine and The Diapason. He serves on the Advisory board for the ECS/AGO African-American Organ Music Series published by E.C. Schirmer Music Company of Boston. Dr. Terry appears on the Albany Records label compact disc George Walker--A Portrait, playing the organ works of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker.

In a previous article, "African-American Organ Literature--A Selective Overview,"  seven composers and their works were featured (The Diapason, April, 1996, pp. 14-17). They included George Walker, Noel Da Costa, David Hurd, Adolphus Hailstork, Thomas H. Kerr, William B. Cooper, and Mark Fax. Through a series of musical examples provided, it was shown that in addition to Negro spirituals and jazz, African-American organ literature is based on several diverse musical sources which include plain chant, German Protestant chorales, general Protestant hymnody, themes of African origin, and original composer themes.1

Also mentioned was the fact that several composers from this school are alumni of major musical institutions. A number of them have been recipients of prestigious composition prizes and academic fellowships.2 Among them is George Walker who, in April 1996, became the first black to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music. This award was for his composition Lilacs for Soprano and Orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Boston Symphony.

Although attitudes towards black composers are gradually changing, the path of the African-American composer has not been an easy one, and it is still fraught with difficulty.3 Historically, racial bias and negative stereotyping have played a deleterious role in coloring perceptions of and attitudes towards African-American composers. In the U.S., such attitudes have long been documented. One of the earliest setof published writings which reflects this attitude is Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia (c. 1784). In this work, the author relates his general perceptions regarding blacks.4 Added to the problem of historical perception was the existence of the now defunct Jim Crow (i.e., segregation) system which deterred blacks from being woven into the fabric of American society. The combination of both factors has greatly contributed to the current dearth of published musical materials from this school of composers. Furthermore, during the pre-integration era, the extant system of laws, racial codes, and negative perceptions prohibited African-Americans, in most cases from matriculating in traditionally white institutions of higher education. At that time, the academic pedigrees and scholastic achievements of blacks were given little or no regard.5 George Walker's experiences, as related to and documented by several newspaper and journal interviews, constitute a case in point.

Prior to receiving the distinction of being a Pulitzer Prize winner, Walker had the distinction of being the first black graduate of the Curtis Institute (Artist Diploma, 1945) and, subsequently, becoming the first black to receive a Doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music (D.M.A. in Piano, 1956). At the time, this was really quite a notable accomplishment because many institutions including the prestigious Peabody Conservatory did not admit blacks for a long time.6 Although the achievements of Walker and others continued to be increasingly evident, many such institutions remained closed, nonetheless, to blacks; teaching posts in such institutions were simply out of the question.

Since winning the Pulitzer, Walker's interviews, such as that published in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Oct. 31, 1996), have occasionally indicated long-standing difficulties and disappointments experienced not only as a composer, but as a virtuoso pianist and teacher.7 Unfortunate as these experiences may have been, they are neither unique nor isolated; several black composers have shared similar misfortunes. One of the greatest misfortunes from that period to the present has been the absence of sufficient recognition for their contribution to the classical literature; part of this article's raison d'être is the writer's attempt to help alter that situation.

As mentioned in the previous article, it is not feasible to present a comprehensive survey in the scope of a single article; as such, the writer has, once again, provided a select sampling of talents who have made substantive and qualitative contributions to the literature for the instrument. The various cited examples are intended to demonstrate not only a diversity of composition styles, but thematic influences which may be found among this body of music. For the purposes of this article, the organ compositions cited are stylistically divided into two general categories: neo-classical and symphonic. Among the neo-classical works cited are compositions by Ulysses Kay, Roger Dickerson, and Charles Coleman. The more symphonically conceived works are represented by Olly Wilson, William Grant Still, Eugene W. Hancock, Charlene Moore Cooper, Mark A. Miller, and Jeffrey Mumford. The neo-classical works are presented first, followed by the symphonic compositions.

ULYSSES KAY (1917-1995) received a B.M. degree from the University of Arizona. Kay also studied with Howard Hanson at the Eastman School of Music (M.M. in Composition) and with Paul Hindemith both at the Berkshire Music Center (1941) and Yale University. He also studied with Otto Luening at Columbia University. Kay served as visiting professor at both Boston University and the University of Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1968, he served as Professor of Music at Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY) until his retirement in 1988. While there, he was appointed as Distinguished Professor (1972). Kay was the recipient of several prestigious awards and fellowships. Twice, he won the Prix de Rome as well as winning the Gershwin Memorial Award (1947). Among the fellowships awarded were: Ditson (1946), Rosenwald (1947), Fulbright (1950), and Guggenheim (1964). In addition to organ works, Kay wrote two operas as well as music for chorus, orchestra, ballet, chamber ensemble, and piano. Commissioned and premiered by Marilyn Mason, Kay's Suite No. 1 for Organ (1958) exhibits the influence of  neo-classicism. For the purposes of this article, excerpts from the second and last movements of this work are cited. (See Examples 1 and 2.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

Two Meditations for Organ (H.W. Gray, 1951) [out-of-print]

Suite No. 1 for Organ [Prelude, Pastorale, Finale (1958)] (Carl Fischer Facsimile Edition, 1986)

ROGER DICKERSON (b. 1934) received his B.A. (Music Education) Degree from Dillard University in New Orleans and M.M. Degree (Composition) from Indiana University. He received a Fulbright to study at the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna (1959-62). Dickerson was also the recipient of a John Hay Whitney Fellowship and received the Louis Armstrong Award (1981). In 1975, he founded the Creative Artists Alliance. He also received an honorary doctorate from the People's Republic of China.  In 1978, he was the subject of a public television documentary film "New Orleans Concerto." Currently, Dickerson serves as Music Coordinator and Choir Director at Southern University as well as Lecturer in Music at Dillard University in New Orleans. He has written for piano, voice, chorus, orchestra, band, and chamber ensemble. The following composition is, at the time of this article's completion, his only contribution for solo organ. Conceived in a neo-classical idiom, it is based on a German Protestant Chorale Das neugeborne Kindelein ("The Newborn Little Child"). (See Example 3.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

Chorale Prelude: Das neugeborne Kindelein (1956) [E.C. Schirmer Music Co., 1996]

CHARLES D. COLEMAN (1926-1991) was a native of Detroit. He received his B.M. and M.M. Degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit. Among his teachers were Virgil Fox, Mildred Clumas, and Robert Cato. In 1955, Mr. Coleman founded the Charles Coleman House of Music, formerly known as Northwestern School of Music, Dance, and Drama. In addition to teaching in the Detroit Public Schools, he served as Director of Music for Tabernacle Baptist Church in Detroit. Coleman was also an Associate of the American Guild of Organists (AAGO). His compositions include works written essentially for chorus, organ, and piano. Conceived in a neo-classical idiom, the sonata is dedicated to Dr. Eugene W. Hancock. The Passacaglia constitutes the sonata's first movement. (See Example 4.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

Impromptu for Pedals Alone (1961; Northwestern School of Music Press, 1977) [out-of-print]

Sonata No. 1 [Passacaglia, Adagio, Allegro]8 (Northwestern School of Music Press, 1979) [out-of-print]

OLLY WILSON (b. 1937) received a B.M. Degree from Washington University (St. Louis), an M.M. Degree from the University of Illinois (Urbana), and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. In addition to being a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (1971 and 1977) and a Guggenheim (1972),Wilson was the recipient of a First Prize in the International Electronic Music Competition (1968) and the Dartmouth Arts Council Prize (1968).  In 1974, he received an award for outstanding achievement in music composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Among his academic positions, he has served on the faculties of Florida A & M University and Oberlin Conservatory.  He is currently Music Department chair at the University of California at Berkeley. Wilson has written for various musical media including: organ, piano, voice, chorus, chamber ensemble, and orchestra. Commissioned for the 1979 Hartt College of Music International Contemporary Organ Music Festival, Expansions was premiered by Donald Sutherland. (See Example 5.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

Expansions (1979)

Moe Fragments (1987)

WILLIAM GRANT STILL (1895-

1979) During his lifetime, he was frequently referred to as the "Dean" of African-American Composers. He studied at Wilberforce University (Ohio) and at Oberlin Conservatory. Still also studied privately with George Chadwick and Edgar Varèse. He was the recipient of many honors and fellowships, including a Guggenheim (1933).  Among his distinctions, William Grant Still was the first black to compose a symphony, to conduct a major U.S. symphony, and to have a composition performed by a major U.S. symphony.  He wrote for almost every musical medium including piano, voice, chorus, chamber music, opera, ballet, and orchestra.  Reverie is one of two original organ compositions written by the composer.  It was commissioned by the Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Pasadena & Valley Districts of the AGO in celebration of the 1962 American Guild of Organists National Convention. (See Example 6.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

Reverie [AGO Prelude Book (published by Los Angeles area American Guild of Organists chapters, 1962)]

Elegy (Avant Music Co., 1963)

EUGENE W. HANCOCK (1929-1994) was a native of Detroit, as was his friend and colleague Charles Coleman. Hancock received a B.M. Degree from the University of Detroit, a M.M. Degree from the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor], and a Doctorate of Sacred Music from the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Among his organ teachers were Marilyn Mason, Vernon deTar, and Alec Wyton. Hancock studied composition with Seth Bingham. He served as Assistant Organist/Choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (1963-66), and later as Organist/Choirmaster of St. Philip's Episcopal Church (1975-82) and of West End Presbyterian Church (1982-90) in New York. In 1970, Hancock was appointed as Professor of Music at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY), a position he held until his death. Among his professional affiliations, Hancock was an Associate of the American Guild of Organists (AAGO). With several choral publications to his credit, he has contributed much to the genre of sacred music. In his recital work, Hancock had been particularly noted for performing and promoting the works of African-American organ composers. Fantasy is a virtuosic work written for and premiered by Herman D. Taylor in 1985 at the Black American Music Symposium held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (See Example 7.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores):

An Organ Book of Spirituals [Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child; We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder; My Lord, What a Morning; Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho; Were You There When They Crucified My Lord; I'm Troubled; Fix Me, Jesus; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; Go Tell It on the Mountain] (Lorenz Publishing, 1966) [out-of-print]

The Wrath of God (Selah Press, 1993)

(Unpublished Scores)

Suite in Three Movements for Organ, String Quartet, Oboe, Xylophone, and Bass Drum [Variation, Aria, Toccata] (1966)

Fantasy for Organ (1985)

CHARLENE MOORE COOPER (b. 1938) is a native of Baltimore. She received a B.M. Degree (Flute/Music Education) from Oberlin Conservatory. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Counseling Psychology at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Cooper has taught music in both the Baltimore and District of Columbia Public Schools. She has also taught liturgy courses at the Howard University School of Divinity. She is also Director for the Municipal Opera of Baltimore, the NAACP Community Choir (DC), the Best Friends Jazz Choir (DC Metro area), and Director of Music for John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church in Washington. In addition to writing for the organ, Cooper has written for piano, voice, chorus, chamber ensemble, and orchestra. A Solitary Prayer was originally conceived as a musical tribute to the composer's deceased mother. (See Example 8.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores)

A Joyful Noise for Trumpet and Organ (1993)

Alleluia (1995)

A Solitary Prayer (1995)

Festal Postlude (1995)

Christmas Morn for Oboe and Organ (1995)

Meditation (1996)

Gloria in Excelsis Deo (1997)

Joy in the Morning (1997)

Resurrection (1997)

JEFFREY MUMFORD (b. 1955) is a native of Washington, D.C. He received his B.A. Degree (Art/Painting) from the University of California at Irvine and his M.A. Degree (Composition) at the University of California at San Diego. Mumford has won First Prize in the Aspen Music Festival (1979) and the National Black Arts Festival-Atlanta Symphony Composition Competition (1994). Also the recipient of several prestigious commissions, he was awarded a commission by the National Symphony in commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Kennedy Center. In 1995, he was also the recipient of a Guggenheim in composition. Most recently, Mumford has been awarded a grant from Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/ USA to compose a piece for the CORE Ensemble. His compositions consist of music for voice, piano, chorus, solo instrument, chamber ensemble, and orchestra. Mumford's Fanfare for November, so far his only organ composition, was written to be the recessional music for own wedding ceremony in November, 1985. (See Example 9.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores)

Fanfare for November (1985)

MARK A. MILLER (b. 1967), a native of Burlington, Vermont,  received a B.A. (Organ Performance/Composition) from Yale University and an M.M. (Organ Performance) from Juilliard.  In 1989, he won First Prize in the National Association of Negro Musicians National Organ Competition. He is currently Director of Music for the Drew University Theological School (Madison, NJ) and Director of Music for Chatham United Methodist Church (Chatham, NJ). Miller is also an organist for the Nightwatch Program at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. In addition to organ music, he has written for voice, chorus, and handbells. Reverie constitutes the second movement of Miller's Verses. (See Example 10.)

Organ Compositions (Published Scores)

Fantasias for Pentecost (1983)

Jubilate (1984)

Toccata on the Mountain (1994

Verses: [Prelude and Fugue, Reverie, Toccata] (1996)

Epilogue

In Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, the author writes: "Whether they [blacks] will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved." Should one be in quest of proof today, it is necessary to look no further than the compositions represented in this and the previous article. Some of these composers have attained a certain measure of renown; others are less renown, but there are several unmentioned here who are also very fine, even if unknown but to a small handful of devoted supporters and disciples. Given the findings, it is rather safe to say that African-American classical organ music exists sufficiently both in quality and quantity. No longer is there need for queries and proof, but rather concerts and recitals, recordings and publication, and most of all, a fervent commitment by the performer.                      

Notes

                        1.                  Mickey Thomas Terry, "African-American Organ Literature, A Selective Overview," The Diapason (April, 1996): 14.

                        2.                  Mickey Thomas Terry, "African-American  Classical Organ Music: A Case of Neglect," The American Organist Magazine (March, 1997): 60n.

                        3.                  This reference provides information concerning the historical perspective of the black composer, Ibid: 56-61.

                        4.                  Therein, Jefferson briefly assesses the musical capabilities of blacks: "In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved." Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, ed. William Peden (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1982), 140.

                        5.                  Terry, "African-American Classical Organ Music," TAO, 59n.

                        6.                  The first black to be admitted to Peabody Conservatory was Paul Archibald Brent (1907-1997) of Baltimore. Brent, an honors graduate, received a teaching certificate in piano (1953). He subsequently received a B.M. Degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore. When interviewed, Anne Garside, Peabody's Information Director, provided the following information regarding the situation: "The director [conservatory] at the time was Reginald Stewart who very much wanted to abolish the color bar because not only had Peabody faculty been teaching African-American students for years under the table, [but] some of these black students were among the best musicians in the city . . . " The Baltimore Sun, Mar. 21, 1997, 5B.

                        7.                  Philadelphia Inquirer (Oct. 31, 1996), E6.

                        8.                  This sonata is comprised of three movements, none of which has been titled by the composer. The movements listed here are more or less described either by their form or tempo markings. In the case of the second movement, there is neither a title nor tempo marking indicated; consequently, the title indicated is provided by the writer to describe a suggested tempo.

Godwin Sadoh is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the organ works of Fela Sowande at Louisiana State University.
An earlier version of this article was originally published in the February issue of "The Organ."

Nigeria has been blessed with very few, but seasoned organist-composers
since the arrival of Christianity around 1842. The schools and churches built
by the missionaries had a great impact on the emergence of the Nigerian
"organ school." The incentive to become professional organists and
composers was further propelled and inspired through the private lessons given
to talented Nigerian church musicians at an early age. All the musicians in
question had their formative periods at the mission schools, in church choirs,
and under organ playing apprenticeships.

The genealogy of Nigerian organist-composers is confined to
four generations from around the 1880s to the present. These are professional
organists trained at various schools of music in Great Britain and America.
Interestingly, each generation has produced only one musician: Thomas Ekundayo
Phillips (1884-1969), Fela Sowande (1905-1987), Ayo Bankole (1935-1976), and
Godwin Sadoh (1965-).

First Generation

Thomas Ekundayo Phillips is the pioneer and grandfather of the Nigerian school of
organist-composers, and he paved the way for the younger generations that were
to come after him. Born in 1884, he attended the Church Missionary Society
(CMS) Grammar School in Lagos. He received his first organ lessons from his
uncle, the Reverend Johnson, and at the age of eighteen he was appointed
organist of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos. Phillips served at
St. Paul's for nine years. In 1911, he proceeded to the Trinity College of
Music, London, to study piano, organ and violin. Thus, he became the second Nigerian
(after Rev. Robert Coker who studied in Germany in 1871) to study music at a
professional level. After returning from England in 1914, he was appointed
Organist and Master of the Music at Christ Church, now Cathedral Church of
Christ, Lagos (the headquarters of the Nigerian Anglican Communion). Phillips
held this position until his retirement in 1962--a total time span of
forty-eight years of outstanding accomplishments.

In 1964, Phillips was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music
degree by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for his contribution to the
development of church music in Nigeria. One of Phillips' most important
achievements was his training of many prominent modern Nigerian composers such
as Fela Sowande and Ayo Bankole. These were some of the leading and prolific
composers in Africa, and they constitute the next generation of professionally
trained organists.1

Ekundayo Phillips wrote only two major works for organ solo:
Passacaglia on an African Folksong, and Variations on an African Folksong.
These pieces are based on his postulations in his book, Yoruba Music, a
treatise on the compositional style of early Nigerian church music. In the
book, Phillips demonstrated various techniques in traditional Nigerian musical
processes that could be utilized to create new forms of church music which
indigenes could easily assimilate.2 His compositional style is simple and
conservative.

Second Generation

Fela Sowande
represents the second generation of Nigerian organist-composers. He can be
regarded as the father of the Nigerian "organ school." It was he who
propelled the musical genre to an unprecedented height through his extensive
compositions and publications for the King of Instruments. Up to the time of
writing this essay, no one else has written such a great number of works for
organ in Nigeria. Interestingly, Sowande composed for other media such as
orchestra and voice, but his works for organ outnumbered the rest.
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Sowande was born at Lagos, in 1905, into a musical family.
His father, Emmanuel Sowande, was a minister of the Gospel and one of the
pioneers of church music in Nigeria. Sowande received his first lessons in
music from his father. Another influence on his early musical training was
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips. Under the tutelage of Phillips, as a chorister at the
Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Sowande was exposed to European sacred music
and indigenous church music. He received private lessons in organ from Phillips
while singing in the Cathedral Choir. Sowande asserts that Phillips' organ
playing, the choir training, and the organ lessons he received had a major
impact on his aspiration of becoming an organist-composer.

At age 27, Sowande decided to become a civil engineer and
went to London to study in 1935. After six months, he changed his mind and
decided to study music. He played jazz in London nightclubs to support himself.
Sowande enrolled as an external candidate at the University of London and
received private lessons in organ from George Oldroyd and George Cunningham. He
became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists with credit in 1943--the
highest British qualification for organ playing. He happens to be the first
Nigerian and perhaps the first African to receive the prestigious British FRCO
diploma. Sowande was awarded the Harding Prize for organ playing, the Limpus
Prize for theoretical work and the Read Prize for the highest aggregate marks
in the fellowship examination. Sowande also obtained the Bachelor of Music
degree from the University of London and became a Fellow of the Trinity College
of Music.

Sowande had a rounded musical experience in England. He was
a solo pianist in a performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in 1936, and was
appointed organist and choir director at the West London Mission of the
Methodist Church (1945 to 1952). It was during this period that he began
composing for organ. The influence of his participation in and exposure to
church music during his formative years could be seen in the abundance of works
written for organ. His organ compositions at this time included Kyrie,
Obangiji, K'a Mura, Jesu Olugbala, Go Down Moses, Joshua Fit the Battle of
Jericho, and Yoruba Lament.3 

These pieces are based on borrowed themes from Nigeria's
Yoruba culture and African-American spirituals. Indig-enous songs are employed
in Sowande's music for three reasons: 1) as a symbol and mark of national
identity; 2) to classify the works under the umbrella of modern Nigerian art
music; and 3) to arouse the interest of Nigerian/African audiences in
performing, studying and analyzing the music. Apart from rhythm, the indigenous
songs are the elements of Nigerian culture most audible to the audiences and
performers. Hearing those songs enabled them to categorize the works as
Nigerian musical heritage.

During the war, Sowande enlisted with the Royal Air Force,
but was released at the request of the Ministry of Information to go to the
Colonial Film Unit as a Musical Adviser of the British Ministry of Information
in London. He was designated to provide background music for a series of
educational films geared towards Africa. Sowande also presented several
lectures titled West African Music and the Possibilities of its Development for
the BBC's Africa Service. He collected a substantial amount of indigenous
folksongs during this period. The songs were later to be employed in creating
large works such as African Suite and the Folk Symphony. The Folk Symphony was
commissioned by the Nigerian government in 1960 to mark the nation's
independence. Although the work was not accepted, the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra in Carnegie Hall eventually premiered it in 1962.

In 1944, Sowande was invited to conduct the BBC Symphony
Orchestra in the performance of his tone poem Africana, a work for orchestra
based on a Nigerian melody. In 1952, his African Suite for strings and a
selection of his original compositions for organ were recorded by the Decca
Records Company (London Records, U.S.) under the title "The Negro in
Sacred Idiom." Sowande received two outstanding positions on his return to
Nigeria in 1953. He was appointed as the Musical Director to the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos and as honorary organist at the Cathedral
Church of Christ, Lagos.

Among his numerous awards are Member of the British Empire
(MBE) from Queen Elizabeth II for distinguished services in the cause of music
(1956); the Member of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (MFN) in 1956; the
Traditional Chieftaincy award, the "Bagbile of Lagos" in recognition
of his research in Yoruba folklore (1968); and an honorary doctorate from the
University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1972. Sowande also
received partial grants from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.4

Sowande first came to the United States in 1957, playing
organ recitals sponsored by the U. S. Department of State. He also toured as a
guest conductor of symphony orchestras and as a guest lecturer. He later came
back to take up permanent residency in 1968. His teaching career included
tenures at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Howard University in
Washington, D.C., the University of Pittsburgh, and Kent State University,
Ohio. Sowande died on Friday, March 13, 1987, at a nursing home in Ravenna,
Ohio.

Sowande composed sixteen major works for organ:

K'a Mura, 1945 (Chappell, London)

Obangiji, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Kyrie, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Yoruba Lament, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Jesu Olugbala, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho, 1955 (Chappell, London)

Go Down Moses, 1955 (Chappell,

London)

Oyigiyigi, 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Gloria, 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Prayer (Oba A Ba Ke), 1958 (Ricordi, New York)

Sacred Idioms of the Negro

Pastourelle

K'a mo Rokoso

Plainsong

Fantasia in D

Festival March

Sowande's sixteen pieces for organ are all based on Yoruba
Christian or folksongs from Nigeria, with the exception of Joshua Fit de Battle
of Jericho, Go Down Moses and Bury Me Eas' or Wis' (from the Sacred Idioms of
the Negro) which are based on African-American spirituals. The structures of
these pieces range from simple three-part forms to continuous development
types, fugues, and theme and variations. To create contrast in the music he
uses bicinium, tricinium, homophony, and contrapuntal textures between the
pedal and manuals. Sowande has a predilection for a continuous tonal shifting
within a work. He sometimes begins a piece in one key and ends in another, such
as Go Down Moses which begins in F and closes in D major. He uses a wide
variety of tonal resources ranging from diatonicism, pentatonality and
chromaticism. The pedal part is generally simple and sparse, but explores
extremes of range. Pedalpoints are used to tonicize specific tonal centers and
to create climax.

Third Generation

Ayo Bankole alone
represents the third generation of Nigerian organist-composers. A prolific
composer, Bankole had the makings of a genius. He had a special skill for
composition and a talent for presenting his material in an eclectic and
personal way that made him stand as a master composer and performer in his own
right. Bankole continued from where Fela Sowande left off, a generation before
him.

Ayo Bankole was born on May 17, 1935, at Jos, in the plateau
State of Nigeria. He belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group. Bankole spent the
first five years of his life with his father, the late Mr. Theophilus Abiodun
Bankole (M.B.E.), who was then organist and choirmaster at St. Luke's Church,
Jos. During those early years in Jos, Bankole began to show great promise for
music, since he was from a musical family. The composer's biography was
exclusively obtained from Afolabi Alaja-Browne's M.A. thesis.5

In 1941, Bankole came down to Lagos with his father and
began living with his grandfather, the late Mr. Akinje George, who exposed him
to various types of musical styles. In 1945, at the age of 10, Bankole went to
school at the Baptist Academy, Lagos. He played piano and through his activity
in organizing small groups to perform, he began one aspect of his life-long
contributions to music--choral conducting. Bankole was appointed as a clerical
officer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954. During this period,
he came in contact with notable Nigerian musicians such as Dr. Thomas Ekundayo
Phillips and Professor Fela Sowande. Bankole had great admiration for Fela
Sowande, and a few years later he was to come under his influence both as
organist and composer.

Between 1954 and 1957, Bankole was already very active as
organist in Lagos churches. For instance, he was assistant organist at the
Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, under the leadership of late Ekundayo
Phillips. It was about 1956 when he began composing his first major work,
Sonata No. 2 (The Passion), for piano.

In August 1957, Bankole left Lagos on a Federal Government
Scholarship to study music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in
London. He was enrolled in the graduate program (GGSM), a three-year teacher's
diploma, and studied piano, composition, organ, harmony, and counterpoint. Some
of his teachers included Alan Brown (organ), Harold Dexter (organ), and Guy
Eldridge (composition). During his time at the Guildhall School of Music,
Bankole was exposed to a variety of musical styles. His works from this period
show the influence of these various styles. He experimented, progressing from
works that were tonally simple, to works in which he explored diverse
twentieth-century compositional devices as exemplified in the Three Yoruba
Songs for voice and piano (1959) and the Toccata and Fugue for organ (1960). In
spite of the intensity of the program at Guildhall, Bankole found time to sit
for and obtain a series of professional diplomas: Associate of the Royal
College of Music (piano), Licentiate of the Trinity College (piano), Licentiate
of the Royal Academy of Music (Teacher's Diploma), Associate of the Royal College
of Organists, and the Graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
(GGSM).

In addition to his activities as organist-composer, Bankole
was able to organize and train a special mixed choir, comprising fellow
students, which gave performances of his compositions, many of them in the
Yoruba language and musical idiom. Members of his choir and the audiences were
captivated by the Nigerian melodies and rhythms. This type of creative
procedure led to the synthesis of Yoruba and Western musical elements in his
works. Some of the works in this category are Sonata No. 1, Christmas (1958),
Cantata No. 1 in Yoruba, Baba Se wa l'Omo Rere (Father, make us good children)
(1959), Sonata No. 2, Passion (1959), and the variations Op. 10, No. 1 (1959),
based on a Yoruba folktune, Ise Oluwa. 

After spending four years at the Guildhall School of Music,
Bankole moved to Claire College, Cambridge University, London, where he
obtained his first degree, the Bachelor of Arts in Music, at the end of 1964.
While at Cambridge as an organ scholar (1961-64), Bankole obtained the
prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), thus becoming
the second and the last Nigerian to receive this British highest diploma in
organ playing.

During Bankole's stay in England, he wrote music that he
himself could perform. A tremendous amount of music was composed for piano and
organ. He also wrote some choral and orchestral works that are technically
oriented towards European performers. The works of this period include Sonata
No. 4, English Winter Birds for piano, Variations Liturgical (theme and nine
variations for piano), Three Toccatas for organ, Fugal Dance for piano, Second
Organ Symphonia (with drums, trumpets and trombones), and a number of choral
works such as Art Thou Come (1964), Little Jesus, Gentle Jesus (1964), Canon
for Christmas (1964), and Four Yoruba Songs (1964). 

After completing his bachelor's degree at Cambridge
University in 1964, Bankole received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to
study ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Works
produced at UCLA include Ethnophony and Jona. Jona is a cantata in Yoruba for
mixed media comprising a narrator, singers, a dancer and an unusual combination
of musical instruments, including the Indian tambura.

In 1966, Ayo Bankole returned to Nigeria, and was appointed
to the post of Senior Producer in Music at the Nigerian Broadcasting
Corporation (N.B.C.). He remained in this position until 1969, when he was appointed
Lecturer in Music, School of African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos.
His job as a senior producer at the N.B.C. brought him into contact with
various Nigerian musical genres. This contact was to become useful to him both
creatively as well as in his development as a scholar. Two works were written
as a result of his experiences at this time--Fun mi Ni'beji (Give me twins),
parts 1 and 2 for unaccompanied chorus (1967), and the opera Night of Miracles
for chorus, soloists, and Nigerian instruments (1969).

While at the radio station, Bankole had a series of
programs, which he designed to educate the Nigerian public and to present
indigenous African music to the world at large. Some of his works were
performed and recorded under a project initiated by Fela Sowande and jointly
sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Information, Lagos, and the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation. Some of the works from this period are Ore Ofe (The
Grace) for unaccompanied chorus (1967) and Adura fun Alafia (Prayer for Peace)
for voice and piano (1969).

In 1969, he was appointed  Lecturer in Music at the University of Lagos, where he
continued his research into Nigerian indigenous music and presented scholarly
papers. From 1970 onwards, as a result of his research efforts, Bankole began
to employ more traditional materials in his compositions. A work which marks
the beginning of this phase is the Cantata No. 4, Festac, completed in 1974 and
scored for soloists, chorus, organ and orchestral accompaniment consisting of woodwinds,
brass, and some Nigerian traditional instruments. Ona Ara is scored for
soloists, chorus, organ, and Yoruba musical instruments.

Between 1971 and 1974, Bankole spent a lot of time on
special assignments, both within and outside Nigeria. For instance, he was
External Examiner to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1971. Between 1971
and 1972, he was Visiting Lecturer at Ohio State University. In 1973, he
received a Federal Government Commission to compose the anthem for the Second
All-African Games. Between July and August 1974, he was director of a music
seminar, organized by the Rivers State Center for Arts and Culture, and in
April 1974, he was Nigerian Composer-Elect to the Fifth Congress of Soviet
Composers, held in Moscow.

From 1974, Bankole began studying diverse musical practices
of the various ethnic groups in Nigeria. The result of these studies gave birth
to three major projects: 1) Dictionary of Musical Instruments of Nigeria; 2)
The Music of the Rivers' People of Nigeria; and 3) a special study of the Edo
musical instruments.

At the University of Lagos, Bankole combined the roles of
music educator, composer, performer and musicologist. As a music educator, he
was especially concerned with promoting the cause of music at the grassroots. He
achieved this by training young talents, teaching them to read music and also
giving voice and piano lessons. Furthermore, he organized and trained several
choral groups. He composed regularly for these groups and exposed them to
various indigenous and foreign musical works. Among the groups he founded and
trained were The Choir of Angels, comprising students from three secondary
schools in the Lagos area; The Lagos University Musical Society; The Nigerian
National Musico-Cultural Society; and The Choir of the Healing Cross.

Although Bankole contributed immensely to the development of
modern art music in Nigeria, he did not live long to witness the fruits of his
efforts. For on November 6, 1976, at the age of forty-one, Ayo Bankole and his
wife, Toro Bankole, were killed in very tragic circumstances. Today he is still
greatly admired by Nigerian musicians for his magnificent contributions to
Nigerian music as a composer, music teacher, musicologist, organist, pianist,
conductor, and choral director--an extremely gifted man who was not able to
develop his God-given gifts to full potential. Bankole composed five major
works for organ solo:

Toccata and Fugue (1960), published by the University of Ife
Press, Ile-Ife, 1978

Three Toccatas, published under Operation Music One, 1967

Fugue, published under Operation Music One, 1967

Organ Symphonia Nos. 1 & 2, for organ, drums, trumpet
and trombone, unpublished, 1961-64

Fantasia (1961-64), unpublished.

Fourth Generation

Godwin Sadoh
represents the fourth and present generation of Nigerian organist-composers.
Interestingly, like his predecessors, he is the only one in this category, and
his musical training, contribution, experience and expertise are eclectic and
extremely diverse. He is a Nigerian ethnomusicologist, African musicologist,
teacher, composer, pianist, scholar, organist/choir director and an ordained
minister of the Gospel.

Sadoh was born on March 28, 1965, at Lagos, Nigeria, to a
middle-class family. Unlike his predecessors, he was not fortunate to have musicians
in his family. The only musical exposure he had during childhood was the
rendition of folksongs by his late mother and older sisters. His mother
enrolled him in one of the local church choirs, St. Paul's Anglican Church,
Idi-Oro, Lagos, in 1979. It was at this choir that Sadoh was first introduced
to European church music. 

Sadoh attended Eko Boys' High School, Lagos, from 1977 to
1982, where he received private lessons in music theory and piano from Mr.
Ebenezer Omole, the school's music teacher. Omole quickly noticed Sadoh's
talents and interests in music and got him appointed as one of his assistants
in conducting and accompanying the school's choir at the piano. It was Omole
who prepared him for the theory examinations of the Associated Board of the
Royal Schools of Music, London. When Omole was transferred to another
institution, the school's principal and the teaching staff unanimously
appointed Sadoh to the position of organist and choir director of Eko Boys'
High School in 1981 at the age of sixteen. During his tenure, he coordinated
musical activities for the school and directed a Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols in December, 1981.

In 1980, Sadoh joined the renowned Cathedral Church of
Christ Choir, Lagos, to sing tenor under the leadership of Mr. Obayomi Phillips
(son and successor of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips), who was then the organist and
master of the music. Worthy of mention is the fact that all the Nigerian
organist-composers passed through the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, and
were directly or indirectly trained by Ekundayo Phillips. Obayomi Phillips, who
gave Sadoh private organ lessons, was trained by his father, Ekundayo Phillips.
Obayomi Phillips took keen interest in Sadoh's talents and dedication to
advance his skills and aptitudes in music. Phillips soon appointed Sadoh as the
assisting organist to accompany the choir practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays
and to play for the 7:15 am communion services on Sundays. Phillips also gave
Sadoh private lessons in piano, organ and general musicianship (aural skills),
and he prepared Sadoh for all the piano examinations of the Associated Board of
the Royal Schools of Music, London, from grade 3 through grade 7.
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During his fourteen years at the Cathedral Church, Sadoh was
privileged to meet prominent Nigerian trained musicians such as Yinka Sowande,
substitute organist at Cathedral Church and brother of Fela Sowande; Mrs. Tolu
Obajimi, a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music, London, and music
teacher; Kehinde Okusanya, a concert pianist and Director of the Music
Department of Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Lagos; Professor Lazarus
Ekwueme, a Nigerian musicologist, singer, choral conductor, and Professor of
Music at the Department of Music, University of Lagos; Kayode Oni, a graduate
of Trinity College of Music, London, and one of the notable concert organists
in Lagos; and Christopher Oyesiku, a bass singer and choral conductor. Obayomi
Phillips gave Sadoh a personal scholarship from his own purse to study music at
the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) from 1984 to 1988.
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Between 1982 and 1984, Sadoh founded and directed several
choral groups in Lagos. He accompanied and directed most of the groups by
himself at rehearsals and concerts. It was during this period that Sadoh
discovered his gifts in composition. Among his creative works at this early
stage are Oluwa Gbo Adura Mi (Lord Hear My Prayer) for tenor and piano, Oluwa
mi (My Lord) for two voices and piano, Ale ti le (Night has Fallen) for
baritone and piano, Gbo Ohun Awon Angeli (Hear the Voices of Angels) for SATB
and piano, and several other works. He wrote mainly vocal music during this
period.

In 1984, Sadoh was accepted to the Obafemi Awolowo
University, Ile-Ife, to study piano performance and composition. Between 1985
and 1986, he was appointed as the director of the Unife Joint Christian Mission
Choir (over 250 voices). He was formally introduced to traditional African
music at the Obafemi Awolowo University. It was there that he became more
conscious of his existence as an African musician and the component elements of
the music. Sadoh's interest in African music was invigorated through his
exposure to diverse musical cultures of the world. He took courses such as
music in African culture, survey of world music, black music in the Americas,
music in the Middle East and India. As time went on he acquired deeper
theoretical knowledge of African music. Sadoh's musical studies at Ile-Ife
paved the way for his growing interest in incorporating indigenous Nigerian
elements and the creative procedures in his musical compositions. Hence, he
began to employ distinct Nigerian rhythmic patterns, harmony, tonal
organization, and scale systems in his works. Sadoh's creative output during
this period includes Memoirs of Childhood for piano, Moonlight Dances for
piano, Akoi Wata Geri for SATB and piano, and Akoi Wata Geri for tenor and
piano. Sadoh completed his Bachelor of Arts degree with a Second Class
Upper-Division in 1988. He was retained to teach in the same Department of
Music from 1988 to 1994 as a result of his diligence and academic excellence.
While teaching at the Obafemi Awolowo University, he founded and directed two
major choral groups, the Ile-Ife Choral Society and the Ile-Ife Junior Choral
Society. With these two groups, he directed several public concerts of choral,
vocal solos, and instrumental music within and outside Ile-Ife. Sadoh also
played piano solo recitals on the university campus and other regions in
Nigeria.

In 1994, Sadoh was accepted to the graduate program in
ethnomusicology and African music at the University of Pittsburgh where he
obtained an M.A. degree in 1998. As a teaching assistant at the institution, he
taught several courses including world music, class voice, and class piano. During
this period, he was apointed as a guest/visiting lecturer at GoldenWest
College, California, in 1995, and at Thiel College from 1995 to 1998. Sadoh
studied organ with Dr. Robert Sutherland Lord at the University of Pittsburgh
for three years. While in Pittsburgh, he also served as organist and choir
director at St.  Stephen's
Episcopal Church, Wilkinsburg, from 1996 to 1998.

Sadoh continued his musical training in organ performance
and church music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1998 to 2000. His
teachers were Dr. George Ritchie and Dr. Quentin Faulkner. Sadoh was often
called upon to present several guest lectures on African and world music at the
School of Music, University of Nebraska. In fact, he created the curriculum of
the African music program and taught the course from 1998 to 2000. During his
two-year sojourn in Nebraska, he served as organist at Christ Lutheran Church,
Grace Lutheran Church, and as associate director of music ministries at the
First United Methodist Church. Sadoh obtained the M.Mus. degree in May of 2000
after playing two Master's organ recitals in one academic year--November 1999
and April 2000. He published his first scholarly article "Music at the
Anglican Youth Fellowship: An Intercultural Experience" in the HYMN
journal, in January 2001. This was a paper he wrote for twentieth-century
church music class, and it was Dr. Faulkner, the instructor, who encouraged him
to get the paper published.

In 2000, Sadoh was accepted to the Doctor of Musical Arts
degree program in organ performance and composition at the Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge. With this admission, he became the first African to
study organ at doctoral level. He has been studying with Dr. Herndon Spillman
(organ) and Dr. Dinos Constantinides (composition). At LSU, he wrote mostly
instrumental and chamber works at the instigation of his composition teacher.
His major works at this time include Three Dances for piano, Three Pieces for
flute solo, Illusion for violin and piano, Potpourri for trombone, flute, oboe,
clarinet in B-flat, and string quartet, A Folk Dance for percussion ensemble of
four players, Yoruba Wedding Dance for brass quintet, Badagry for woodwind
quartet, A Suite of Nigerian Folksongs for string quartet, Tribute to Homeland
for chamber orchestra, Harmattan Overture for symphony orchestra and Nigerian
instruments, Summer Evening at Ile-Ife for wind quintet, and Three Wedding
Songs for soprano and piano. Sadoh wrote his first major works for organ in the
summer of 2002: 1) Folk Dance, 2) Ore Ofe Jesu, and 3) Nigerian Toccata.
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The Folk Dance was composed on August 13, 2002. The thematic
material was derived from a Nigerian folksong "Owo o, Omo o, ma m'omo se
ire" (money and children are both desired and I will embrace both and revere
them). It is divided into three sections. The first introduces the main theme
on the Great with an ostinato in the Pedal. The second section is the
development of the theme in D-flat, while the third section returns back to the
home key (F) and ushers in the principal theme triumphantly in the Pedal with
full organ. Nigerian Toccata was influenced by nineteenth and twentieth-century
French toccatas. Composed on August 14, 2002, it is a virtuoso piece that calls
for all the resources of the organ from the smallest pianissimo to the loudest
fortissimo. The four thematic materials are original. Structurally, it is in a
quasi-sonata allegro form without a development. The harmonic framework and
sonority are purely modern. The work is characterized by diatonicism,
chromaticism, pentatonicism and sequences. Ore Ofe Jesu (The grace of Jesus)
was composed on August 15, 2002. It is a quiet and meditative piece most
suitable for offertory, communion or any other contemplative aspect of a divine
service, and is in three sections. It opens with a prelude in duple meter and
moves into the second section in triple meter. This section is based on a
Yoruba church hymn "Idahun re l'a nreti" (We are waiting to receive
your answer). It closes quietly with the first four measures of the prelude.
These three pieces were published by Wayne Leupold Editions in April 2003 as
one major work titled Nigerian Suite No. 1 for organ solo.

In 2002, Sadoh wrote and published two articles: "A
Centennial Epitome of the Organs at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos,
Nigeria," published in The Organ (London), and "The Creative Process
in Nigerian Hymn-Based Compositions," published in The Diapason (August,
pp. 15-17). Several scholarly articles by him are to be published in 2003.
"Creativity and Dance in Joshua Uzoigwe's Music," will be published
in ComposerUSA, "Organ Building in Nigeria" and "A History of
South Africa's Organ Builders" will be published in the Organ
Encyclopedia. In May 2003, Sadoh was nominated by members of the faculty at LSU
for membership in the Beta Lambda Chapter of Pi Kappa Lambda, for his academic
and musical accomplishments.

It is interesting to note that an organist-composer is born
in Nigeria every thirty years. Sowande was born in 1905, Bankole in 1935 and
Sadoh in 1965. Hypothetically, the composer-organist for the fifth generation
must have been born in 1995 somewhere in Nigeria.

Others

The following are organists only.

Kayode Oni studied
organ at the Trinity College of Music in London. He came back to Nigeria in the
1970s and was subsequently appointed Honorary Organist at the Cathedral Church
of Christ, Lagos. He was also organist and choir director in several Anglican
churches in Ogun and Lagos States. He taught several budding organists in
Lagos, including Deji Osun.

Deji Osun studied
organ privately with Kayode Oni for several years in Lagos. He sat for the
theory, piano, and organ examinations of the Associated Board of the Royal
Schools of Music, London, while studying with Kayode Oni. He served as organist
in various churches in Lagos and Ogun States before leaving for the Trinity
College of Music, London, to continue his studies in organ in early 1980s. He
has completed his training and currently resides in England.

Merriman Johnson was
the organist at the Tinubu Methodist Church, Lagos, for several years. He went
to study organ in one of the British schools of music in the early 1980s. He
has finished his training and is currently residing in England.

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian organist-composer, church musician, pianist, choral conductor, and ethnomusicologist. He is the author of several books, including The Organ Works of Fela Sowande: Cultural Perspectives (2007), Intercultural Dimensions in Ayo Bankole’s Music (2007), and Joshua Uzoigwe: Memoirs of a Nigerian Composer-Ethnomusicologist (2007). Sadoh is presently Professor of Music at Talladega College, Alabama.

The arrival of the Christian faith in Nigeria around the mid-19th century introduced not only the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but also church music to one of the most populous African countries. At the turn of the 20th century, indigenous church musicians began to develop a repertoire of music for worship. The music included church hymns, chants for singing Psalms, versicles and responses, and choral anthems, as well as organ pieces. The pioneers of church music composition endeavored to write music that would be close to the cultural roots of the congregations through the incorporation of traditional music resources. Foremost among the first generation of composers was Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969), popularly referred to among Nigerian musicologists as the “father of Nigerian church music,” for his immense contributions to the development, growth, and stabilization of Christian music.

Short biography of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips

Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips was born in 1884 and he attended the Church Missionary Society Grammar School (CMS), Lagos. Phillips received his first organ lesson from his uncle, Johnson, who was an Anglican priest. At the age of eighteen he was appointed organist of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Breadfruit, Lagos, and served in this capacity for nine years. In 1911 he proceeded to the Trinity College of Music, London, to study piano, organ, and violin, becoming the second Nigerian to receive professional training in music abroad and the first Nigerian to formally study organ in a school of music (Robert Coker was the first Nigerian to study European music abroad in Germany in 1871).1
Upon his return to Nigeria in 1914, Phillips was appointed to the position of organist and master of the music at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.2 Phillips’ tenure marked a great transition and a period unparalled in the history of Nigerian church music. His accomplishments far outshone those of all his predecessors at the church. He led the Cathedral Choir to great heights within a short period of time, since the choir was established to be a model for other churches. The choir sets the musical standard for choral performance in the country. In this way, Phillips succeeded in revolutionizing church music in Lagos and in Nigeria as a whole.
Phillips embarked on a massive campaign to educate Nigerian congregations in the latest repertoire. First, he concentrated on an intensive training of his choir on sight reading, vocal production and blend, and modern techniques of chanting the Psalms. Second, Phillips established a musical journal of which he was the editor-in-chief. He used the journal to disseminate cogent information about sacred music to the Yoruba congregations in southwest Nigeria, including its role in worship and its relationship to the culture of the people. Third, Phillips wrote a treatise on the compositional devices of early Nigerian church music entitled Yoruba Music.3 In this monumental book, Phillips described methods that composers could use to create new forms of music that employ Nigerian indigenous music resources—such as melodies, scale, and rhythms—to which congregations could relate. Nigerian congregations tend to embrace and appreciate hymns, anthems, and instrumental works based on indigenous popular melodies and rhythms. According to Bode Omojola, Phillips’ views in his Yoruba Music are summed up in three salient points: 1) Yoruba music is often based on the pentatonic scale; 2) harmony rarely exists in Yoruba music; and 3) Yoruba music, like all other musical traditions, is undergoing an evolutionary process.4 Phillips’ book represents the first musicological research and documentation of African traditional music by a professionally trained native. His postulations and research findings were circulated among church musicians through public presentations such as lectures, conferences, and symposia. His Passacaglia on an African Folk Song for Organ and Variations on an African Folk Song for Organ are representative works based on the ideas from his Yoruba Music. Fourth, Phillips founded the Conference of Church Organists and other musical organizations such as the Association of Diocesan Organists, which was a forum for church musicians to interact and exchange ideas on various aspects of sacred music from congregational singing to choral training to organ playing.
Phillips frequently gave lectures, addresses, and demonstrations for the improvement of musical taste and development in the church. He wrote numerous articles on harmonium and organ playing as well as on the maintenance of these instruments. At his instigation, some of the sermons at the Cathedral Church of Christ during this period were directed towards enlightening the congregation on devotional and reverential singing. The historical background of some of the hymns was also incorporated into the sermons. All these efforts led to a tremendous growth in the musical standard of the choir and the congregation in Lagos State and other parts of the country. The Cathedral Choir rendered settings of canticles, responses, anthems, hymns, and diverse choral works by famous European and indigenous Nigerian composers.
When the church was to be elevated to cathedral status in 1923,5 the congregation decided to buy a bigger pipe organ. Phillips embarked on several concert tours at home as well as in London to seek funds for the instrument, and he was able to raise over half of the budgeted amount. Works performed by the choir during these tours included Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah, John Stainer’s Daughter of Jairus, and the Yoruba songs composed by Phillips. The money was used to purchase a three-manual pipe organ built by Abbot & Smith Co. in 1932.6 In 1964 Phillips was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree by the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for his contributions to the development of church music in Nigeria. Phillips also trained most of the prominent and internationally famous Nigerian musicians, such as Fela Sowande (organist-composer, 1905–1987), Ayo Bankole (organist-composer, 1935–1976), his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips (organist and choir director, 1919–2007), and Christopher Oyesiku (singer, choral conductor, and broadcaster, 1925–).7 Thomas Ekundayo Phillips directed the music ministry at the Cathedral Church of Christ for 48 years (Trinity Sunday 1914 to Trinity Sunday 1962). He was succeeded by his son, Charles Oluwole Obayomi Phillips, who served as organist and master of the music from Trinity Sunday 1962 to Trinity Sunday 1992.8

Issues in Nigerian hymn composition

The art of hymn composition in Nigeria is confronted with several related problems. The first issue to be tackled by a hymn writer is that of ethnic diversity—who is your audience or which of the ethnic groups is your primary target? Nigeria as a nation is made up of three major ethnic groups: Yoruba in the southwest, Igbo in the southeast, and Hausa to the north. In addition to this powerful tripartite caucus, there is a large body of minority groups including the Edo, Urhobo, Isoko, Ishekiri, Kwale, Efik, Tiv, Ijaw, Ibibio, and Fulani. All these groups speak different languages and hundreds of dialects. When you move from one small town to another, you might neither be able to understand nor speak the language there, even though you are a Nigerian.
For illustration, I am a Nigerian born to a Yoruba mother, but my father is from Edo State in the midwest region of the country.9 As a result of being raised in Lagos, I am very fluent in the Yoruba language; however, I can neither speak nor understand the local dialect of my father’s ethnicity. Each time I go to Edo State, I communicate in English, a language common to all or most Nigerians.
It follows, then, that a hymn composer in Nigeria must always have a targeted congregation in mind when writing a new song for worship. If the composer wants his/her songs to be sung in the southwest region, the hymn must be in Yoruba. And if the primary congregation is situated in the southeast, the hymn must be in Igbo. Alternately, a wise composer who wishes to reach a larger body of Christ that cuts across ethnic barriers, would write the hymns in English. With this approach, all the ethnic groups within the nation may be able to understand the message of the hymns.
Ironically, this procedure may even create a greater problem because there are some churches that have adamantly adhered to conducting services in their indigenous language and would not accommodate songs in any other language. Among these churches, there are some educated people who could communicate well in English, and there are also those who cannot read nor write the English language.
For instance, there are several Igbo Anglican (Episcopal) churches in Lagos, a Yoruba community. The Igbo Anglican churches were founded by Igbo priests who were confronted with fierce oppositions in convincing ministers in Yoruba churches to create English services to accommodate non-Yoruba speaking natives. The Igbo priests made this move to prevent further loss of Igbo Anglicans to other denominations.10
The only places where English hymns thrive are the newly founded evangelical churches, chapels on college and university campuses, and a few denominational churches such as the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, where services are conducted mainly in English. These congregations have a larger population compared to small parish churches because they are pan-ethnic and globally intercultural in their modes of worship. In most of the evangelical churches, you will find Igbo and Yoruba as well as other minority ethnic groups worshiping together. On college and university campuses, English is the official language of instruction; accordingly, services are conducted in English at all worship centers including student fellowship meetings.
The second problem a hymn writer may have to grapple with is the translation of hymn texts. This may be in the form of translating English hymns to any of the indigenous languages or the translation of a particular local dialect to another within the country. In the first situation, the composer may find it difficult to translate certain English words that do not exist in Nigerian culture. For instance, we do not have snow, winter, hail, or ginger bread in the Nigerian cultural experience. Therefore, the hymn composer will experience difficulty in translating these words into an indigenous language and choosing descriptive words that can best convey the exact meaning to Nigerian congregations. In another instance, when words are translated from one language to the other, there may be too many syllables to be inserted into a single note, or there may be too many words within a phrase that would not fit into the melodic phrase.
The hymn writer is then confronted with the problem of choice: which words are more important to retain and which are less important, to be deleted. A Yoruba Christian song, Kokoro Ayo lowo Mi, when literally translated into English becomes “The Key of Joy in My Hands.” There are several problems with this translation. The Yoruba text has eight syllables and melodic notes to go with it, while the English translation has only seven syllables. The composer will have to create an additional English word to complete the sentence or she/he may try to force two notes into a single syllable of the text. The other problem with this translation is that of positioning the important English words under the strong accents such as the first or third beats of each measure. In other instances, after creating a literal translation of the hymn text, the composer still has to rearrange the words.
The third obstacle to be addressed in composing hymns in Nigeria is the issue of melodic choice. The composer will need to choose between pre-existing tunes such as folk songs, traditional songs that belong to specific cults, popular dance tunes, or original melodies. Folk songs are generally acceptable because their texts deal with simple social life experiences, whereas traditional songs that are devoted to specific deities or divinities may be difficult to persuade Nigerian congregations to sing. The church members were taught by the early foreign missionaries to believe that such cultic songs belong to the devil, and, because of this, they should refrain from incorporating them into Christian worship. These songs are well known to the people; engaging in the singing of those songs may bring back to their consciousness the images of traditional gods and goddesses that they have disowned for the true God of the Christian faith.
Popular band songs on the other hand are perceived to be too “worldly” and mundane for true worship in the church. The argument here is that juxtaposing such melodies with sacred texts may bring back memories of “worldly” experiences that do not bring glory to God and Jesus Christ. In Nigeria, there has been a long controversy and debate on the issue of employing popular band tunes played at night clubs to accompany sacred texts. The Christian community has vehemently opposed this practice at every seminar, symposium, and conference. An alternative available to the composer is to write original melodies that align with new text or pre-existing words.
The fourth major problem confronting a hymn composer in Nigeria is melodic construction. After overcoming the issues of ethnic and language diversity, translation barrier as well as choice of melody, the hymn writer will still have to contend with the issue of tonal aspects of indigenous languages. Because all languages and regional dialects have tonal inflections, the composer must be mindful of the melodic shape of each note assigned to every syllable. Any discrepancies between the melodic contours and indigenous language can adversely dislocate the intended meaning to be conveyed to the congregation.
Most Nigerian dialects normally have three to four tonal inflections. Yoruba language has three main tone patterns on its words: the low, middle, and high tones. Consequently, if the tonal inflection of a word is high, the melodic contour must correspond to it by rising; if the inflection is low or middle on the word, the melodic contour has to move in that direction. In other words, the melodic shape of words in Nigeria has to run parallel with the rising and falling pitches of the local dialects.
Among the Yoruba, the word Ade means crown, and its tonal inflections are middle and high. Hence, the appropriate notes for the two syllables can be re–mi, mi–so, la–do, or so–la. If the hymn writer chooses a melody in the opposite direction, the meaning of the text will change and it will not make sense to the Yoruba congregation. By choosing different tonal pitches, this word can mean ade (crown), ade (to cover), ade (to tighten), or Ade (the name of a person from a royal lineage). The composer of indigenous Nigerian church hymns will have to take into account this problem in order to write meaningful and logical songs for Nigerian congregations.
The fifth problem a Nigerian hymn writer faces is that of harmonic organization. Nigerian traditional music has a concept of polyphony. Indigenous harmonic usages can be observed in both traditional vocal songs and instrumental music. While there is a predilection for thirds, fourths, fifths, and parallel harmonies in the musical repertoire of traditional music, one can also hear the clashing of seconds in tone clusters among the Ijesha and Ekiti from southwest Nigeria. Interestingly, the concept of harmony is more pronounced in the southern regions of Nigeria, such as the Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Ijaw, Efik, etc. The northern Hausa-Fulani sings mostly in unison or what Kwabena Nketia calls “polarity,”11 which is a very strong influence from the Arabic culture. The reason for this might be twofold: 1) the southerners have a long history of harmonic singing in their traditional culture, in particular, the Igbo and Midwestern regions; and 2) the church music introduced by the early missionaries from America and England was restricted mainly to the south. Consequently, the foreign hymns in four-part harmony simply reinforced the concept of polyphony among the southern peoples. As one may recall, the colonial policy encouraged the northern Muslims to continue in their Islamic faith, while the southerners fully embraced the newly found Christian faith.12
The final problem confronting hymn composition and congregational singing in Nigeria is that of instrumental accompaniment. During the early stages of Christian worship in Nigeria, especially in the 19th century, congregational hymns were accompanied mainly with organ, harmonium, or piano in most churches. Unfortunately, native worshipers could not easily relate to nor embrace singing songs without movement. They were used to dancing, hand clapping, and all manner of bodily movements in their traditional culture. The singing of European or indigenous hymns with the exclusion of the dance experience created a major hindrance and stumbling block to congregational singing. This impasse created schisms and eventually led to the fragmentation of the early church in Nigeria into various factions and denominations. From this fragmentation evolved indigenous independent churches such as the Aladura (Prayer) Church in early 20th century, where traditional musical instruments were fully utilized to accompany congregational singing of hymns.
In Nigeria today, traditional musical instruments are employed in accompanying congregational singing at various indigenous churches and established traditional churches such as Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Even European or American hymns are accompanied with indigenous drums, iron bells, sekere (shaking idiophone), and hand clapping. The only exception to this practice is to be found at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, where hymns are still accompanied only with the pipe organ and piano. The Cathedral Church is the only church in the country that strictly kept intact the European worship traditions in post-colonial Nigeria. The worship experience in the church is comparable to any of the British cathedrals such as St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. In addition to instrumental accompaniment, services have been conducted exclusively in English, from the inception of the Cathedral Church of Christ in 1867 to the present. The only occasions when other types of musical instruments and indigenous language is tolerated are during special services dedicated to the youth of the church or during diocesan events. Even in these specialized services, Western musical instruments such as trap drum set, electric guitar, and electric keyboard are mostly used in accompanying contemporary praise choruses from America and Nigeria. These instruments are used to play music that the youth of the church would like to hear and sing. The Standing Committee of the Cathedral Church approved the use of foreign instruments in order to keep their youth in the church and perhaps attract more young men and women to their congregation. Prior to this era, which began in late 1990s, the Cathedral Church was losing a lot of their young people to the newly founded contemporary churches where those instruments were being used to accompany modern praise choruses.
Therefore, a hymn writer in Nigeria needs to recognize the important issue of movement in worship. The composer is compelled to write songs that can align with percussion instruments and inevitably move the congregation to dance. In Nigeria, dance is visualized as an act of worship to God. We may ask at this juncture: how did Thomas Ekundayo Phillips solve the aforementioned problems in the hymns he wrote, and how did the congregations react to his compositions?

Selected indigenous hymns
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips wrote several songs of worship for the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, and other smaller parish congregations. His hymns are in both English and Yoruba languages. Although services were conducted mainly in English at the Cathedral Church, Phillips’ compositions in Yoruba language were permitted for rendition during special occasions such as choir concerts, synod services, diocesan events, and ordination of a bishop or archbishop in the church. Such events attracted people from various backgrounds, both the well-educated and the less-educated. As the church was located in a Yoruba state, the majority of the guests from other parishes were Yoruba; therefore, they felt more at home singing songs in their own language. Phillips’ music represents the first generation of Nigerian composers. Works in this era are quite simple, short, and tonal.
Phillips’ Versicles and Responses (Awon Adura Kukuru ati Idahun Won)13 was specifically written for worship in the smaller Yoruba parish churches in southwest Nigeria. It is a canticle of prayer sung in morning and evening worship. The performance technique of the song is the African “call and response,” with simple organ accompaniment. The priest (Alufa) sings the solo while the congregation (Ijo) responds in unison. The organist plays the first note of the opening solo and the priest sings his line a cappella, but the organ accompanies the congregational response. Since the Versicles and Responses is in Yoruba language, it cannot be sung at worship in other regions of the country. The melody is original and in five-note pentatonic scale (do–re–mi–so–la), which is commonly found in Yoruba folk songs. The vocal compass of the song is nearly an octave, making it easy for the members of the congregation to sing without straining their voices. While the melodic line employs a pentatonic scale, the organ accompaniment uses a free diatonic harmony with occasional tonicization of the dominant. The melodic contour mirrors the tonal patterns of the Yoruba text throughout the music. The translation of the first page of the Responses is as follows:

Priest: Oluwa, Iwo si wa l’e te (Lord open our lips)
Congregation: Enu wa yio si ma fi iyin Re han (Our mouths shall sing forth Thy praise)
Priest: Olorun, sise ki o gba wa la (Lord make haste to save us).
Example 1 shows the first page of Phillips’ Versicles and Responses.
Phillips wrote a very short Yoruba Vesper hymn for the closing of evening service, entitled Baba a f’ara Wa (Father, we surrender ourselves). This hymn is usually sung at the end of evening worship before the recessional hymn is sung. The organist plays the first chord as written in the score, then the congregation sings the entire song as quietly as possible. Apart from one sub-dominant note, the melody is in five-note pentatonic scale (do–re–mi–so–la), and its range is a seventh. The melodic shape of the hymn strictly mirrors the tonal inflections of the Yoruba text, and it is an original hymn. Consequently, by observing the compositional rules, Phillips was able to retain the intended meaning of the Yoruba words. The congregation sings in unison, but the organ accompanies with conventional four-part harmony and closes with a plagal cadence. The song is a prayer for God’s protection at night. Below is a translation of the Yoruba text:

Baba a f’ara wa
Si iso re l’ale yi
Dabobo wa ko pawa mo
Titi ‘le o fi mo, Amin.

Father we surrender ourselves
Under your care tonight
Protect and keep us safe
Until tomorrow morning, Amen.

See Example 2 for Phillips’ Vesper Hymn.
Yoruba Magnificat in C (The Song of Mary) is another evening hymn composed by Ekundayo Phillips. The text of this hymn is derived from Luke 1:46–55 in the King James Bible. It is a Yoruba hymn-anthem for four-part choir, congregation, and organ accompaniment. The hymn is commonly sung during a synodical or any other diocesan service that involves the Cathedral Church of Christ and other parishes in the community. Compositional technique combines monophony, polyphony, and contrapuntal devices. Structurally, the hymn-anthem is in three-parts: A) the congregation sings with organ accompaniment in C major; B) alternation of solo passages with full chorus in the key of G major; and A) full chorus with organ. Phillips maintains strict observance of parallel motion between the melodic shape and the Yoruba text. The original melody mirrors the contours of the inflection of the words. As regards tonality, Phillips uses the conventional diatonic scale for the melody, while the organ has more notes. Harmonically, there is a preponderance of thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and unison in the vocal lines. In addition, he uses all types of dynamics—mf, f, ff, cresc., dim., as well as rallentando, allargando, etc. Example 3 shows an excerpt from the Yoruba Magnificat in C.
Phillips wrote several Antiphons to Psalms with organ accompaniment. These short songs are all in Yoruba language and they are meant to be sung in unison before, during, and at the end of the Psalms. The melodies use tetratonic and pentatonic scales, and they are generally within the range of an octave. The melodic contours strictly imitate the inflections of the Yoruba words. The organ accompaniment is simple and often closes with either a plagal or perfect authentic cadence. The composer gives clear instructions on performance technique and at which points the antiphons are to be sung in the Psalms. Example 4 shows the opening page of the Antiphons to Psalms.
From Glory to Glory is a four-verse English hymn by Ekundayo Phillips, written in four-part harmony with short organ interludes inserted between all the verses except the final. This hymn is frequently sung at evening services and festive occasions at the Cathedral Church of Christ. In this hymn, Phillips keeps the melodic construction simple and the harmonization diatonic. He is not compelled to observe the Nigerian indigenous creative principles because of the English text. In fact, the harmony briefly tonicizes C in the third and fourth measures. However, the singing alternates between monophonic and polyphonic phrases. Phillips’ Yoruba hymns were well received and are still popular today in most Anglican churches in southwest Nigeria, especially Lagos. In fact, the current Cathedral Church of Christ Choir recorded some of Phillips’ hymns and anthems in 2006 to celebrate his musical legacy. From Glory to Glory is shown in Example 5.

Conclusion
Thomas Ekundayo Phillips indeed is the father of Nigerian church hymn composition. He laid a solid foundation for the composition of indigenous hymns through his numerous compositions and his book, Yoruba Music. He continually strove to encapsulate the theoretical framework of Yoruba traditional music in his compositions for the Christian church in Nigeria. In the area of tonality, he uses the popular five-note pentatonic scale, occasionally deviating from this method in songs such as From Glory to Glory, which is in English. Therefore, it would not be wrong to admit that Phillips adheres strictly to pentatonality in his Yoruba hymns, but uses the diatonic scale freely in composing English hymns. Phillips solved some of the problems in composing indigenous hymns by writing original texts and melodies. This procedure enabled him to successfully juxtapose the two entities in which the melodic contours consistently mirror the tonal patterns of Yoruba text in order to convey the intended meaning to his Yoruba congregations.
A large number of Phillips’ compositions are in Yoruba language, meaning that his targeted audience was the Yoruba congregations in southwest Nigeria. This corroborates the prevalent ethnic diversity among the Christian congregations in post-colonial Nigeria. Subsequent generations of composers rely on his research from well-documented field work on Yoruba music found in his book and his compositions. However, some modern Nigerian composers are making efforts to alleviate the issue of ethnic conflicts by writing songs in diverse indigenous languages as well as borrowing folk and popular songs from various ethnic groups in the country in their works. My new hymn book, E Korin S’Oluwa,14 is a major contribution towards uniting the vast ethnic groups in Nigeria. The indigenous texts are in Yoruba, Igbo, as well as English language, and pre-existing songs are borrowed from all the major ethnic groups in the country. I am but one of a growing number of Nigerians who have been touched by Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips, and so his efforts to build the musical life of the Nigerian church continue after his death.

Other articles of interest:

History of the organs of the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Nigeria

Centennial of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos, Nigeria

Fela Sowande: Nigerian Musician Legend

Thomas Ekundayo Phillips: Nigerian composer

Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips