(b Lagos, 28 April 1935). Nigerian composer. His early musical career was nurtured by his father and influenced by W. Echezona and T.K. Ekundayo Phillips. A government scholarship allowed Euba to study with teachers including Arnold Cooke and Eric Taylor at Trinity College, London (19527), where he gained diplomas in teaching and piano performance and earned two fellowships in piano and composition. In 1962 a Rockefeller Foundation grant enabled Euba to study ethnomusicology at UCLA (BA 1964, MA 1966), where resources in world music prompted a diversification of his compositional materials and techniques. He completed the PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Ghana in 1974. Euba held lecturing and professorial posts at the universities of Lagos (19668, 197781) and Ife (196877). He was a research scholar at Iwalewa-Haus at the University of Bayreuth (198691). In 1988 he founded and became the director of the Centre for Intercultural Music Arts in London; he is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh.
His exposure to Nigerias diverse indigenous musical traditions as senior programme assistant (195760) then head of music (196065) at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation informed his subsequent compositions, for instance such works as Six Yoruba Folksongs (1959) and The Wanderer (1969). Examples of his ingenious combination of indigenous timbres and Western and African instruments are found in Abiku I (1965) and Four Pieces (1966). The possibilities for creating art music in an authentic African idiom that he expounds are put into practice in his concept of African pianism, which explores through piano music the percussive, shifting tonal and rhythmic contrasts commonly found in indigenous musical traditions. While specific influences from indigenous practices include call-and-response, repetition, use of a time-line, polyrhythms, constrasting timbres and percussive attacks, his compositional vocabulary also includes serialism and dodecaphony, as in Scenes from Traditional Life (1970).
(selective list)
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Pf: Impressions from an Akwete Cloth, 1964; 4 Pictures from Oyo Calabashes, 1964; Saturday Night at Caban Bamboo, 1964; Scenes from Traditional Life (1970); Waka Duru: Studies in African Pianism, nos.13, 1987 |
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Other inst: Str Qt, 1957; Introduction and Allegro, orch, 1960; Dance to the Rising Sun, wind orch, 1963; 5 Pieces, eng hn, pf, 1963; Legend, vn, hn, pf, perc, 1966; 4 Pieces, African orch, 1966; The Wanderer, vc, pf, 1969; Ice Cubes, str, 1970 |
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Stage: Abiku I (choreog. S. Olusola), Nigerian insts, 1965; Abiku II (J.P. Clark), chorus, 5 Nigerian insts, 1968; Chaka (op, L.S. Senghor), solo v, chorus, Yoruba chanter, African and Western insts, 1970; Dirges, spkrs, singers, Yoruba drums, tape, dancers, 1972; West African Universities Games Anthem (W. Soyinka; choreog. S. Ajasin), vv, rock ens, athletes, 1981; Bethlehem, solo v, chorus, rock ens, African insts, dancers, 1984 |
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Vocal: Igi Nla So, 1v, pf, 4 Yoruba drums, 1953; 6 Yoruba folksongs, 1v, pf, 1959; 3 Yoruba songs, Bar, pf, Yoruba drum, 1963; The Fall of the Scales, 1v, Nigerian insts, 1970; Festac 77 Anthem (M. Walker), chorus, jazz ens, 1977; Time Passes By, 1v, pf, 1985 |
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MSS in Iwalewa-Haus, U. of Bayreuth |
Multiple Pitch Lines in Yoruba Choral Music, JIFMC, xix (1967), 6671
New Idioms of Music Drama among the Yoruba: an Introductory Study, YIFMC, ii (1970), 92107
Traditional Elements as the Basis of New African Art Music, African Urban Notes, v/4 (1970), 5262
Dundun Music of the Yoruba (diss., U. of Ghana, 1974)
The Potential of African Traditional Music as a Contemplative Art, Black Orpheus, iii/1 (1974), 5460
Criteria for the Evaluating of New African Art Music, Transition [Kampala], no.49 (1975)
Essays on Music in Africa, iii (Bayreuth, 19889)
Yoruba Music in the Church: the Development of a Neo-African Art among the Yoruba of Nigeria, African Musicology: Current Trends: a Festschrift presented to J.H. Kwabena Nketia, ed. J.C. DjeDje and W.G. Carter (Atlanta, GA, 1989), 4563
ed., with C.T. Kimberlin: Intercultural Music: London 1990
Yoruba Drumming: the Dundun Tradition (Bayreuth, 1991)
CC1 (I. Musa)
M. Troup: Towards an African Pianism: Interculturalism on the March, Piano Journal, no.32 (1990), 35
J. Uzoigwe: Akin Euba: an Introduction to the Life and Music of a Nigerian Composer (Bayreuth, 1992)
B. Omojola: Nigerian Art Music (Ibadan, 1995)
DANIEL AVORGBEDOR