Yoruba art music: Fronting the progenitors

Abstract

The bedrock of music genres in Africa today remains the traditional music. The western formal music education embraced by African schools during and after the scramble for Africa by the northern hemisphere has given ‘colorations’ to music genres both in the classroom and the larger society. Its legacies are found more in popular music. The most interesting thing is that essence of music remains undaunted in the faces of all new formalities in the educational system. Music still lives on stage and not on paper. This paper emerges as a derivative of the Yoruba Art Music (YAM) festival premiered in 2015 at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. With bibliographical evidences and substantial interaction with a non-Yoruba speaking music scholar this paper sufficed that the YAM festival is worth doing and is capable of solving other attendant issues in music scholarship.