Ní èdè àti ohùn orin Yorùbá: A discourse on the documentation of yorùbá native airs in Christian liturgy

Abstract

Documentation is an important tool for cultural preservation and maintenance of originality of the creative arts. Oral tradition is the mode by which pre-colonial Africans pass on knowledge to their younger generations. This has resulted in loss of details in artistic practices such as narratives, crafts, music, dance and so on. Dwelling on the Yorùbá native air tradition (YNA) in Christian liturgy, this paper is an exploration of the documentation of the Yorùbá musical tradition. It is anchored on the theory of cultural nationalism of Johann Gottfried Von Herder, which he employed in the study of national identity, character and cultural traits among the federating states in Europe. For the purpose of research, maximum variation purposive sampling was used to collect ten indigenous Yorùbá hymn publications.The documentation of these selected YNA publications are found to be either in staff or tonic solfa notation. The aim of the YNAcomposers was to compose a wide collection of Yorùbá hymns that best suite the traditional Yorùbá musical culture, which would be used in the Yorùbá church as opposed to the European hymns which have been translated to Yorùbá language and sung to European tunes. Although the use of staff notation ensures the appropriate performance of the YNAs, the use of tonic solfa by vast majority of the composers was to enable end users interpret the music without much difficulty, even in the absence of trained choirmasters and organists. It is important that more effort be put in place by church musicians and music scholars to further improve on the documentation of indigenous Yorùbá song books that are not well documented. Composers and music educators can render an invaluable service towards the preservation of the YNA tradition by putting together compositions of hundreds of YNA composers in one all-encompassing volume.