Fela Sowande was born outside Lagos, Nigeria in 1905, the son of an Anglican Priest. Growing up a choirboy, he was taken under the wing of Nigerian church music pioneer Dr. T.K Ekundayo Philips, learning Bach and other European composers on the organ, as well as new native Yoruba works being introduced into the church service. At the same time, he led a band playing early Highlife dance music… a form mixing elements from Ghana and Cuba, influenced by jazz.
In 1934 he would begin an almost two-decade stay in England: studying music at the University of London, playing organ for the BBC and for London churches, producing educational radio programs about African music, leading jazz bands, and even playing the piano solo in a performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
And he composed. Organ works based on Yoruba themes. Choral settings based on American spirituals. And orchestral works fusing Nigerian music with classical music. Sowande viewed all music as part of as a single human family, writing, “We are not prepared to submit to the doctrine of apartheid in art by which a musician is expected to work only within the limits of his traditional forms of music.”
Returning home to direct music at the new Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, he became one of the earliest African-born ethnomusicologists, awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth II and named a chief by the Nigerian government.
in 1968 Sowande moved again, to the U.S., to teach in the African-American Studies departments at Howard University, the University of Pittsburgh, and finally at Kent State University.
Fela Sowande… Father of Modern Nigerian Art Music… and Classically Black.
