With the glorious Yoruba drumming as your own background, how do we begin to compare Cuba's Salsa percussion or Mongo Santamaria or Tito Puente ( Puerto Rico) or Sabu Martinez or the Cuban piano with any rebel chiki-chaka reggae percussion that you could dream up ina Jahmaica? OK, with Cecil Taylor's approach to the piano, his hitting those 88 keys as if he's playing some percussion, the closest to which we possibly have Monty Alexander. I suppose that the Garvey influence increased after Jamaican Independence, but reggae is so dominant - Cuba has not made much in-ways - it's all Jamaica's own - and since every instrument in a reggae band is distinctly percussive, maybe we should not compare, it's to each its own, Haiti has it's own and so does Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago...everybody has his own Sebene //sebenology
--
How did the British West Indian artistes get their drums back because the percussive edge of Brirish Caribbean Reggae artistes is legendary?
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>Date: 29/03/2021 22:30 (GMT+00:00)Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dr. ADEOLA FALEYE,DISTINGUISHEDPOET,TO INTERVIEW EBENEZER OBEY ON APRIL 18, 2021
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (corneliushamelberg@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
Lord Agbetuyi,
A Good Afternoon to you!
I must confess that I don't understand what you meant by "discordant tones." "Discordant" - to your Yoruba ears?
As I write this I am tuned to the full menu here, listen-ing & hear-ing & really enjoy-ing on Spotify: Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, and wishing God's Blessings on Chief Commander & Evangelist Ebenezer Obey & family, his tribe, his world & nation & all his music lovers to whom he has been bringing so much joy, through the years & now preaching the Gospel of Redemption through music - the food of love, Amen!
You mention how successfully the Rev Bob Marley integrated his Bible message into his reggae music, although as we all know, one of the difference between British colonialism and the French & other impies was that British missionary zeal banned what they deemed was d-evil "Voodoo drums" as a result of which we find next to no African drumming in the then British West Indies, a far cry from the tolerance and greater "permissiveness" in the French Caribbean, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America and Africa. In the Rev Bob Marley's case we have to factor in the influence of the leadership of their Prophet Gad and his organisation "The Twelve Tribes of Israel " - an organisation to which I belonged in 1985 and was assigned membership of the tribe of Judah, being born in July and according to their system, that should be my tribe (smile). Just imagine if it could be like that for Nigeria, tribes allocated according to the signs of the zodiac , all the people born under the astrological sign of Cancer : Yoruba , Gemini: Igbo, Taurus : Hausa, Sagittarius ; Fulani , Virgo : Kalabari…that would solve the tribalism issue because we would all then be equally divided, even if statistically most people are born nine months after the rainy season and above all, many tribes co-existing within the same family. Real unit-y
I suppose that at this stage, an essential difference between the Bob Marley and the Nigerian musical proselytizers of the Gospel message is that Bob celebrated freedom, took mighty puffs of the ganja, the holy sacrament and church bread of the Rastafari and in the name of humanity and as the trumpet of his" Jah" used his voice as an instrument, to sing against all forms of oppression…
I still don't get it that the Great Chief Commander and King Sunny Ade should compromise or succumb to watering down their full artistry because of what they are moved to imagine the Almighty would disapprove of when making their joyful noises unto the Lord.
I should just like to add that I understand that a fuller appreciation of Chief Commander's lyrics contributes that much more to a fuller appreciation of his music - in the same sense that e.g. Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or even Joni Mitchell or indeed "The Last Poets" , Gil-Scott-Heron and all the Rappers thereafter would not amount to that much if we subtracted the impact of their lyrics from the totality of their music.
I understand that that's a very important point you are making about any miscreant or charlatan who should want to specialise in Ifa poetry without an in-depth understanding of the Yoruba Language and its development just as we did with our study of the English Language , at least since the time of Chaucer (smile) Ditto Sanskirt, Pali, Hebwre, Arabic
What more should we have to say about Carlos Castaneda's doctoral thesis - as a work of science fiction ?
It's another case of "Give the devil his due", isn't it, Lord Agbetuyi ?
--On Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 01:41, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--
Oga Cornelius:
Unfortunately the two greatest juju exponents KSA ( the Golden Mercury of Africa and the Chief Commander suffered the loss of dexterity of their musical sophistication once they added the Pentecostal side to it.
Commander Obey's decline was gradual starting from the lyrics you cited. He was connected to evangelisation from the start and sang ' 'Mùkúlúmùkę Máájó Fólórun Mi 'with balanced artistry, that did not go overboard with later evangelisation monotones. The balance was caused by the need to keep pace with the frenetic jig of ace Egúngún ( masquerade) follower ( in his youth) King Sunny Ade. But even King Sunny Ade yielded to the evangelical pull of the nouveau rich Pentecostal class who gradually formed dominant clientele, so that KSA who sang Ògún ( which I used in a presentation in graduate school) began to sing more and more of my friend the Nazarene in discordant tones.
I suppose this was one way of the ancestors catching up with these musicians antics and betrayal: the elementals confused their tones and reduced their rhythms to monotones.
It is true the greats like Bob Marley were able to merge the Bible with their rhythms to great effects.
But as I once explained that was because Marley distinguished Christianity the motivation for enslavement from Old Testament narrative.
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>Date: 28/03/2021 19:12 (GMT+00:00)To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dr. ADEOLA FALEYE, DISTINGUISHEDPOET,TO INTERVIEW EBENEZER OBEY ON APRIL 18, 2021
This Sunday afternoon (1st day of Pesach and Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar) now that I intuit the nature of the problem, my sincere apologies to music connoisseur Lord Agbetuyi for having spoken in haste with special emphasis on the tail-end of his comment which was "the deleterious effect on the sophistication of his music" and if I understand Lord Agbetuyi correctly, also possibly the deterioration or degeneration that thenceforth occurred "in the Chief Commander's lyrics" In essence I understand you to be saying that Chief Commander's earlier uninhibited exuberance in the juju music has now been considerably chained or "tamed" by the Holy Spirit
In his own defence Chief Commander could righteously explain that in praise of God he is singing higher lyrics, just like Shulem!
And, was Duke Ellington's Sacred Music less musical because it was sacred? What about Pharoah Sanders? Alice Coltrane? Carlos Santana ? McCoy Tyner? Herbie Hancock? Bheki Mseleku? Abdullah Ibrahim ? John Coltrane himself, to name just a few? And what about all that great Gospel Music - did it diminish Aretha Franklin or Marvin Gaye ?
But of course it's our Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey Fan Club that you're talking about and when it comes to the Yoruba rhythms and lyrics, I concede, you know better. Much better. So far, apart from his " What God has joined together" I have not listened to any of his evangelical evergreens. It's only today that I have restarted my listening, chronologically and such is his prodigious output that I pray and hope I should have got to his latest by 18th April, so that I too will know what I'm talking about. ( for me it's mostly the instrumental music that counts, the vocals too of course not so much the meanings in the Lingala, the Mandinka, the Wolof , the Twi, the Igbo, the Haitian Creole and the Yoruba lyrics )
There is a long list of musicians not even listed here who gave their life to Jesus and still continued to Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, I have in mind Debaba, of course King Sunny Ade, marvellous Ghanaian-Brit Caleb Quaye ex-Hookfoot , a host of others, but chiefly Bob Dylan who for a while gave his life to Jesus - thereby sending shock-waves throughout the Jewish nation, but in his case - and here I'm a real connoisseur without his music really shuffering a degeneration , the only difference being that his lyrics were more Gospel inspired and less iconoclastic as we can here in his "Slow Train Coming " and " Saved" just around the time my fanatical Igbo and Ikwerre Brethren almost drowned me not by the Rivers of Babylon, but in that river in Umuahia.
--On Saturday, 27 March 2021 at 19:10:24 UTC+1 yagb...@hotmail.com wrote:
I thought I sent this yesterday but found it in my draft box
Wonderful!
Odùduwà a gbe Ojogbon Faleye. Ifá yio se amònà obìrìn męta. Yèyé gbédè gbęyò yio şe atókùn, yío mójó ró.
( Odùduwà will enkindle Dr. Fálęyę. Ifá will guide her aright. The Primal Linguist will provide guidance and she will take charge of the day's proceedings.)
I hope Dr. Fálęyę will be able to probe incisively the nexus of traditional ( particularly Ifá) religion and Christianity in the Chief Commander's lyrics on our behalf, especially the syncretism that propelled him to full blown Christian ministry and the deleterious effect on the sophistication of his music, to the chagrin of music lovers and industry alike.
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------From: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>Date: 26/03/2021 11:48 (GMT+00:00)To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yorubaaffa...@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dr. ADEOLA FALEYE, DISTINGUISHED POET,TO INTERVIEW EBENEZER OBEY ON APRIL 18, 2021
--
Dr. ADEOLA FALEYE, DISTINGUISHED POET, SINGER, SCHOLAR, AND NOLLYWOOD ARTIST TO INTERVIEW EBENEZER OBEY ON APRIL 18, 2021
Sunday, April 18, 2021
5:00 PM GMT+1 (Nigeria Time)
11:00 AM US CST (Austin Time)Register here
https://www.tfinterviews.com/post/chief-obey
Adéọlá Adijat Fálẹ́yẹ graduated with a First Class (B. A. Hons) in Yorùbá Language and Literature. She won the Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀ University Faculty of Arts' award as the "Best Overall Graduating Student" of her set (1997/1998), along with many other outstanding academic awards. She acquired her Masters' and doctorate degrees from the University of Ìbàdàn, Nigeria (2005 and 2015). She earlier worked as the Yorùbá Editor with the Oxford-affiliated University Press PLC in Ìbàdàn (1999-2002). She is a Fellow of the AHP/American Council of Learned Scholars (2012). She is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Faculty of Arts of Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀ University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria. Adéọlá Fálẹ́yẹ is a celebrated poet, renowned actress, and a published performer. Some of the national and international film and stage play productions she has featured in include: Lápé in Agogo Èèwọ̀ of Mainframe Productions; Ìyálọ́jà in Ikú Olókùn Ẹsin of Akínwùnmí Ìsọ̀lá's translated play, and Olóhùn-Iyọ̀ in Wọlé Ṣóyínka's Death and the Kings' Horseman. To her credits also are eight audio Oríkì albums: Tótó Ọba, Ìbàdàn Ọmọ Ajorosùn, Ẹ máa tú yagba, Jẹ́ ká gbáyé pẹ́, Mo ń Bọ́ba Rèhà, Onínúure Lọ (2009-2018). She has several published journal articles, chapters in books, and published creative works showcasing her area of specialization, which is Oral Literature, Culture and Performance Studies. Her published poems and books include Ìlù, Èjọ́ Èmi náà kọ́, Ọ̀rọ̀ Kàǹkà in Kíké Olóbùró (2003), Trends in African Oral Literature, Creative Writings and Contemporary Society (2018), her edited works are Ìwé Kíkà Àsìkò (2007) and Ìwé Mímọ́ Ifá: Ẹ̀sìn Àkọ́dá Olódùmarè (2019) which is a compilation of Ifá corpus, and a very detailed text for researchers and learners.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB72479349EE627088FA90FCA1F8619%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/cc2f4daa-f4a3-4fad-92fd-e7375214bdf5n%40googlegroups.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/usaafricadialogue/o3MZmT0WifQ/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB298284BBD83CB16F10DD4024A67F9%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAFYPD-SD8UbCK%3D%2B-XNy9Dv8z-Je1WDhwPw82C%3DCTFjAPU0VYLA%40mail.gmail.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/usaafricadialogue/o3MZmT0WifQ/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982A25EF338C06622667F6CA67D9%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAFYPD-S3HLVJ15M_sB68%3DigOoDN1TvCze2mcPxq8yhKTGiCLhg%40mail.gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment