Since black music didn’t start here in the United States during slavery, it makes sense for the study of the art form to reach across the Atlantic to its roots in Africa.
This is what Ghana-born composer/conductor/director Fred Onovwerosuoke (Fred O) does as director of the St. Louis African Chorus, which teaches African culture and music in African languages.
“Most schools tell you about gospel and jazz, but there is so much to black music,” Fred O said.
He said one of the African Chorus’s goals is “to let future students – not just black – understand that black music research does not begin with slavery, but that it is a continuum.”
Practicing what he preaches at a Black History Month celebration last Thursday, Fred O featured composers of African descent as he presented (and performed in) a classical music program at The Touhill.
He commissioned acclaimed Liberian-born soprano Dawn Padmore to deliver Joshua Uzoigwe’s Eriri Ngeringe and Ayo Bankole’s Ojo Maa Ro, both accompanied on piano. UMSL Chancellor Tom George shared piano duties with Fred O.
Padmore is known for presenting diverse concerts to international listeners, performing art songs by African composers and from the standard repertoire.
Fred O accompanied Padmore on his own Meditation for Darfur, a poignant piece he composed in 2006, illustrating the severe inhumanity of the ongoing genocide in the Sudan.
As in all of his compositions, Meditation for Darfur, is informed by his travels around the world. The composition is also a prayer for world peace, which includes a multi-media presentation. It can, and should, be viewed on You Tube or www.stlamerican.com.
The two other compositions performed at the Touhill are by (now-deceased) accomplished and respected African composers.
Joshua Uzoigwe (1946-2005) was a leading exponent of African pianism and one of the major figures in the neo-African school of composition. He composed the instrumental stretch Eriri Ngeringe in 1973.
Nigerian-born Ayo Bankole (1935-1976) is known for his contribution to the development of modern art or classical music, though he did not live long enough to bear witness to the fruits of his labor. However, Nigerian musicians admire him for his contributions as composer, musicologist, teacher, organist, pianist, conductor and choral director.
Bankole and Uzoigwe are composers whom black people (and others) should already know, Fred O lectures said.
“Ask any black music student who they are, and they will look at you like you’re talking Greek,” Fred O said.
“We have great African composers dating back to the 1800s, but many students of music schools and conservatories don’t know because they aren’t required to play them. But they must all know Mozart.”
Just like studies of European-based music goes back to the Renaissance, Middle Ages and beyond, the roots of black music should be studied beyond America.
“I see hidden across Africa a gold mine of unlimited musical scales and modes, melodic and harmonic traditions and, yes, rhythms – abundant and untapped,” Fred O has written.
Fred O has even paid attention to hip-hop music, noting that some of it is great. However, he warns, “Black kids are losing to other races in terms of disciplined music,” saying they “don’t naturally gravitate to the only available art music, which is European.”
