Intercultural creativity in the Nigerian-Igbo art music of Okechukwu Ndubuisi

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of Western art music on the founding of an art music tradition in Nigeria. While the pioneering composers were more Western in approach and style, modern composers’ creative quests for identity and relevance for a local audience have motivated their compositional experiments through intercultural creativity, which Euba [2014. J. H. Kwabena Nketia: Bridging Musicology and Composition. A Study in Creative Musicology. Point Richmond, CA: MRI Press] conceptualised as ‘creative musicology’ or ‘intercultural musicology’. These experiments have resulted in hybrids of Western and indigenous musical features, which in this paper are put in the context of the Igbo ethnic group where Okechukwu Ndubuisi thrived in his art. Indigenous folk music ideals inspired his compositions, which he created with an intercultural approach. This paper has partly emerged from existing studies on Ndubuisi and on intercultural musicology in Africa, and opens new perspectives, for example on pedagogical and performance interculturalism and on Ndubuisi’s creative frameworks, which are omitted both in the literature on him and in other discussions of intercultural and creative musicology in Africa. The study encompasses a sociological argument, theoretical conceptualisation, and musical analysis; it therefore extends the existing scholarship in intercultural and creative musicology.