Textual migration in Ebenezer Obey’s juju music

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examines textual migration as one of the principal sources of Ebenezer Obey’s juju music in the framework of free borrowing that characterised the oral composition and performances of Yoruba traditional chanters. In indigenous Yoruba societies, in which there was no patent law governing artistic productions, free borrowing allowed chanters to pick song items from different sources within the context of performance to deck up composition. Obey has expertly made use of this artistic graft herein referred to as textual migration. The study has identified three major sources of textual migration deployed by Ebenezer Obey. The first is from Yoruba oral genres such as oriki (praise poetry), incantatory poetry, festival songs, itan (story) and myths. The second is from Christian oral genres and heritage such as hymnal composition and Christian sermons or evangelical discourses. Obey’s third textual migration derives from Yoruba folk music and older forms of popular music in Yoruba and other parts of the world. Intertextuality and the concept of polyvocality would be used to analyse Obey’s song-poetry. Intertextuality studies interactions between and among texts with a view to establishing the modality of relationship between such texts. Polyvocality is a conceptual notion that posits that individual speakers’ utterances are overpopulated and are largely drawn from various sources that individual speakers might not consciously notice. These theories are therefore appropriate analytical tools to study the artistic graft that operates in Obey’s music.