Voice and the new media in the classification of Yoruba neo-traditional music

Abstract

ABSTRACT The place of voice, or the vocal mode, has long been recognised in the classification of Yoruba oral poetry, which includes Yoruba songs and dance music. However, it has not been accorded the full acknowledgement that is due. The emergence of new media, especially instrumentation, itself an important factor in the typology of Yoruba poetry, has given the voice added valence in the taxonomisation of Yoruba songs. This paper identifies and seeks to situate the human voice, primal instrument of the singer, as the crucial factor in the categorisation of Yoruba neo-traditional music, particularly fuji and juju. Against the backdrop of globalisation, the free flow of information and the transcending of economic and cultural borders, Yoruba neo-traditional music manifests eclecticism, in that new and sophisticated instrumentation enters old musical forms, signalling a postmodernist phase in the development of the music in particular and Yoruba poetry in general. What then emerges is a local-global music that is in expression neither traditional nor foreign, as the result primarily of the infusion of new (foreign) musical instruments and sometimes languages into diverse musical types. The mode of vocalisation or voice, complemented by the other traditional criteria, thus becomes the major yardstick for the classification of the music.