Pages: (90-98 )
Abstract
Songs and music, as in all other forms of the arts, are a dynamic form of cultural expression. Performers borrow, interpret, and modify songs based on many factors including personal, cultural, and regional influences. Throughout the history of mankind, song and music have been influenced by historic events. The popularity of the folksong ‘Ọmọ’níresì’ (Rice Seller) spans colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, responding to the country's changing social and political contexts. It was first known as a lunch hour song for primary school pupils in western Nigeria during the 1950s. Later, it was used as a theme song for the first drama series of the Nigerian Broadcasting Television. This series had over six hundred episodes and ran for almost two and a half decades (1968- 1991). As a theme song, it was arranged by one of the foremost Nigerian composers of the twentieth century, Kẹ́hìndé Òkúsànyà. Some years after the television series had come to an end, another art music composer of the twenty-first century, Dayọ̀ Oyedun, made an elaborate choral arrangement of this folksong (1999). This paper examines the import and the impact of ‘Ọmọ’níresì’ in Nigerian society. Drawing on interviews with both Òkúsànyà and Oyedun, and through a close reading of the folksong itself, it investigates the manner in which it becomes an important part of Nigerian society over the past six decades. This article is concerned with the distinctive ways in which music (broadly defined) can enrich and illuminate our understanding of particular historical contexts.
Keywords: ‘Omo niresi’, folksong, capturing, Nigerian, imaginary,