Foremost Nigerian composer, musicologist and pianist, Professor Akin Euba is dead.
The inventor and theorist of the concept of African pianism, who also coined and popularised the term, ‘Creative Ethnomusicology’, passed on Tuesday evening in the United States aged 84.
An international symposium and concert in his honour were held in January 2019 at the University of Lagos and MUSON Centre, Onikan. The Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos and the MUSON jointly sponsored it.
His inability to make the events because of his then advanced age didn’t stop the sweet music of celebration.
The Unilag Chorale conducted by Dr Albert Oikelome, the Mountain Top Chorale, led by Aderayo Oyegbade, young Ghanaian pianist, David Kafui, and, Director of Early Music Ensemble at the University of South Florida, Professor John Robinson were among the performers at the concert.
Eight of the 19 pieces performed at the concert were by Euba who was born on April 28, 1935, in Lagos. His father, Alphaeus Sobiyi Euba, was a chorister at the Olowogbowo Methodist Church (now Wesley Cathedral) Lagos. He also played the clarinet in the Triumph Orchestra, a Lagos dance band in which the late Fela Sowande was the pianist.
Euba received his first piano lessons from his father, beginning in 1943 while his second piano teacher was Major J.G.C. Allen, a British civil servant with whom he began instruction in 1948. Euba won first prize at the First Nigerian Festival of the Arts in 1950.
After completing his secondary education at CMS Grammar School, Euba travelled to the U.K. in September 1952 to study music at the Trinity College of Music. In four years, he earned three degrees at the College. They are Associate of the Trinity College London (Piano Performance) 1954; Licentiate of the Trinity College London (Teacher’s Training Diploma) 1955; and Licentiate of the Trinity College London (Piano Performance) 1956.
He returned to Nigeria in 1957 and served as a Senior Programme Assistant (Music) at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation until his promotion to Head of Music in 1960. While still the Head of Music at the NBC, Euba was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1962. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied with Mantle Hood, Charles Seeger, Professor J.H. Kwabena Nketia, Klaus Wachsmann, and Roy Travis. He holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Ghana, Legon (1974).
While at Legon, Professor Nketia supervised Euba’s doctoral work, and his dissertation is entitled, ‘Dundun Music of the Yoruba’
Euba was a lecturer, visiting fellow and external examiner at several universities in Africa and North America.
He was a lecturer at the University of Lagos from 1966-68; Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) from 1968 – 1975 and spent the Summer of 1969 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was a Professor at the University of Lagos from 1978-81, and spent five years as a Research Scholar at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, from 1986-91
Euba was the Andrew Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh between 1993 and 2011 when he retired. He was also the founder and director of the Centre for Intercultural Music Arts, London, and Director Emeritus of the Centre for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
His works include numerous academic publications and compositions including books like ‘Yoruba Drumming’ and ‘Chaka, an opera in two chants’. His latest book, ‘J.H. Kwabena Nketia – Bridging Musicology and Composition – A Study in Creative Musicology’ was published by the Music Research Institute in 2014.
