Olabode Omojola

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Olabode Omojola’s work has focused on late twentieth-century trends in African music, with special attention to the works of African composers of art music. For example, in his most recent article, “From Ritual Drama to Concert Opera: History and Style in Twentieth Century Yoruba Opera,” he examined the development of modern operatic idioms in Nigeria.

At the Radcliffe Institute, Omojola will undertake structural and stylistic study of selected orchestral, piano, and operatic works by modern West African composers and will assess how these works, in crossing cultural boundaries, reflect on the issue of identity and demonstrate aesthetic permeability between African and Western forms. His study provides a new perspective in the discourse on artistic and cultural identity, musical meaning, and intercultural aesthetics.

Omojola holds a PhD in music from the University of Leicester in England. His research fellowships include the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship to attend the University of Cologne in Germany (1996–1998) and a Ford Foundation African Humanities Fellowship from the University of Ghana at Legon (2000). He is the national secretary of the Musicological Society of Nigeria. Selections from his piano and choral works (published by Bayreuth African Studies, Germany, 2003) received a world premiere at Cambridge University during the International Symposium and Festival of African Music in August 2003.