Conference Agenda

Over the past three decades, scholars have explored African art music through compositional studies and research, yet debates persist regarding its place in African music, particularly concerning identity and authenticity. This presentation examines the 2023 African Art Music Commissioning Project (AAMCP) organized by Àkójọpọ̀, which premiered works by eight composers from Brazil, Ghana, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, and the United States, demonstrating how the organization expands African art music practice across borders.

Building on Georgina Born’s concept of mediation—which clarifies how music acquires meaning through the social, institutional, and technological processes shaping its production—I examine how Àkójọpọ̀’s institutional structures serve as a form of mediation. By analyzing the selection of musicians, the compositional process, rehearsals, and dialogues among diverse composers, I demonstrate how these stages shape and negotiate authenticity and identity.

I argue that Àkójọpọ̀’s AAMCP, through mediational practice, challenges exclusive notions of African art music, resituating it as a Pan-African and transnational form of artistic expression. This analysis reflects on my 2023 ethnographic experience in Lagos, Nigeria, drawing on my direct involvement as a musician, rehearsal director, scholar, and member of the production team.

The growing interest in the performance, recording, and appreciation of African pianism broadens the scope of scholarly inquiry within and beyond African art music discourse. While scholars have underscored the creative processes of composing and performing African pianism, its aesthetics and significations within the African art music tradition, it remains to be practically tested what works of African pianism mean to diverse audiences. This paper interrogates the idea of the piano as a surrogate instrument, the impressionistic perspective of African pianism, and the involvement of audiences in meaning-making processes. With excerpts from works of West and North African composers, it foregrounds translative prospects situated within the broad lenses of composers’ intention, performance practices, and the perception of audiences. Critical questions include what it means to hear the piano and listen beyond the instrument, the possibilities and limits of imaginative listening, and the significance of cultural knowledge or memory in the appreciation of African pianism. The paper therefore describes the translative imaginary as a meaning-making process for composers, performers, and listeners based on different methods of translation reinforced by imagination. Methodologies include descriptive analysis, interviews, and survey results. Ultimately, the paper underscores the translative perspective of African pianism, its complexities and contradictions, and argues for it as an approach towards the making of meaning.

How does African art music negotiate gender? While scholars have explored the genre’s relationship to traditional music, intercultural style, and the classical canon, the literature has rarely centered women and gender. This presentation bridges this critical gap, arguing that the historical exclusion of women in African art music was shaped by colonial restructurings of gender that intersected with the institutionalization of Western tonality.

I locate gender in the 20th-century repertoire of pivotal figures such as Fela Sowande, Ayo Bankole, Akin Euba, and Joshua Uzoigwe. Analyzing their music through an intersectional feminist lens, I emphasize how colonial narratives fundamentally shaped gender concepts in the African musical imagination. I argue that the resulting exclusion of women during colonial rule was mirrored and reinforced by the arrival of Western art music frameworks—a "nested oppression" that led to the sonic sidelining of African women.

Moving toward new creative frameworks, I draw on my experience as a performer and composer to chart inclusive paths forward. I introduce "creative autoethnography," which marries Akin Euba’s creative ethnomusicology with Patricia Hill Collins’ Black feminist epistemology. This approach centers autoethnographic writing as a starting point for musical composition, acknowledging the work of contemporary African women composers while addressing their historical absence from the canon. Through this blend of scholarship and practice, I aim to contribute to larger conversations regarding the empowerment and visibility of African women in music.