Samuel Ekpe Akpabot

Samuel Ekpe Akpabot (born October 3, 1932 in Uyo ; † August 7, 2000 ibid) was a Nigerian composer and music teacher and ethnologist .

Akpabot came to Lagos at the age of eleven , attended King's College and sang in the choir of Christ Church Cathedral . He was also a member of Soji Lijadu's band Chocolate Dandies, and after leaving the church choir in 1949, he founded his own band, The Akpabot Players . In 1954 he went to England, where he studied organ and trumpet at the Royal College of Music in London . His teachers were John Addison , Osborn Pisgow and Herbert Howells . After completing his studies at Trinity College of Music , he returned to Nigeria in 1959 and joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation .

During this time his first composition Overture for an Nigerian Ballet was written . In 1962 he left the radio and became a teacher at the Music Faculty of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Here he composed a. a. the Scenes from Nigeria for orchestra (1962), Three Nigerian Dances for string orchestra and percussion (1962) and the tone poems Ofala (1963) and Cynthia's Lament (1965). In 1970 Akpabot became a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University ).

In 1972 he wrote the opera Jaja of Opobo , in 1973 the composition Nigeria in Conflict , which reflected the horrors of the Biafra War , and in 1974 the Two Nigerian Folk Tunes for choir and piano. Akpabot continued his music ethnology studies in the United States, where he received his master's degree and Ph. D. in musicology and became a visiting scholar at Michigan State University . In the 1990s he returned to Nigeria and taught music at the University of Uyo . During this time he wrote the ethnomusicological works Foundation of Nigerian Traditional Music and Form, Function and Style in African Music .

Web links

• Africlassical - Samuel Ekpe Akpabot (1932-2000)
• Classical Composers Database - Samuel Ekpe Akpabot