THREE DANCES FOR PIANO - Sadoh

The first 2 pieces in 3 Dances for Piano were composed on Nov. 11, 2001. These pieces were inspired by Nigerian socio-cultural ideations. The first movement Atilogwu Dance is reminiscent of the music played for the performances of the Atilogwu Dancers among the Igbo of southeast Nigeria. The piece is built upon interplay of duple and triple meters. The Beggar’s Chant is a recreation of songs often performed by blind beggars as they plead for coins on the streets of Lagos where I was born and raised. The famous African call-and-response technique permeates the entire piece between the left hand and right hand. Yungbayungba was composed on December 14, 1994. It was submitted as a term paper project for the graduate seminar in Creative Ethnomusicology, at the University of Pittsburgh. It is an original work built on the rhythmic patterns introduced in the first two measures of the piece. The middle section is an ostinato passage. The piece is exclusively based on pentatonic scale: C, D, E, G, and A.