Three Dances for Piano

The first two dances were composed on November 11, 2001 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana State. The pieces were inspired by Nigerian socio-cultural ideations. The first movement Atilogwu Dance is reminiscent of the music played for the performance of the Atilogwu Dancers among the Igbo people of southeast Nigeria. The piece is built upon interplay of duple and triple meters. The Beggar’s Chant is a recreation of songs often sung by blind beggars as they plead for coins on the streets of Lagos where I was born. The famous African call-and-response technique permeates the entire piece between the left and right hand. Yungbayungba was composed on December 14, 1994 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 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.