Three Yoruba Wedding Songs for Soprano and Piano

The Three Yoruba Wedding Songs for soprano and piano was composed on July 19, 2002, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana State. The texts of the three songs are actually three verses of a popular Yoruba wedding song in Nigeria. The texts are borrowed, but the melodies and piano accompaniments are original. The texts have been modified in this work to align with solo performance. The vocal parts are essentially in pentatonic scale, while the piano accompaniments are in pentatonic and diatonic modes. Songs No. 1 and No. 3 are through-composed, while song No. 2 is in three distinct sections like an aria. The vocal melodies are very simple, however, the accompaniments supply interesting shades of colors and varied rhythmic patterns to sustain the motion. The melodic contours of the songs mirror the tonal inflections of the texts since Yoruba language is a tonal language. The rhythmic accentuation and tonal inflections of the words are unavoidable in the creative process.