Performed by Mountain Top Chorale at the World Choir Games 2024, Auckland New Zealand, winning GOLD in the Contemporary Music - Mixed Voices category.
"Helele" , in pidgin English, is composed from two choruses well known across Christendom in Nigeria. The text, "Helele", with its inherent musicality in speech tone and rhythm, is deployed as a motif and a structural glue that holds the piece together.
Other structural elements in the piece include extensive use of the ‘call and answer’ antiphonal structure, unison singing and a tripartite organization of lines into foreground (melody), middle-ground (harmonic accompaniment or counter melody) and background (timeline or bass line). All these occur on a bedrock of polyrhythm and polyphony.
Stylistically, a harmonic feature of South-East Nigerian traditional music - the use of ‘naked’ thirds as harmony - is invoked in many parts of the work albeit mostly within a polyphonic texture.
Follow Mountain Top Chorale:
Instagram: / mountaintopchorale
Facebook: / mountaintopchorale
#mountaintopchorale #mtc #choralmusic #choirmusic #worldchoirgames2024 #helele #choir
13 сен 2024
