In all, this book is a competently written account of the life and times of the subject as well as of the history of the various genres of Yoruba music; the socio-economic philosophies underpinning the rivalries - petty and major- among the practitioners and the contextual cultural allure which grew the trade.
Five hundred and thirty five pages in seven chapters girded firmly, front and back, by a Preface, a Foreword, an Afterword and an Acknowledgment! This unusual structure makes this an uncommon biography. The story, if seen as a drama, has all the trappings of a Shakespearean tragedy: There is Ayinla Omowura, the tragic hero; there is a villain in the man who wasted him. The hero's tragic flaw, his harmartia, was possibly his love for women, beer - and fight.
If readers believe the chapter is all about what the title says, they will be mistaken. The chapter actually dwells as much on the political history of Egba Ake starting with its founding in about 1840 by Sodeeke as a town of refugees. It proceeds to detail how the fecund soil and cultural essence of Abeokuta birthed a succession of multi-talented personages with one of them, Yesufu Amuda Gbogbolowo siring, in about 1933, a child who would in later life be known as Ayinla Omowura.
Chapter four discusses further the peculiar rancorous family which Ayinla raised; the complexities, the dangers and the competing malevolent forces that rule a polygamy - ile olorogun - plus the various philandering escapades of the family head with all manner of women, including his secret lust for the woman in whose beer parlour he was killed.
Now, did Omowura know he was going to die when he did? The author answers this question in various ways through various sources. First was the claim that he told Fatai Bayewumi, his band Chapters six and seven are a posthumous examination of his music and the genre to which it belongs. These latter chapters can be said to be an extensive excursion into the musical world of Omowura, his precursors, contemporaries and successors. Perhaps deliberately or fortuitously, the author exposes himself here as a voracious connoisseur of the works of Omowura. He presents here the thematic, textual and contextual analyses of every of Omowura's 20 albums and stage songs.
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