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DURO LADIPO
INFLUENCES AND CAREER
According to Ogunbiyi (1981:334-339), Duro Ladipo was
born in Osogbo, southwestern Nigeria, on 18 December
1931, the son of an Anglican catechist. As a child, he was
keenly interested in Yoruba culture and customs; he closely
followed the activities of the various cults and observed
traditional festivals. Ladipo worked as a teacher in Ilesa and
Kaduna before settling down at Osogbo in 1959.
Theatrical and musical works
While teaching in Kaduna he founded a dramatic
society and produced his own interpretation of
Shakespeare's As You Like It. After returning to
Osogbo, Ladipo composed an Easter Cantata in which
he made use of talking drums, the first time these
drums had ever been introduced into All Saints Church,
Osogbo, where the cantata was premiered.
Secular setting for his works
The church disapproved of this innovation and thus
forced Ladipo to seek a secular setting for his
compositions. In December 1961, he presented a
Christmas Cantata at the Mbari Club, a cultural
organization at Ibadan, and later founded his own
cultural club, Mbari Mbayo, at Osogbo.
A celebrated operatic career
Duro Ladipo's activities as a composer of Christian
religious music were a prelude to a celebrated
operatic career. By the time of his death on 11 March
1978, he had produced at least twenty full-length
operas. The most famous of these operas, Oba Koso,
was widely performed in Nigeria and also presented
in Berlin and in the United Kingdom and the U.S.A.
His conception of the Yoruba folk
opera

Duro Ladipo's conception of the Yoruba folk opera
(of which other distinguished exponents were Hubert
Ogumde and Kola Ogunmola) is a model example
of the neo-traditional idioms of African music
theatre.