Resounding Yorùbá narratives: interrogating historical Àló performance in Gerhard Kubik’s archived recordings

This article interrogates the historical performance of àlọ́ (Yorùbá folktale/chantefable) as recorded by the ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik in 1963. We studied two recordings from Kubik’s collection by means of collaborative close listening, which leverages our respective research competencies and skills to foster a robust engagement with the archived material. This method, drawing on the Yorùbá concept of àgbájọwọ́ and Nyamnjoh’s idea of convivial scholarship, was inspired by prior close listening endeavours in the disciplines of history [Hoffmann, Anette. 2023. Listening to Colonial History: Echoes of Coercive Knowledge Production in Historical Sound Recordings from Southern Africa. Basler Afrika Bibliographien], musicology [Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. 2009. “The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performances.” Charm.], and ethnomusicology [Pooley, Thomas Matthew. 2016. “Umaskandi Izibongo: Semantic, Prosodic and Musical Dimensions of Voice in Zulu Popular Praises.” African Music : Journal of the International Library of African Music 10 (2): 7–34. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v10i2.2036]. We underscore the manner of combining rhetorical techniques (silence, muted voice, and songs) as a signal of artistic proficiency within the tradition and show how conventions Kubik had presented as fixed varied significantly in practice. We submit that future studies on àlọ́ (and perhaps other African oral traditions) stand to benefit from engaging with archival materials using a similar method.