Thematic Extemporization - A Compositional Exploration of Mike Ejeagha's Gwo gwo gwo Ngwo

Abstract

The popularization of Mike Ejeagha's long-released song titled “Gwo gwo gwo Ngwo” in recent times has opened up new vistas of compositional research interests among Nigerian musicians and musicologists from variant perspectives. The song’s catchy rhythm and engaging lyrics, spiced with comic folklore, radiate a unique centripetal force of attraction among many performers and consumers. Nigerian TV journalist Rufai Oseni's influential platform on Arise Television helped to throw this work into the mainstream media consciousness, prompting many dance clubs as well as politico-social gatherings to romanticize with it as a brilliant artifact of cultural enthusiasm and intellectual engagement. Using a research-compositional method, this paper capitalizes and draws on the theme of political deceit in the song, mining the extant melodic and harmonic resources in it to generate a political satire and discourse that is both consistent with and contemporaneous to the present-day Nigerian situation.