What a sound! Diegetic and non-diegetic music in the films of Túndé Kèlání

Abstract

The agency of music to effectively convey ideas in movies and articulate visual-emotional experience of the audience during mise-en-scene has long been established. Existing studies have focused more on the elements that characterize film as a visual experience, than on the diegetic (foreground) and non-diegetic (background) music, especially along their aural aesthetic lines. This article, therefore, investigated the aesthetic connections between traditional and performative significations of music in selected movies of Túndé Kèlání, one of Nigeria’s foremost cinematographers. Using a qualitative (videographic) research design, three movies, Ti Oluwa N’ile, Saworo Ide and K’oseegbe, were purposively selected, based on their unique aesthetic traits and distinct cultural identity quality, for content analysis. A close reading of the musical and textual data was done. Findings revealed that cultural themes in the movies, bordering on entertainment, rituals, politics, philosophy, didactic, panegyric and dirge, were projected through African and Western musical instruments, while folklore and folksongs constituted major sources of materials and cultural signifier. The authors argue that examples of the dialectic and sequential troughs in the performance of music exemplify aesthetic reinforcement, not only in terms of the didactic functionality it expresses, but also in what it conceals.