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Yoruba Mozart
For most people, being called a ‘big kid’ would be a term of endearment, but for
Juwon Ogungbe, well, it’s a title he takes very seriously. Jesse Quinones reports.
T
he 42-year-old Nigerian composer has
been making music for his entire adult
life, primarily in musical theatre, and
during this time, if he has learned anything, it
is that if you can’t have fun creating art, then
there’s really no point in doing it at all. “I feel
that artistic practice is about maintaining the
childlike part of oneself,” he says. “What
artists do is play, and art itself is an adult form
of play. The discovery, the excitement the thrill
of discovering things, a world where you can
make things up.”
Juwon: ‘Men sometimes feel
vulnerable about the voice and
singing.’
Because of his jovial approach to music, he has made
a career out of working with children. During 2002 he
worked on five projects at the Museum of Childhood,
in East London. He’s also had productions youth
groups in Tower Hamlets, with primary schools in
Hackney and many more besides. One look at his CV
could make even the least altruistic of people go out
and sponsor a child.
Ogungbe says, “Kids are less likely to have any
preconceived notions about performance, about arts,
about creativity, about cultural reference points, all of
those things. So you can do anything really and they
won’t question you and say, ‘Oh that’s not culturally
specific,’ because they haven’t been frozen into those
points of view.”
But this does not mean that there aren’t any setbacks.
Because he has been so successful in working with
children, he feels pigeonholed into that role. But he
wants to let people know that that is just the start.