By Stephen Adewale

There are anniversaries that only count years, and there are anniversaries that summon history to stand still for a moment.

The golden jubilee of the Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, belongs gloriously to the latter category. It is not an anniversary to be mentioned casually, applauded politely and allowed to pass quietly.

It is a moment for all who understand the power of culture, scholarship and memory to stand up for a Department that has given fifty years of sound, service, imagination and excellence to Nigeria and the world.

On Monday, June 1, 2026, the Department of Music will formally open its 50th Anniversary International Conference at the Design Studio ACE, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

The opening ceremony, scheduled for 10:00am, will bring together scholars, students, alumni, performers, cultural workers, university administrators, benefactors and friends of the Department in what promises to be far more than an academic gathering.

It will be a golden convocation of memory and melody, a celebration of fifty years of music excellence, and a solemn recommitment to the future of music scholarship in Nigeria and beyond.

For those who understand the soul of OAU Faculty of Arts, ours has always been a grand theatre of ideas, a republic of learning and culture, and a Faculty where beauty, struggle, intellect and imagination meet. Within that larger story, the Department of Music occupies a place of uncommon grace.

It is one of those departments that remind us that the Faculty is not complete until knowledge sings, until scholarship dances, until culture finds form, and until the human spirit is given room to breathe.

For fifty years, the Department has trained musicians, musicologists, composers, educators, ethnomusicologists, church music directors, instrumentalists and creative entrepreneurs whose works continue to travel far beyond the walls of Ile-Ife.

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Gbenga Fasiku, captures this legacy with admirable clarity when he describes the Department as one of the most vibrant intellectual and artistic hubs in the Faculty and in the University, committed across the decades to teaching, research, performance and cultural preservation.

But what exactly is being celebrated? Certainly, not age alone. Age without achievement is only chronology.

What the Department of Music celebrates is fifty years of disciplined creativity, artistic courage, intellectual production and cultural stewardship.

It celebrates generations of teachers who turned sound into science, rhythm into method, performance into archive, and African musical traditions into respectable fields of global scholarship. It celebrates students who arrived with talent and left with training. It celebrates alumni who now carry the banner of OAU across schools, churches, studios, stages, universities, cultural institutions and creative industries around the world.

Music is often mistaken by the casual mind as entertainment alone. Yet, in Africa, music is history. Music is philosophy. Music is prayer. Music is protest. Music is therapy. Music is memory. Music is law, laughter, lamentation and liberation. It accompanies birth, marriage, worship, war, healing, coronation, farming, mourning and celebration.

A society may lose a document and still recover their past from song. A community may forget a date and still remember the rhythm of an event. In that sense, music is one of Africa’s most enduring archives.

This is why the golden jubilee of the Department of Music is a celebration of the humanities at their most powerful. At a time when the world increasingly asks universities to justify the arts in narrow economic terms, this Department stands as a magnificent rebuttal.

It tells us that no society can be truly developed if it has no memory, no sound, no beauty, no cultural confidence and no disciplined understanding of its creative inheritance.

Roads may connect cities, but music connects generations. Technology may quicken communication, but music deepens communion. Statistics may measure growth, but music measures the pulse of the human spirit.

The anniversary conference itself bears the mark of a Department that is not trapped in nostalgia.

Its panels and sessions speak boldly to the present and the future. The programme reflects engagements with history, memory and archival practices in African music scholarship; music, technology, artificial intelligence, digital platforms and streaming cultures; popular music and audience studies; music, politics and social movements; sacred music and spirituality; music therapy and health communication; gender, embodiment and representation; cultural policy, economics and poverty reduction.

In other words, this Department is not looking backward with ceremonial pride. It is standing at the crossroads of heritage and innovation.

That is perhaps the greatest beauty of this celebration.

The Department of Music is inviting scholars and society to think seriously about the next fifty years.

What will become of African music in the age of artificial intelligence? How will digital platforms transform indigenous sound? How can music therapy strengthen health communication? How can musical heritage become part of creative tourism and cultural economies? How can music education produce thinkers, entrepreneurs, archivists, technologists and cultural diplomats?

These are questions at the centre of the twenty-first century. Nigeria today is one of the most powerful musical nations on earth. From Afrobeats to gospel, from indigenous performance to film soundtracks, from sacred compositions to popular protest songs, Nigerian music has become one of the country’s most visible exports.

Yet, behind every global sound must stand serious institutions that teach, document, theorise, preserve and critique. Fame may be born in the studio, but legacy is often secured in the academy.

This is where the Department of Music, OAU, remains indispensable.

The conference will be hosted under the leadership of Professor Olusegun Stephen Titus, Head of the Department of Music, with Professor Adebayo Simeon Bamire, Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, as Chief Host, and Professor Gbenga Fasiku, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, as Co-Host. Professor Adeoluwa Okunade, Visiting Professor at the African Studies Institute, University of Georgia, USA, will deliver the keynote address, while Professor Atinuke Adenike Popoola of the Department of Music, Delta State University, Abraka, will serve as Lead Paper Presenter.

The choice of these distinguished scholars speaks to the seriousness of the occasion.

Professor Okunade’s profile as a scholar of ethnomusicology, African music education, cultural preservation and diaspora music gives the keynote address a fitting intellectual weight. Professor Popoola’s reputation in composition, analytical musicology and African music equally enriches the conference with scholarly authority and artistic depth.

Yet, beyond titles and ceremonies, what I find most moving about this anniversary is the human labour behind it. Departments do not become great by accident.

They are built by dreamers who refused despair, administrators who kept faith, teachers who gave more than salaries could reward, students who believed in their training, alumni who remembered their roots, and benefactors who understood that culture must be supported if it is to survive.

Beyond the ceremonies and scholarly conversations, the anniversary also draws attention to the kind of generous partnerships that sustain great institutions.

The Department has, over time, enjoyed the goodwill of remarkable friends, alumni and benefactors whose support has strengthened its capacity for teaching, performance and creative production.

These include Dr. D. K. Olukoya of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, whose donation of multimillion-naira musical instruments and commitment to the forthcoming 1,000-seat Music Theatre project speak powerfully to the future of music education; Mr. Lanre Delano, whose donation of a Two-Manual Allen Organ, alongside further promises of support, represents a rare investment in organ studies and performance culture; Emnoch Company, for supporting the renovation of the Music Studio; Chief Makinde, for his financial support; Prince Timmy Ademakinwa, popularly known as Big Timmy, for his consistent encouragement; and many alumni and friends whose affection for the Department continues to find expression in practical acts of support.

This is the kind of partnership that builds institutions. It is easy to applaud music when the choir is singing.

It is harder, and nobler, to support the rooms where the music is taught, the instruments through which it is practised, the studios where it is refined, and the students through whom it will outlive the present generation.

In this regard, the Department’s benefactors deserve generous public commendation.

As a member of the Faculty of Arts, I consider this anniversary a collective honour. The glory of one department enlarges the dignity of the whole Faculty. When Music celebrates fifty years of excellence, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Linguistics, English, Dramatic Arts, Foreign Languages and other sister disciplines also have reason to rejoice.

This is because the arts, properly understood, are rivers flowing into the same ocean of human understanding. Music converses with history through memory. It converses with religion through worship.

It converses with linguistics through language and tone. It converses with theatre through performance. It converses with philosophy through meaning. It converses with technology through innovation. It converses with society through the daily drama of human existence.

The Department’s golden jubilee, therefore, becomes a reminder that the future of the humanities will not be built by timid departments guarding narrow territories, but by bold disciplines willing to cross boundaries, ask new questions and create new forms of knowledge.

The Department of Music has done this for fifty years. Now, it must do even more.

The next fifty years must be years of digital archives, international collaborations, stronger postgraduate training, community-based research, creative industry partnerships, indigenous instrument preservation, music entrepreneurship, sound studies, AI-driven music inquiry, and deeper African-centred theorisation.

The Department must not only participate in global conversations; it must help define them.

As the celebration begins on Monday, let the drums speak. Let the choir rise. Let the organ thunder. Let the scholars gather. Let the alumni return. Let the students see that they belong to a lineage larger than their present anxieties. Let the Department stand before the world as a golden house of sound, scholarship and cultural memory.

At fifty, the Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University, has earned its flowers, its applause and its anthem. It has given Nigeria scholars, performers, teachers, thinkers and cultural ambassadors. It has preserved memory and produced knowledge. It has made sound respectable as scholarship and scholarship beautiful as sound.

Therefore, to stand up for the Department of Music at 50 is to stand up for the arts in a season when the humanities are too often treated as ornaments rather than foundations of civilisation. It is to stand up for the teachers who have kept the flame alive, the students who still believe in the dignity of artistic training, the alumni who carry Great Ife into the world, and the benefactors whose generosity proves that culture survives best when society chooses to invest in it. It is to say, with conviction, that music is not a decorative extra in the life of a university. It is one of the grand languages through which a university speaks to the soul of society.

As the 50th Anniversary International Conference opens on Monday, what is clear is that this is not the closing note of an old song. It is the opening movement of a greater symphony.

And from Great Ife, that symphony will continue to rise.

Stephen Adewale writes from the Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife