HELELE by Dr. Ayo Oluranti - Mountain Top Chorale

Performed by Mountain Top Chorale at the World Choir Games 2024, Auckland New Zealand, winning GOLD in the Contemporary Music - Mixed Voices category. "Helele" , in pidgin English, is composed from two choruses well known across Christendom in Nigeria. The text, "Helele", with its inherent musicality in speech tone and rhythm, is deployed as a motif and a structural glue that holds the piece together. Other structural elements in the piece include extensive use of the ‘call and answer’ antiphonal structure, unison singing and a tripartite organization of lines into foreground (melody), middle-ground (harmonic accompaniment or counter melody) and background (timeline or bass line). All these occur on a bedrock of polyrhythm and polyphony. Stylistically, a harmonic feature of South-East Nigerian traditional music – the use of ‘naked’ thirds as harmony – is invoked in many parts of the work albeit mostly within a polyphonic texture. Follow Mountain Top Chorale: Instagram:   / mountaintopchorale   Facebook:   / mountaintopchorale   #mountaintopchorale #mtc #choralmusic #choirmusic #worldchoirgames2024 #helele #choir