Ayo Bankole

Ayo Bankole (17 May 1935 – 6 November 1976) was a composer and organist from the Yoruba ethnic group in southwest Nigeria. Early life and education Ayo Bankole was born in Jos, Nigeria, into a musical family: his father, Theophilus Abiodun Bankole was an organist and Choirmaster at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Jos. His mother was a music instructor for several years at Queen’s School, Ede, Osun State, a Federal government high school. Bankole studied in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. There he met drama student and poet Brian Edward Hurst and set one of Hurst’s poems, “Children of the Sun”, to music; this was performed at the Guildhall School in 1960. He also studied at Clare College, Cambridge and received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to study ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Musical career Bankole returned to Nigeria in 1966 and was appointed Senior Producer in Music at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Lagos, where he worked until 1969, after which he was appointed lecturer in music at the School of African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos. He worked as a music educator, composer, choral conductor, performer and