Musical Pragmatics and Rhetoric in Owóẹ́jẹ́ - a Yorùbá Traditional Movie

Copious literature abound on music and Nigerian traditional film productions, and on the enduring relationship between them. However, pragmatics import and musical rhetoric in traditional movies have not really occupied the minds of scholars in comparative terms, hence, the rather scarce scholarly writings on the subject matter. Whereas the descriptive and narrative capacity of music, especially, in Yorùbá movies is overwhelming, this has not been properly elucidated and documented by scholars. The paucity of scholarly works in this areas might be some sort of oversight or trivialization of the subject matter on the part of scholars. Therefore, using Owóẹ́jẹ́ - a Yorùbá traditional movie as a point of reference, this paper expounds how traditional music is used pragmatically in relating messages to the audience in movies, and concisely interrogates the descriptive significance of musical rhetoric. The study is anchored on pragmatism and rhetoric as the theoretical bases. The music content of the movie formed the data for the study, which was subjected to qualitative analysis. Findings were that music in the movie was functional to explain, stress and project moral values (such as contentment and self-control), and to describe, advice, admonish, pray and counsel the targeted audience.