Is African music communal or a social ritual? An analysis of film music in Idrissa Ouédraogo’ s Yaaba and Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman

Abstract

Globally, there is a common understanding of what film sound and film music entail. However, since films are cultural and ideological products, their nuanced meanings could well be appreciated within their unique socio-cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the extent to which African music functions as a communal art form and as a social ritual using a qualitative analysis of two films: Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Yaaba (1989) and Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman (2022). Drawing from African aesthetic theory and extant literature, the paper explores how film music in the selected films articulate collective identity, express communal memory, and mediate social obligations. The findings suggest that musical traditions in African films sustain important cultural elements while functioning as both communal expressions and social rituals. Through close readings of musical sequences, the relationship between dialogue and music, and culturally grounded symbolic cues, the analysis demonstrates that African music in these films transcends mere entertainment; it performs communal bonding, reinforces cosmological worldviews, and structures ritual action. Yaaba foregrounds music as an everyday communal practice embedded in unity of purpose and intergenerational cohesion, while Elesin Oba situates music within sacred Yoruba cosmologies, emphasising its function in rites of passage, ancestral mediation, and social order. The paper argues that the cinematic soundtracks in both films embody culturally specific epistemologies in which music is a living, participatory force that shapes social experience, preserves indigenous aesthetics, and enacts the moral fabric of their respective societies.