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Duro Ladipoinfluences and career According to Ogunbiyi (1981:334‑339), Duro Ladipo was born in Osogbo, southwestern Nigeria, on 18 December 1931, the son of an Anglican catechist. As a child, he was keenly interested in Yoruba culture and customs; he closely followed the activities of the various cults and observed traditional festivals. Ladipo worked as a teacher in Ilesa and Kaduna before settling down at Osogbo in 1959.
Theatrical and musical works While teaching in Kaduna he founded a dramatic society and produced his own interpretation of Shakespeare's As You Like It. After returning to Osogbo, Ladipo composed an Easter Cantata in which he made use of talking drums, the first time these drums had ever been introduced into All Saints Church, Osogbo, where the cantata was premiered.
Secular setting for his works The church disapproved of this innovation and thus forced Ladipo to seek a secular setting for his compositions. In December 1961, he presented a Christmas Cantata at the Mbari Club, a cultural organization at Ibadan, and later founded his own cultural club, Mbari Mbayo, at Osogbo.
A celebrated operatic career Duro Ladipo's activities as a composer of Christian religious music were a prelude to a celebrated operatic career. By the time of his death on 11 March 1978, he had produced at least twenty full-length operas. The most famous of these operas, Oba Koso, was widely performed in Nigeria and also presented in Berlin and in the United Kingdom and the U.S.A.
His conception of the Yoruba folk opera • Duro Ladipo's conception of the Yoruba folk opera (of which other distinguished exponents were Hubert Ogumde and Kola Ogunmola) is a model example of the neo‑traditional idioms of African music theatre.
