Nkeiru Okoye (born 1972)
Nkeiru Okoye [in KEAR roo oh KOY yeh] was born in New York to an African American mother and a Nigerian father, and she has spent time in Nigeria as well as the United States. She began learning piano at the age of 8 and started composing at 13. She attended the Manhattan School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rutgers University, where she earned a doctorate in Music Theory and Composition.
Nkeiru Okoye is best known for her 2014 folk opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom. This is a video of a complete stage performance in Brooklyn of the chamber version of the opera with the orchestra reduced to piano and a string quintet performed by the Harlem Chamber Players. It was recorded under less-than-ideal conditions, but the video has been posted on YouTube by the composer.
At about 1:15:30 is a thigh-slapping Juba dance, continuing a tradition from the early 20th century in compositions by Nathaniel Dett and Florence Price.
This video is of a 2020 composition Black Bottom for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, bass-baritone, and orchestra, performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra:
An extensive program note includes this overview:
Grappling with the complex fabric of Detroit’s urban renewal history, composer Nkeiru Okoye’s Black Bottom crafts a bold portrayal of the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods’ musical social life in the 1920s-1960s. Black Bottom was said to have been named after the fertile topsoil on which it was established, until the neighborhood was razed to construct the Chrysler Freeway (I-375) in 1964…. This composition is meant to raise questions about the destruction of a vibrant neighborhood and the reasoning behind why Black Bottom was selected for demolition.