Olajida Olude

OLUDE, (A. T.) Olajida. b. 16 July 1908; d. c. 1986. A Nigerian Methodist minister, Olude was educated at Wesley College, Ibadan, and at the Mindola training school. He was awarded the Order of Niger and, from the University of Nigeria, the Mus.D. degree (Young, 808). A.M. Jones describes Olude as ‘profoundly upset by the way European-type hymns murdered his language’ (Jones, 1976). Jones also notes that Olude built up a collection of at least 77 hymns whose melodies followed precisely the speech tones of the Yoruba language ‘in every verse’. While in a Mission School in the 1940s, Olude learned a text by Elizabeth Parson*, ‘Jesus, we love to meet’*, dating from 1840. He based his Yoruba...