REIMAGINING AFRICAN PIANISM: A DIALOGICAL INQUIRY INTO ONYEJI’S DRUMMISTIC COMPOSITIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Although African pianism holds profound cultural depth and creative ingenuity, it remains largely unexplored within mainstream musicology. Its rhythmic and structural innovations are often overshadowed by Eurocentric compositional models, leaving a critical gap in the understanding of non-Western musical thought. This study responds to that gap through a dialogical inquiry into Christian Onyeji’s Drummistic Composition Technique, a compositional philosophy grounded in the structural logic of indigenous drumming. Framed by Episto-Musical Pedagogy theory and aligned with Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG) 4 - Quality Education, the research advances culturally responsive pedagogy and epistemic diversity in music education. It explores how Onyeji’s technique reimagines composition through pulse, repetition, and communal memory, offering a rhythmic epistemology that challenges dominant notions of authorship, form, and curriculum. Using a qualitative, interpretive design, data were collected via a structured written interview and were analyzed thematically following Braun and Clarke’s framework. The findings reveal that Drummistic Composition not only embodies indigenous musical knowledge but also extends and resolves earlier theoretical postulations by Euba. The interview functions as both testimony and theory, serving as a living archive of African compositional thought. This research contributes to decolonial musicology and invites further inquiry into curriculum reform and intercultural composition rooted in indigenous epistemologies.