‘Tiwa ati Tiwon’ (Ours and Theirs): Interrogating the Intersection Between Western Musical Training and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Composing African Art Music

Author: Stephen Olusoji, PhD

Abstract

African art music has generated sustained scholarly interest, particularly regarding its identity, pedagogical foundations, and the creative strategies through which composers negotiate the relationship between Western musical training and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). This study interrogates the intersection of these two epistemic domains and examines how their interaction shapes compositional practice, cultural identity, and audience reception. Drawing on archival materials, manuscripts, recorded works, and published scholarship, the paper demonstrates that African art music attains cultural authenticity when composers are thoroughly grounded in the indigenous musical traditions of their communities, including their performance practices, tonal systems, rhythmic structures, and aesthetic philosophies. The analysis identifies composers who have successfully integrated indigenous elements into Western-derived art music idioms and highlights the techniques through which such fusions are achieved. Findings reveal that meaningful hybridity requires not only technical proficiency in Western compositional methods but also deep immersion in indigenous musical epistemologies. The study recommends strengthened bi-cultural training, expanded field research, and increased institutional support through grants and commissions to enable composers to produce works that are both artistically rigorous and culturally rooted.

Keywords: African art music, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Western training, identity,
structural fusion, decolonisation.

Copyright © 2026. The author retains the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.

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Author

Stephen Olusoji, PhD