In Piano and Drums, Gabriel Okara has effectively managed to present two conflicting cultures, both of which he is a part of, through the form of music. On one hand is his innate African culture symbolised by the raw wild beating

        Okara describes how the drums take him back to his childhood and life as a hunter. His “blood ripples,” this action suggests that the rippling is just the beginning and then it “turns torrent, topples the years.” The blood could mean the feelings locked up inside him that suddenly boil and come rushing out like a flood, destroying all his years of experience and foreign culture and “at once” transporting him into his childhood. The alliteration in “turns torrent, topples,” increases the pace of the action, making it seem fast, violent and terrible. Okara is transported to his mother’s “laps” where he is “a suckling.” “Mother” here could be a reference to nature and “a suckling” suggests a feeling of fulfilment and contentment. Okara talks about walking down “paths” instead of streets or roads as the “paths” are “rugged” and “fashioned with feet” and lacking “innovation.” All of these show the simplicity of the African way of life, without any modernism but Okara seems to be happy .

        The third stanza finally speaks of the piano. Even then, it is not many pianos but just one. This shows the individualistic side of European culture contrasting with the social and collective side of the Africans. When Okara hears the piano, it is “wailing.” “Wailing is associated with shrill unpleasant sounds. He also focuses on the single mindedness of the Europeans as he talks about just “a” piano and it also speaks “solo.” The music itself is complex and complicated,  and “tear-furrowed,” making it seem as if the sound is melancholy and forcing the poet to furrow his brows in concentration. The use “far away lands” and “new horizons” imply that the sound is coming from far way and is distant, again contrasting with the right here, right now feeling of the drums. The use of “coaxing” also suggests that the feelings it draws are forced to come out not like the feelings so easily drawn out by the sound of the drums. The sound of the piano is like a “labyrinth” of complexities and complications and even when he reaches the end of the maze, he is at a “daggerpoint” and the music kills the African inside him. Okara says that the music “ends in the middle of a phrase” meaning that it is incomplete and there is no feeling of satisfaction or fulfilment unlike the satisfaction that the music of the drums give.

        The final stanza is sort of like a conclusion but not exactly. It is a conclusion to the poem but not to his feelings of discrepancy. Even though it already seems as if he values the drums before the piano, he is still plagued by the piano calling to him. Here, the “morning mist” mimics his feelings of confusion, also supported by “wandering” showing that he hasn’t come to a final conclusion. Okara feels more from the drums as is evident in the two long paragraphs full of simplistic language and sensory images against the one bare and short stanza of complex language with no sensory images at all. Even the structure of the poem shows his preference as the drums are described with passion as “mystic, raw and urgent” while the piano is described in small breaking lines as if the piano (colonisation) calls to him but he doesn’t want to go. Though Okara has made up his mind half-way about which culture he prefers, he can’t abandon one and pick the other as he is still being called to by both of them. The final stanza states this confusion.