Press Clips + Bio

Onye Onyemaechi, MBA, is the founder of Village Rhythms — a visionary author, teacher, advisor, inspirational speaker, and performer. He brings the joy and soul of African culture and education to create and teach ancient ways of wisdom, blending the best of traditional culture and modern lifestyles for individuals, organizations, and the world.

Onye is committed to bringing his wealth of knowledge and insight to his intuitive consultation services and promotes healthy lifestyles through integrated transformative therapies and ceremonies. Onye is recognized as a pioneer in using the drum and music to bring diverse communities together as a tool for personal and societal health. His seminars and consulting have improved hundreds of lives and institutions.

He is a celebrated recording artist, performer, producer, and composer. A virtuoso of African music, Onye's drumming and dance artistry has electrified audiences in the United States and abroad for over thirty years. Through music, Onye has a profound capacity for seeing into ordinary reality and discovering what is needed to bring insights, growth, and transformation to various situations. His healing music is useful for a wide range of therapies, alternative medicine programs, corporate team building, and retreats.

Onye Onyemaechi is a presenter at school assemblies as a speaker and performer to promote the joy of learning and to empower and encourage students' success. His message of village wisdom fosters respect, tolerance, and kindness, and profoundly resonates among teachers, administrators, and parents. He is currently on the roster of the League of Volunteers of Newark Arts Council, El Dorado Arts Council, and the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz Spectra Program. He has completed LBC's Kennedy Center Teaching Artist Professional Training and LBC Artist in Schools – Teaching Artist.

Leader and manager of the Onye and the Messengers Afrobeat Band, Onye has been a member of the Massachusetts Performing Arts Student Series, Young Audiences of San Jose, and Young Imagination. He has also been an artist in the California Arts Council's Arts Education Partnership (LAEP) grant program with Santa Rosa City School District. He has received recognition and appreciation from the Sonoma County Cultural Arts Council. Ronald McDonald's Children's Charities honored Onye with the Award of Gratitude for "special recognition for outstanding participation in Family Fest 1988." He has received grants from the California Arts Council, the City of Boston, and public and private foundations.

Onye is a celebrated, world-renowned percussionist, composer, and producer, and has recorded music for interactive video games and numerous CDs. He has been featured on NBC TV affiliate program Coming Together and the video and film documentaries: Of Sound & Healing, Search for Spirituality, and the Wisdom Channel.

Performing in the United States since the early 1980s, Onye has been featured in Billboard Magazine as musical director of the "O Band," Artistic Director and Business Manager of his own performance company, The Igbote Ethnic Ensemble, and has performed on numerous radio shows nationwide. His major performances include First Night Boston, Cambridge Arts Fest, Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Statue of Liberty Bicentennial Celebration (with his Igbote Dance Ensemble), Harvard University Cultural Rhythms concert, Uetliberg Museum Arts Festival in Switzerland, and Stadttheater Neuburg A.D. Donau, Germany.

His sold-out concert at Humboldt State University Performance Festival electrified the John Van Duzer Theater with a celebration of the human spirit. He has been a featured performer and choreographer of the Oakland Festival of the Arts, Bay Area Dance Series, and Forest Meadows World Music and Dance Series. In Switzerland, Onye has provided programs for children, youth, and immigrant families, sponsored by the City of Zurich and psychotherapy clinics. He has been interviewed on public radio in Germany.

The Cultural Encounters commission of the de Young Museum, San Francisco, commissioned Onye to perform an original piece, "The Rhythms of Change," on the Art of Africa. He earned a BA in Fine Arts from the College of the Holy Cross. After receiving his MBA with an emphasis in international business from Boston College School of Management, Onye felt his true calling was to create and teach a blend of the best of traditional culture and modern lifestyles.

While living in Cambridge in the early 1980s, he presented a monthly night of ethnic music and dance. All nationalities were invited, and the evening would end with Onye drumming while hundreds of people — young and old — danced and drummed along. Some of those who experienced these events studied with Onye and went on to establish drum circles around the country. Onye is recognized as a pioneer in using drum and ethnic dance to bring communities together.

In the April/May 1988 issue of Whole Life New England Magazine, Onye was featured as the cover story, and he was profiled in the Harvard Independent on February 25, 1988.

He has taught at prestigious institutions, businesses, and conferences including Harvard University, Holy Names College/ICCS, Esalen Institute, Omega Institute, International Conference on Business and Consciousness, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Boston College, Sonoma State University, California Academy of Sciences, de Young Museum, College of Marin, featured presenter at the International Conference on Shamanism and Consciousness, International Conference on Sound Healing, International Conference on Science and Consciousness, Memorial Hospital, Kaiser Medical Center, Sutter Health Center, International Medical Interpreters Association, California Institute of Integral Studies, California Library Association, Open Center, Sonoma Development Center, Elaborate Technologies, over 1,000 schools, and the Stadt Theater in Germany.

As an adjunct faculty member, he founded the Drum and Dance Society at Sonoma State University.