Rhythm in Sub-Saharan Africa
Rhythm in Sub-Saharan African culture
Many Sub-Saharan languages do not have a word for rhythm, or even music[citation needed]. Rhythms represent the very fabric of life and embody the people's interdependence in human relationships[citation needed]. Cross-beats can symbolize challenging moments or emotional stress: playing them while fully grounded in the main beats prepares one for maintaining life-purpose while dealing with life's challenges.[4] The sounding of three beats against two is experienced in everyday life and helps develop "a two-dimensional attitude to rhythm". Throughout Western and Central Africa child's play includes games that develop a feeling for multiple rhythms.[5]
Among the characteristics of the Sub-Saharan African approach to rhythm are syncopation and cross-beats which may be understood as sustained and systematic polyrhythms, an ostinato of two or more distinct rhythmic figures, patterns or phrases at once. The simultaneous use of contrasting rhythmic patterns within the same scheme of accents or meter lies at the core of African rhythmic tradition. All such "asymmetrical" patterns are historically and geographically interrelated.[6]
As a result of the migrations of
Instruments
African music relies heavily on fast-paced, upbeat rhythmic drum playing found all over the continent, though some styles, such as the Township music of South Africa do not make much use of the drum and nomadic groups such as the Maasai do not traditionally use drums. Elsewhere the drum is the sign of life: its beat is the heartbeat of the community.[8]
Drums are classed as membranophones and consist of a skin or "drumhead" stretched over the open end of a frame or "shell". Well known African drums include the djembe[9] and the talking drum[9]
Many aspects of African drumming, most notably time-keeping, stem from instruments such as shakers made of woven baskets or gourds or the
Tuned instruments such as the mbira and the marimba often have a short attack and decay that facilitates their rhythmic role.
Cross-rhythm
African rhythmic structure is entirely
Cross-rhythm is the basis for much of the music of the
Key patterns
Key patterns, also known as bell patterns, timeline patterns, guide patterns and phrasing referents express a rhythm's organizing principle, defining rhythmic structure and epitomizing the complete rhythmic matrix. They represent a condensed expression of all the movements open to musicians and dancers.[16] Key patterns are typically clapped or played on idiophones such as bells, or else on a high-pitched drumhead.[17] Musics organized around key patterns convey a two-celled (binary) structure, a complex level of African cross-rhythm.[18]
The standard pattern
The most commonly used key pattern in sub-Saharan Africa is the seven-stroke figure known in ethnomusicology as the standard pattern.
Until the 1980s, this key pattern, common in Yoruba music, Ewe music and many other musics, was widely interpreted as composed of additive groupings. However the standard pattern represents not a series of durational values, but a series of attack points that divide the fundamental beat with a cross-rhythmnic structure.[23]
Tresillo
The most basic duple-pulse figure found in Sub-Saharan African music is a figure the Cubans call tresillo, a Spanish word meaning 'triplet'. The basic figure is also found within a wide geographic belt stretching from
References
- ^ Stapleton C. and May C., African All-Stars, Paladin 1989, page 6
- ISBN 0-19-713512-9.
- ^ Ladzekpo, C.K. (1996), Cultural Understanding of Polyrhythm http://home.comcast.net/~dzinyaladzekpo/PrinciplesFr.html.
- ^ Peñalosa 2009, p. 21.
- ISBN 0-252-02211-4
- ISBN 1-57806-145-8.
- ^ ISBN 9780226456911.
- ISBN 9782825412299.
- ^ a b "Britannica Academic".
- ^ Uribe, Ed. The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion & Drum Set. Alfred.
- ^ Novotney, Eugene D. (1998), The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, page 147
- ^ Novotney, Eugene D. The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics Urbana, IL: University of Illinois (1998), page 201. UnlockingClave.com.
- ^ "The Myth of Cross-Rhythm". Home.comcast.net. Retrieved 30 January 2014.
- ISBN 0-415-94390-6.
- ^ Locke, David (1982). "Principles of Off-Beat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Ewe Dance Drumming" Society for Ethnomusicology Journal 11 Nov.. (1982), p. 231
- Gale A146258931.
- ^ Peñalosa 2009, p. 51.
- ^ Peñalosa 2009, p. 53.
- ISBN 0-19-713512-9.
- ^ King, Anthony (1960). "The Employment of the Standard Pattern in Yoruba Music" American Music Society Journal.
- ^ "3-2 THESIS ABSTRACT". Unlocking Clave. Retrieved 30 January 2014.
- ^ Peñalosa 2009, p. s58; 63–64.
- ^ Novotney, Eugene D. The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois (1998) page 158
- ISBN 978-0-520-25486-2. Shown in common time and then in cut time with tied sixteenth & eighth note rather than rest.
- ISBN 978-1-55652-632-9.
- ^ Peñalosa 2009, p. 236.
Sources
- Agawu, Kofi (2003). Representing African music : postcolonial notes, queries, positions. New York, N.Y. ; London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-94390-6.
- Novotney, Eugene D. (1998). The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
- Peñalosa, David (2009). Greenwood, Peter (ed.). The Clave Matrix: Afro-Cuban Rhythm : Its Principles and African Origins. Bembe Books. ISBN 978-1-886502-80-2.
- Ladzekpo, C. K. (1995). "The Myth of Cross-Rhythm", Foundation Course in African Dance-Drumming (webpage, accessed 24 April 2010).
Further reading
- Godfried T. Toussaint, "On the question of meter in African rhythm: A quantitative mathematical assessment", In Proceedings of Bridges: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, and Culture, G. Hart and R. Sarhangi, (Eds.), Enschende, The Netherlands, 27–31 July 2013, pp. 559–562, Phoenix: Tessellations Publishing.