Separating the music into easily comprehensible units

African Music

John Miller Chernoff

We write papers for students

Tell us about your assignment and we will find the best writer for your paper.

Get Help Now!

Excerpted fromAfrican Music, University of Chicago Press (1979). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Our approach to rhythm is called divisive because we divide the music into standard units of time. As we mark the time by tapping a foot or clapping our hands, we are separating the music into easily comprehensible units of time and indicating when the next note or chord is likely to come. A Western rhythm marks time at an even pace with a recurrent main beat, generally with a major pulse every two, three, or four beats. What is most noticeable about the rhythm is that it serves to link the different notes to each other. We say, for instance, that a piece of music has a certain rhythm, and as we count out the beats, we will notice certain things. First, most of the instruments play their notes at the same time, and second, if we have a sequence of notes that runs into a phrase or a melody, the whole thing will start when we count One. It is this fact, that Western musicians count together from the same starting point, which enables a conductor to stand in front of more than a hundred men and women playing in an orchestra and keep them together with his baton. Rhythm is something wefollow, and it is largely determined in reference to the melody or even actually defined as an aspect of the melody. Our approach to rhythm is obvious in most popular or folk music, but it is no less evident in a fugue in which the melody may start at different points. What is important is that the rhythm is counted evenly and stressed on the main beat, and we have the special word syncopation to refer to a shifting of the normal accents to produce an uneven or irregular rhythm. Even composers in the Western classical tradition who used complex rhythms, like Beethoven or Brahms, or twentieth-century composers who were influenced by African musical idioms, like Stravinsky, manifest this basic orientation. In the popular or folk idioms of Western music, the more artistic complexities rarely arise.

In Western music, then, rhythm is most definitely secondary in emphasis and complexity to harmony and melody. It is the progression of sound through a series of chords or tones that we recognize as beautiful. In African music this sensibility is almost reversed. African melodies are clear enough, even if African conceptions of tonal relationships are sometimes strange to us but more important is the fact that in African musicthere are always at least two rhythms going on. We consider the rhythms complex because often we simply do not know what the rhythm of a piece is. There seems to be no unifying or main beat. The situation is uncomfortable because if the basic meter is not evident, we cannot understand how two or more people can play together or, even more uncomfortably, how anyone can play at all. On a superficial level, we might get away with describing the beating as fanatical or by referring to the rhythmic genius of African people, but such comments explain very little, and they are, of course, inaccurate because they only indicate our sense of what African music seems to require or bring out of us. Since we are used to hearing one set of tones move through time, we do not expect any distractions from a musician who plays out of time or misses the beat. Exposed to the music of an African drum ensemble, even the most accomplished Western musicians have expressed bafflement. …

In such music, the conflicting rhythmic patterns and accents are calledcross-rhythms. The diverse rhythms establish themselves in intricate and changing relationships to each other analogously to the way that tones establish harmony in Western music. The effect of polymetric music is as if the different rhythms were competing for our attention. No sooner do we grasp one rhythm than we lose track of it and hear another. In something like Adzogbo or Zhem it is not easy to find any constant beat at all. The Western conception of a main beat or pulse seems to disappear, and a Westerner who cannot appreciate the rhythmic complications and who maintains his habitual listening orientation quite simply gets lost. …

The inadequacy of Western efforts at notation and the clumsiness of Western efforts at participation reflect the basic problem: We can choose any of several rhythmic approaches, yet we have no way to judge the proper one. To a more sensitive ear, the flexible and dynamic relationships of various rhythms actually help distinguish one rhythm from another, and on a basic level,one rhythm defines another. One drum played alone gives an impression of a rhythm tripping along clumsily or senselessly accented; however, a second rhythm can make sense of the first. …

An interesting illustration of this point occurred while I was trying to record separately the many stylistic variations the lead dondon can play in some of the Dagomba dances because I did not want to forget what I had learned. Ibrahim Abdulai, as the leader of the Takai drummers in Tamale, was to play. …

Ibrahim, however, complained that he could not hear his variations when he played without a second dondon. He regarded the counter-rhythm which would tend to throw Westerners off the beat as the only thing that kept him on time and enabled him to hear what he was playing and to be creative. It may have been the first time he had ever played the Takai drumming by himself. …

We can think about this difference in sensibilities as the difference between perceiving a rhythm as something to get with or as something to respond to. Rhythms which cut across each other are also dynamically coherent. Ibrahim felt that his isolated beating was meaningless without a second rhythm, but more than that, he could not even think of the full range of stylistic variations he might play without the beating of a second drum. There was noconversation, and this kind of responsiveness is given another, fuller expression in African musical arrangements. From our discussion of multiple meter and apart-playing, of hand-clapping and metronome sense, we might tend to conceive of the basic rhythm of a piece of music as the fastest pulse on which all the beats could be located or as the slowest pulse which unites all the patterns. But while certain rhythms may establish a background beat, in almost all African music there is a dominant point of repetition developed from a dominant conversation with a clearly defined alternation, a swinging back and forth from solo to chorus or from solo to an emphatic instrumental reply.Call- and-response, as this kind of arrangement is generally known to ethnomusicologists, is a major characteristic of African musical idioms. This characteristic is not particularly difficult to understand, for we are familiar with this standard format in Afro-American music. When James Brown sings Get up!, Bobby Byrd answers Get on up!; when Kool sings Get down, the Gangs horns answer. In African music, the chorus or response is a rhythmic phrase which recurs regularly; the rhythms of a lead singer or musician vary and are cast against the steady repetition of the response. In essence, if rhythmic complexity is the African alternative to harmonic complexity, the repetition of responsive rhythms is the African alternative to the development of a melodic line. [A. M.] Jones writes that an African would find our broad changes of melody coarse and inartistic. … He knows the artistic value of a good repetitive pattern. …

To maintain their poise in their social encounters, Africans bring the same flexibility which characterizes their participation in musical contexts: They expect dialogue, they anticipate movement, and most significantly, they stay very much open to influence. The many ways one can change a rhythm by cutting it with different rhythms is parallel to the many ways one can approach or interpret a situation or a conversation. And there is always an in-between, always a place to add another beat. A musical occasion, like any other social occasion, is therefore beyond any one perspective a person can bring to it, and people in Africa are usually realistic enough not to try to impose a single point of view on the larger context in which they are playing a part. It is not only that one rhythm cannot monopolize all the notes; one rhythm means nothing without another. In a musical context, separation of parts heightens rhythmic dialogue, and in a musical ensemble, singlemindedness of purpose would be equivalent to poverty of expression. And, of course, if a rhythm must be cut by another to be meaningful or interesting, its meaning can be influenced, altered, or defined by another. There are those of us who would feel insecure in a context where who we are is more dependent on other peoples perspectives than on our personal self- image, but in Africa a person will generally be prepared to connect his self-image with what others see him doing, and he may hope and expect that people will be steady enough to make sense of him in a complementary way. If you wish to sit alone in a bar, and you politely refuse an Africans invitation to join his table, you may be cautioned in a friendly way that someone who sits alone may have crazy and meaningless thoughts, staying too long inside his isolated imagination and misperceiving things: It is better to develop ones thoughts with the open-mindedness ensured by the presence of other people. Their potential to reciprocate or to differ helps provide balance. …

In African music, as we know, respect for an established rhythmic framework provides the possibility for comprehensible improvisation, and in daily life as well, people adopt a highly mannered approach in their relationships so that they may act with clarity and relevance. Ibrahim Abdulai could not think of what to do without a second dondon; a master drummer, minding his own improvisations, listens to a hidden rhythm, in effect creating another rhythm for his own to engage. In a musical context, the diverse rhythms help people distinguish themselves from each other while they remain profoundly involved; in the discrete encounters of social life, people maintain their boundaries, even in their closest friendships, and a Westerner in Africa may have trouble deciding whether the people he meets are being friendly or circumspect in their approach to him. Though it may seem paradoxical to a Westerner, Africans use stylized social forms and conventions to achieve interpersonal intimacy, but, as at a musical event, Africans impose a formal institutional or social framework on their affairs in order to personalize their behavior and expressions against a specifically limited context of meaning. From an African perspective, once you have brought a structure to bear on your involvements, and made your peace with it, the distinctive gestures and deviant idiosyncrasies of personality can stand out with clarity. You are free to introduce subtle refinements in a dramatic way to focus on the quality or status of your relationship at any moment. Thus, Africans do not so much observe rituals in their lives as they ritualize their lives.

In the model of community presented in an African musical event, integrity is ideally a combination of diverse rhythms which must remain distinct, and the power of the music comes from the conflicts and conversations of the rhythms, from vivid contrasts and complementary movements. …

Like a ritual or a musical event, a community too is basically an ordered way of being involved through time. Africans rely on music to build a context for community action, and analogously, many aspects of their community life reflect their musical sensibility. Knowing what we do about artistic realization in African musical events, we should be better able to appreciate the way that, in Africa, the power of community comes from the dramatic coordination and even ritualized opposition of distinct personalities. On a simple level, in a conversation, someone listening will punctuate a speakers phrases with what a Westerner might consider to be meaningless noises, but without these utterances at the right time, the speaker will stop to wait for encouragement or for an indication of involvement. A speaker may even stop on purpose to elicit such a response, indicating his own need for dialogue. On the broadest level, the African musical sensibility offers a highly sophisticated example of a tendency frequently seen in traditional African political and economic institutions, a tendency toward situating multiple conflicting and opposing forces into a process of mediated and balanced communication.

Get Professional Assignment Help Cheaply

Are you busy and do not have time to handle your assignment? Are you scared that your paper will not make the grade? Do you have responsibilities that may hinder you from turning in your assignment on time? Are you tired and can barely handle your assignment? Are your grades inconsistent?

Whichever your reason may is, it is valid! You can get professional academic help from our service at affordable rates. We have a team of professional academic writers who can handle all your assignments.

Our essay writers are graduates with diplomas, bachelor’s, masters, Ph.D., and doctorate degrees in various subjects. The minimum requirement to be an essay writer with our essay writing service is to have a college diploma. When assigning your order, we match the paper subject with the area of specialization of the writer.

Why Choose Our Academic Writing Service?

• Plagiarism free papers
• Timely delivery
• Any deadline
• Skilled, Experienced Native English Writers
• Subject-relevant academic writer
• Adherence to paper instructions
• Ability to tackle bulk assignments
• Reasonable prices
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Get superb grades consistently

How It Works

1.      Place an order

You fill all the paper instructions in the order form. Make sure you include all the helpful materials so that our academic writers can deliver the perfect paper. It will also help to eliminate unnecessary revisions.

2.      Pay for the order

Proceed to pay for the paper so that it can be assigned to one of our expert academic writers. The paper subject is matched with the writer’s area of specialization.

3.      Track the progress

You communicate with the writer and know about the progress of the paper. The client can ask the writer for drafts of the paper. The client can upload extra material and include additional instructions from the lecturer. Receive a paper.

4.      Download the paper

The paper is sent to your email and uploaded to your personal account. You also get a plagiarism report attached to your paper.

PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH ASSIGNMENT DEN TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT

The post Separating the music into easily comprehensible units appeared first on Assignment Den.