The African Imagination in Music

Kofi Agawu

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263201.001.0001
Published: 2016 Online ISBN: 9780190263232 Print ISBN: 9780190263201

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4 The Rhythmic Imagination 
Kofi Agawu

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190263201.003.0005 Pages 155–194

Published: March 2016

Abstract
Rhythm is often regarded as the most elaborate of all the dimensions of African music. Without
undermining this premise, this chapter argues that the complexity of African rhythm is a rational
complexity, not the result of happenstance or spontaneous improvisation. Distinguishing between the
rhythms of speech and those of the body, the chapter rst outlines a variety of manifestations of
rhythm. Three principal ways in which the rhythmic imagination is exercised are then described. The
rst consists of the use of bell patterns or time lines as points of temporal reference in ensemble
playing. Second is, polyrhythm, the simultaneous unfolding of several di erent rhythmic patterns in a
texture saturated with repetition. In the third, lead drumming, a versatile drummer draws on stock
materials to spin extended rhythmic narratives. The chapter nishes by suggesting that African
rhythmic patterns that look complex on the surface are often based on simpler patterns, and that the
speculative reconstruction of such complex patterns is a worthwhile exercise.

Keywords: time lines, polyrhythm, lead drumming, talking drum, improvisation, notation, African rhythm,
repetition
Subject: Ethnomusicology
Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

The Idea of “African Rhythm”

More ink has been spilled on rhythm than on any other topic in African music studies. An entangled
parameter embodying the temporal and accentual dimensions of music, rhythm is said to be the heart and
soul of African music. Often associated with dance, rhythmic patterns are elaborated in ingenious and
sophisticated ways not matched by any world music. Rhythm may well manifest the continent’s most
distinctive modes of rhetoric and expression.
 Literally hundreds of statements from both popular and scholarly writings a rm this idea. Early European
travelers to Africa, members of learned societies and scienti c expeditions, missionaries, anthropologists,
African nationalists, and ethnomusicologists have all remarked on the strengths and peculiarities of African
rhythmic shapes. “Everywhere from the North to the South,” writes Monique Brandilly about Chad, “a
common feature is the presence of many drums and a wealth of rhythmic musics that are most often bound
1
to dance.” Hornbostel came across a passage in which “the lower part is syncopated past our
2
comprehension.” According to Gunther Schuller, “in respect to rhythm, African music is unquestionably
3
the world’s most complex music.” Ensemble textures are often characterized as polyrhythmic, while
metrical order remains a subject of controversy. Some feel and hear regularities approximating the common
meters of Western music (such as 4/4 and 12/8); others deny the existence of meter altogether, judge time
signatures to be inconstant and elusive, or say that meter is irreducibly multiple. In a recent book on Ewe

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p. 156 rituals published in 2009, for example, American ethnomusicologist Steven Friedson denies that there is
a “one” in African rhythmic practice; he hears a “suspended feeling” in Ewe drumming and claims that
players rely not on the intellect but on “bodily knowledge” (as if there could ever be “bodily knowledge”
4
that was not also mediated by the intellect). The essence for him is ambiguity. And as if furthering
Friedson’s cause, David Locke, who hitherto had been on the side of those who found order, precision, and
regularity in African rhythm, now prefers to speak of “simultaneous multidimensionality” to capture the
complexity that he feels is being lost in some of the corrective structuralist-analytical accounts of the 1990s
5
to 2000s.

What motivates these diverse and often opposing views, and where might the truth lie? We would have our
hands full trying to unpack them all here. Some see African music as the site of indescribable, incredible, or
incomprehensible happenings. For them, rhythms are magical and indexical of spiritual or other-worldly
realms. African rhythms are thought to defy notation—any notation—and are ultimately di erent from, if
not superior to, those of Western music. Others (and I include myself in this group), although no less
enchanted by African rhythm, conclude that the complexity of African rhythm is a rational complexity; that
there is indeed a “one”; that there are on- and o -beats, meter, and periodicity; and that the multiplicity of
inference that some vocal outsiders claim to hear is not a free, anything-goes a air but ordered
arrangements of beats that allow dancers to embody sounds. The di erence between African and Western
rhythm, I would argue, is not categorical, not indicative of a radically di erent way of being in the world.
The di erence is largely a matter of emphasis and idiomatic preference. The truth is that no device or
procedure found in African music is unheard of in Western music, especially if we consider the musical
practices of Medieval Europe. This makes Africa’s rhythmic endowments all the more remarkable.

The most reliable characterizations of African rhythm are likely to come from individuals who work across
di erent world repertories and thus bring a comparative perspective—sometimes explicit, other times
implicit—to bear on their studies of African repertories. Rhythm, after all, is basic to most music, so the
perspective of a musician who already “speaks” one rhythmic language is likely to illuminate his or her
speaking of another. (I am using the word speaking to denote a full engagement.) A survey of the literature
p. 157 suggests that the most penetrating studies have come from scholars who have proceeded comparatively,
who come to African music with a genuine understanding of another musical culture. I am thinking of
gures like André Schae ner, Rose Brandel, Mieczslaw Kolinski, Nketia, Euba, Rouget, and A. M. Jones from
an earlier generation, and Meki Nzewi, David Locke, Marcos Branda-Lacerda, Zabana Kongo, Simha Arom,
James Burns, David Temperley, Rainer Polak, Godfried Toussaint, Chris Stover, and Willie Anku from a more
recent one. Schae ner’s example may be held up as a model. In the mid-1950s, he said that “perhaps …
6
rhythm in African music is more persuasive and more subtle than in any other music.” The telling
quali cation signaled by the word perhaps aside, we note that Schae ner had studied African music both on
the continent (through various eld expeditions) and in Europe, notably in Paris; he was involved in the
1930 exhibition of world cultures and served as an adviser to the organizers about African musical styles; he
wrote a great deal about African music, especially its instruments; above all, perhaps, he knew his own
 “native” music well, having studied with Stravinsky, Boulanger, and others, and having expressed that
understanding through the composition of signi cant works. He was thus in a position to think across
cultures and to bring a comparative perspective to bear on a topic that desperately needs a broad
perspective. By engaging African music variously as collector, analyst, and composer, Schae ner stood
7
poised to illuminate its structures.

How, then, might we frame an introduction to the study of African rhythm? The subject is vast, of course, so
we need once more to be selective. I begin with a comment on musical time and then outline two
frameworks for contextualizing rhythms (one from Curt Sachs and the other from my own work on
Northern Ewe music). Then, referring mainly to the preeminent drumming ensemble of West African music,
I describe three prominent features of African rhythm: time lines, polyrhythm, and the lead drummer’s

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rhythmic narratives. I close by suggesting a generative approach to rhythmic organization as one that
captures African intellection into rhythm most felicitously. The idea throughout is to orient the reader to the
foundations of African rhythm and to advocate frameworks of understanding that a rm its rational basis.

p. 158
Time

A path to understanding African rhythm that once seemed promising was to begin with time rather than
rhythm and then to see how or whether African conceptions of time were translated into the sonic realm.
Alan Merriam went this route, combing the ethnographies of various anthropologists for information about
time reckoning. Predictably, while the West was credited with linear time, African societies like the Tiv,
Nuer, Kaguru, BaKongo, and Basongye were said to reckon time di erently:

Time-reckoning is thought to be nonlinear; instead, it can be reversed, discontinuous, a “sliding

scale,” circular, or spiral. Time-reckoning is carried on in terms of referral to natural phenomena
or, most particularly, social activity. Time is not reckoned as distance, it is not epochal, and it is
8
not measured with special apparatus.

In his search for the units of time, Merriam further claimed that “the smallest period in African time-
reckoning is the division of the day.”

The rei ed structures that studies of time had produced were of limited utility to understanding music
making. Agricultural communities, for example, were said to subscribe to a circular (or spiral) as opposed to
a linear view of time; the intensely cyclical element in dance drumming was then traced back to this sense of
time. But the transfer was always already problematic, for while there is indeed a circular or cyclical element
in dance drumming, there is at the same time a strongly linear or goal-oriented element as well. The two
logically entail one another. The narratives of some lead drummers, for example, have a strongly linear
trajectory. Moreover, the apparent absence of words indicating small units of time in African languages is
neither accurate (Ewe refer to seconds as aɖabafofo) nor signi cant, for surely not every aspect of music
making is designated in verbal language. Finally, what is one to make of the contrast between an ostensibly
casual African sense of time—dictated by sun and shadows (“African time,” which euphemistically denotes
perpetual lateness)—and the amazing precision in timing that one nds, say, in xylophone ensemble
performances? The time of music is its own time. Musical time is not—or not necessarily—a microcosm of
ordinary time; it is not a domestication or translation of some other temporal realm. Indeed, it is a sobering
thought that not a single enduring insight into musical structure has come from re ections on lived time in
9
relation to music.
p. 159
Rhythms of Speech Versus Rhythms of the Body

A good framework for distributing the reality of rhythmic processes is to distinguish between rhythms of
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speech and rhythms of the body. All rhythms notionally originate in one of these two realms. The rhythms
of speech are the durational, accentual, and periodic patterns produced in the course of speaking. In
ordinary, day-to-day speech in numerous African languages, syllabic durations alternate between long and
short, accentual patterns emerge from phenomenal stress associated with either timbre or tonal change,
and periodicity is sensed in the asymmetrical succession of segments of performed speech, be it a greeting,
the swearing of an oath, a town crier’s announcement, the pouring of libation, a minister’s sermon, a radio
announcer’s interview, the chief’s linguist’s admonition, or a medicine man’s incantations. The rhythms of

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speech are the rhythms of language in motion—individual words and their succession, sentences and
paragraphs, conversation and interrogation. Language itself may be manifest as ordinary speech or poetic
speech. Whereas ordinary speech typically displays variability in sentence length, certain kinds of poetic
speech incorporate regularity in one domain or another. Except in special circumstances, ordinary speech is
not normally con ned metrically.

The rhythms of the body are dance rhythms. They are pro led in thousands of dances performed daily
across the African continent: baakisimba (Uganda), kpanlogo (Ghana), mganda (Zambia), bikutsi
(Cameroon), gele (Togo), sindimba (Tanzania), atilogwu (Nigeria), soukous (Democratic Republic of the
Congo), makossa (Cameroon), luhya (Kenya), and azonto (Ghana), among many others. These rhythms are
nurtured by repetition; they enable, motivate, or simply accompany movement. Harold Powers
acknowledges their widespread distribution and generative function: “Repetitive rhythms rooted in bodily
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movements whether of work or of play, lie behind much of the world’s instrumental music.” A palpable
beat normally guides movement, and this in turn contributes a metrical feel. Whereas rhythms of the body
are modes of communal expression, rhythms of speech are modes of individual expression. Whenever
speech takes on a mode of communality, it submits to regulation; it is molded into poetry. The rhythms of
dance, then, are closer to music than to speech because their purpose is to carve time in response to
movement. While rhythms of the body have the capacity to communicate messages, their primary purpose
is to make play possible.

p. 160 Distinguishing the rhythms of speech from those of the body allows us to present their conjunction as a
basic syntactical unit in African performance. Many dance genres have an external form made up of two
contrasting sections: free leading to strict; slow followed by fast; or in terms of the dichotomy we are
developing here, speech yielding to song. A declamatory section featuring the rhythms of speech typically
initiates proceedings. This portion of the performance is valued for its contemplative or philosophical
import. Proverbs, deep thoughts, and enigmas put performers (and listeners) in mind of those things that
lie beyond, powers that exceed their own; this is a way of underlining the seriousness or solemnity of the
occasion. Only after this acknowledgment has been made does the performance proceed to a second main
section, one in which rhythms of the body are expressed in physical movement. Dancing may involve pairs
of performers, small groups, or sometimes larger groups. Individual dances may foreground di erent parts
of the anatomy. Gabada, for example, emphasizes rapid foot movement; baakisimba makes much of the
midri and buttocks, as does bamayaa; and agbadza highlights the upper torso, adowa the hands, and
egwu-amala the hands and feet. What is emphasized naturally re ects the aesthetic premises of the
community in question. Invariably, however, an underlying constraint in the form of a regular beat or cycle
played by the musicians makes the work of dance not only possible but also enjoyable for participants.

The distinction between speech and body rhythms may be further aligned with the dichotomy between free
and strict rhythm. Rhythms of speech are “free” in the sense that they are not metrically constrained; their
patterns of repetition are more elusive, residing on a more abstract level. Rhythms of the body are “strict”
because, with the intervention of dance, a beat requirement is put in place and a cyclic or periodic constraint
 follows naturally. An analogous set of qualities is enshrined in the well-known musicological distinction
between recitative and aria in opera, as well as that between the “speech mode” and “song mode” in
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instrumental music. Recitative is free or ametrical, while aria is strict or metrical. The temporal feel of
recitative promotes e ciency in the communication of verbal messages, while the intramusical focus of
aria obscures, undermines, or otherwise transforms its verbal-communicative functions. Because it is
speechlike, recitative foregrounds a semantic dimension; because it is songlike, aria begins to diminish that
dimension and replace it with elements of play, redundant elements whose function is to make movement
or contemplation possible. Finally, the speech dimensions of recitative facilitate the articulation of a future
p. 161 sense—a narrative that traverses two moments separated in time. The song element in aria traps us in
the present and dispenses with the past except as memory or afterthought.

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Numerous ethnographic recordings allow us to experience the contrast between rhythms of speech and
those of the body. Performance of the popular Akan funeral dance, Adowa, normally begins with drum
narration lled with verbal messages. This is meant to induce contemplation on the part of participants and
listeners. Only after the lead drummer has thus “spoken” does the rest of the ensemble join in to activate
the full instrumental texture and initiate the dancing. In the Northern Ewe dance Gabada, a cantor or two
will typically begin with declamatory singing, often with drum commentary in speech mode. After
presenting these deep messages (e.g., “I was bitten by a snail”), the cantor signals the rest of the ensemble
to begin the dance proper, at which point bells, rattles, chorus, and dancers join in the stricter portion of the
dance.

Representing the Domain of Rhythmic Expression

Another framework for conceptualizing di erent forms of rhythmic expression is shown in Figure 4.1.
Originally devised to explain the rhythmic practices of a cluster of Ghanaian communities, its explanatory
potential may well extend to other groups. The idea behind this representation is to recognize a broad
domain of rhythmic expression and to seek its internal order based on either the generation of one element
13
by another or the existence of analogous structures among elements.

Figure 4.1

A framework for conceptualizing the domain of rhythmic expression.

The model originates in gesture and terminates in stylized gesture or dance. In between, it encompasses the
principal forms of rhythmic expression. First comes gesture, an external manifestation of a more
fundamental communicative urge, here postulated as the primordial rhythmic event. (Right-pointing
arrows in Figure 4.1 describe generative processes.) Gesture generates the spoken word in the sense that it
releases speech from a prior nonverbal but concept-based state. While the aura of language underlies both
gesture and the spoken word, gesture is rhythmic but silent, whereas the spoken word is rhythmic and
 manifest in sound. Two of the spoken word’s fundamental attributes, speech tone and rhythm, will directly
p. 162 generate song or vocal music. Song is marked by a number of distinctions, the most important being the
just-noted di erence between free rhythm and strict rhythm. “Free” or declamatory rhythm is unmetered,
anchored to the periodicities of speech; its segments are of variable length and succeed each other
asymmetrically. Strict rhythm is metrical rhythm, constrained by an explicit cycle of beats throughout. The
cycles of strict rhythm are structural; their rhetorical representation varies according to genre and
performer interest. Free and strict rhythm may be further aligned with the spoken word: free rhythm in
song is ordinary speaking, whereas strict rhythm is a stylized or regulated speaking.

Vocal music, in turn, generates instrumental music in the sense of motivating it materially. Dance
drumming, for example, takes over the musical qualities of song while incorporating sung songs as an

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additional layer. The practice of talking drums resembles recitativelike free-rhythmic singing, even though
it is more directly generated by the previous element in the model, the spoken word. Finally, stylized
gesture emerges in response to both instrumental and vocal music. Dancing is an outcome, a necessary
outcome of the singing of songs and the drumming of drums. In short, an initial gesture representing a
communicative need is transformed over the course of the model into a stylized gesture representing a
response to speech and song. And with this arrival at a form of stylized gesture, we have come full circle.

The generative process outlined in Figure 4.1 is something of a simpli cation; our description has hinted at
porous boundaries, noncontiguous a liations, and putative left-pointing arrows. A model such as this is
meant to provide only a general orientation and to encourage re nement at more local, analytical levels.
The main claim to consider here is that the di erent forms of rhythmic expression found in a given
community are related, some more closely than others. The rhythms of speech, for example, are related to
those of song, instrumental music, and dance; retaining this broader horizon enhances our understanding
p. 163 of the individual domains.
 Photo 4.1

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Pouring libation, Matse, Ghana.

Free and Strict Rhythms in Song

Just as performed speech comes in both free and strict forms, so song displays a similar contrast as it rms
up the musical core that was only latent in spoken language. We have already mentioned the alternation
between a declamatory introduction and a stricter dance drumming as a favorite syntactical unit in African
performance. Within this natural conjunction of unmeasured and measured values, singers explore a range
of temporalities and deliver a variety of messages. In declamatory singing, the “dry” enunciations of
ordinary language are replaced by the more sonorous enunciations of song. And further along the
continuum, the emergence of a clear meter and strict rhythm represents a further distancing of the
p. 164 expression from ordinary language. Song inherits many of the rhythmic qualities of speech, but in
developing a new ontology, it sustains some of these qualities, introduces others (notably the rhythms of
tonal movement), and erases or “problematizes” still others.
In part because rhythm is a resultant or emergent quality, it appears in numerous contexts throughout this
book. We will postpone analytical discussion of song for now and simply invite readers to savor di erent
kinds of temporal environment for di erent kinds of song. Figure 4.2 assembles examples of ve such
environments grouped into self-explanatory categories: unaccompanied and accompanied singing in free
or unmeasured rhythms, unaccompanied or accompanied singing in strict or measured rhythms, and
singing that progresses from free to strict rhythm.

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Temporal environments for di erent kinds of song: free versus strict.

Figure 4.2
p. 165
Speech Mode, Signal Mode, and Dance Modes of Drumming

The opposition between the rhythms of speech and those of the body is re ected in another fundamental
distinction that captures the kinds of rhythm produced in the course of di erent modes of drumming:
14
speech mode, signal mode, and dance mode. The speech mode is a liated with rhythms of speech, the
signal mode with stylized speech, and the dance mode with rhythms of the body.

Drumming in the speech mode means beating out the relative durations and relational pitch elements of
spoken speech on a drum. The semiotic mode of transfer is iconic; it entails resemblance and rstness. The
primary obligation of drumming in the dance mode is to provide a rhythmic groove to which dancers can
move their bodies. Often this means producing well-formed rhythms within an explicit metrical structure.

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The semiotic mode is symbolic and partly indexical—symbolic because the relationship between a dance
rhythm and the dance is conventional, and indexical because within this convention, the rhythmic pattern
p. 166 literally elicits dance in response.

Speech and dance modes come together in those genres that begin in declamatory style and continue in a
stricter dance style. Just as some genres juxtapose unmeasured and measured singing, so certain dance-
drumming genres exploit the distinction between an initial speech mode of drumming and a subsequent
(and main) dance mode. The lead drummer of an Akan Adowa ensemble, for example, may begin a
performance by saying things in speech mode on his Atumpan drums. These may be proverbs, poetic lines,
wise sayings, or deep thoughts, each of which has a recoverable semantic content and philosophical
signi cance. The drummer might announce, for instance, that “Before it rains, the wind blows”; that “The
river crosses the path, the path crosses the river; which is the elder?”; or “A visitor is not a sibling” (the
implication being that if we need to sacri ce a human being, the visitor is fair game!). These drum messages
are heard and processed by audiences and performers alike. In cases in which drumming accompanies
declamatory singing, drum messages may amplify what is sung or introduce a counternarrative.

Figure 4.3 assembles a few recorded examples of the three modes of drumming from various regions in
p. 167 Africa. Once again, it is impossible to be comprehensive given the vastness of the continent. Those new to
the phenomenon are in for a treat, however; those already familiar with it may well smile in recognition of
practices rooted in ventriloquism. We normally speak with our mouths, so if we nd ourselves speaking
with drums, utes, harps, or xylophones, we know that something is up. The staging of talking drumming
suggests a deep level of pretense, play, and whimsy.
Figure 4.3

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Recorded examples of the three principal modes of drumming.

The Philosophy and Practice of Ensemble Performance

What forms does the rhythmic imagination take in ensemble performance? There is, of course, no single
dance-drumming ensemble that is prevalent throughout Africa, but the idea of an ensemble delivering a
highly coordinated musical message refracted through a set of contrasting timbres is pretty standard.

Ensembles di er in size and type. They may range in size from small, “chamber” groups of three, four, or
ve musicians to a massive group of fty or sixty instrumentalists and singers (famously in Chopi
xylophone playing or in Senegalese Sabar drumming). In type, they may feature instruments of the same
class (like the Chopi xylophone orchestras, Senegalese jembes, Yoruba bàtá ensemble, Yoruba dùndún
ensembles, Dagomba dòndón) or they may feature a mixture of instruments (bells, rattles, drums). Whether
the ensemble is homogenous or heterogenous, the musical intention is always one and the same: to create
the conditions of possibility for melorhythmic expression. A shared point of temporal reference guarantees
the coherence of the whole without discouraging the exercise of individual creativity.
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Ensemble, Ho, Ghana.
Photo 4.2
 Photo 4.3

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Ipangwa (guitar) and Ilimba, Nzali, Tanzania.

What is the idea behind ensemble performance? Over the generations, African communities have developed
profoundly e ective ways of making music together. Some are in uenced by social considerations, others
by economic, material, religious, and invariably aesthetic factors. Topographically, ensembles are not at;
rather, they are textured so as to accommodate a variety of expressions. Whenever we make music together
as members of a community, we recognize varying levels of skill; we also welcome a complementary
diversity in the medium of expression and in the shapes of the actual patterns played or sung. The ensemble
environment allows the amazingly skilled to make music alongside the less skilled. This simple ideal has
proved extremely in uential in the design of many other forms of ensemble music making. It speaks to an
p. 168 underlying communal ethos. Competence is assumed on the part of all members of the community.
15
Indeed, to be human, as John Blacking famously reminded us, is to be notionally musical.

The many-in-one philosophy is readily observed in one of the best-known ensembles of African music, the
Ewe Agbadza ensemble. For this combination of bells, handclaps, rattles, support drums, lead drums, and
voices, patterns are assigned to individual instruments to ful ll three essential functions: rst, a largely
xed time-marking section normally entrusted to some combination of bells, rattles, and handclaps;
second, a less xed function entrusted to a set of support drums that ensures the heart of the polyrhythmic
p. 169 texture; and third, a relatively “free” section composed of a lead drum (or “master drum” or “mother
16
drum”) that rides (Locke’s felicitous term ) on the texture provided by the rest of the ensemble.
Performances typically begin by activating the ensemble from the bottom up, that is, from the time
providers (starting with the bells and rattles) through the support drums to the lead drum. Singing and
dancing will follow, and the sense that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts will not be lost on
observers. Again, the logic and ingenuity in the organization of the ensemble are impeccable. By combining
metrically strict patterns with freer patterns; intricate rhythms with less intricate ones; and short, repeated
segments with longer rhythmic narratives, the ensemble philosophy reinforces the reciprocity of communal
living. The whole (the community) is acknowledged without muting the sound of individual voices (the lead
drummer). It is easy to take for granted these and numerous other signs of intelligent design in the
organization of music making in Africa.

Four components of ensemble playing will illustrate further the motivations for ensemble performance and
the contributions of di erent media and techniques. They are the ubiquitous handclapping, the attractive
p. 170 time lines, the fascinating polyrhythmic textures, and the engaging lead-drum narratives. While these
functions are realized in di erent idiomatic ways in di erent ensembles, there are enough functional
resonances across ensembles to justify the paradigmatic status accorded them.

Handclapping patterns.
The clapping of hands to provide minimum accompaniment to song, punctuate instrumental playing, or
contribute a layer to a polyrhythmic texture is probably the best-known instrumental mode in Africa. The
availability of this instrument to all of us reinforces the natural and communal sources of music making; it
also confers a certain self-su ciency on individual music making. Handclapping exploits the body’s ready
a liation with pairs, doubleness, symmetry, and reciprocity: hands may be together or apart, inside or

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outside, upturned or downturned, high or low. Clapping entails movement. In performance, palms travel a
variety of distances depending on the desired aesthetic e ect. As onsets, claps may be short, pointed, and
metronomic, or arclike with larger movements. They may be vigorous and delivered at a lightning-fast
pace, or slow and activated only intermittently. Some styles of clapping are intense and designed to be in
your face, while others are relaxed, almost self-e acing, and easily overlooked. Given the range of
motivations and traces that it supports, and given its primal role in marking participation in music making,
17
clapping is a far-from-insigni cant element in the shaping of the rhythmic imagination.

Although the traces left by claps vary from dance to dance and from genre to genre, the normative musical
function of clapping is to reinforce the emergent beat of the music. Reinforcement may take the form of
simple alignment or consistent nonalignment. Aligning claps with the beat allows the body to provide
orientation to the dance (real or imagined) at a gross level. Participants of average ability often do no more
than realize this beat, but more skilled individuals may add to the basic clap pattern. Clapping compels
involvement and synchronicity; it acknowledges foundations, including the center of gravity that holds the
body in place.

We may identify two basic patterns of clapping. The rst consists of patterns constrained by the beat. These
are equidistant and occur on one of three structural levels: the beat level, the subbeat level, or the superbeat
level. The second consists of patterns with distinct shapes that counterpoint the beat. They may resemble
time-line patterns or unfold alongside them in a polyrhythmic texture. This second type of clap pattern has
an intrinsic interest that exceeds the metronomic function associated with the rst type.

p. 171 There is no economical way to illustrate the variety of clapping patterns found across the continent, but
because clapping is a widespread activity, students will readily observe it in their own communities. Let me
cite just a handful of examples. The Ewe dance Agbadza is sometimes performed with four claps
corresponding to the four main beats of a 12/8 meter [3-3-3-3], ve claps in the pattern [2-2-2-3-3], or
18
even six claps distributed evenly across the measure as [2-2-2-2-2-2]. The underlying meter nevertheless
remains 12/8. The [3-3-3-3] arrangement is isomorphic with the meter; the [2-2-2-3-3] combines two
halves, the rst of which, [2-2-2], “crosses” the main beats and the second of which, [3-3], is
unproblematically isomorphic with the ruling meter; and the [2-2-2-2-2-2] arrangement inscribes a
permanently crossed rhythm.

A healing ceremony among the San Bushmen of Botswana included in the JVC/Smithsonian anthology
19
features a clap pattern similar to the one used in Ewe Agbadza [2-2-2-3-3]. Among the Xhosa in the
Mthatha area in South Africa, the clapping that accompanies a variety of dances is vigorous and often
incorporates articulation at the subbeat level. In the popular Ga dance, Kpanlogo, the clap pattern (as
distinct from the time-line pattern played on a bell) consists of two quarter-note onsets in a 4/4 meter. The
rst occurs on beat 4 (the upbeat), the second on beat 1 (the downbeat of the following measure). This same
clap pattern accompanies a popular game played by Ghanaian girls called ampé.
 Clap patterns enshrine a variety of attitudes and thus invite di erent hermeneutic readings. Those from the
area around Umthatha in South Africa mentioned earlier are vigorous and often have an aura of urgency
about them. Used typically in performances of singing and dancing, they partly compensate for the absence
of instruments. But this compensatory function alone will not explain the spirit of de ance communicated
by the con uence of clap patterns. By contrast, the Kpanlogo clap pattern has a certain easy-going and
perhaps self-satis ed quality, re ecting its role within an urban recreational genre (rather than, say, a rural
ritual dance). And the [2-2-2-2-2-2] pattern of Agbadza, set in contrast to the [3-3-3-3] main beat
pattern, contributes vital energy to the overall rhythmic life.

Time lines.

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A time line (also known as bell pattern, guide, phrasing referent, or topos) is a short rhythmic pattern
p. 172 normally entrusted to the bell (or castanet, sticks, or stone) and played as an unvarying ostinato
throughout a particular dance drumming. Although a few time lines consist of equidistant successions of
20
beats or pulses (see, for example, “Babolibo” from the Democratic Republic of the Congo ), the majority
evince a distinct and often memorable pattern animated by at least two contrasting note values—a long and
a short note or, typically, a quarter note and an eighth note. Because it is unchanging, a time line may seem
to function like a metronome, but there are di erences as well. The traces left by metronomes lack the basic
di erentiation of contrasting note values. Successions of pulses rather than patterns, metronomic traces
are not normally considered part of the music (except where an avant-garde composer like Ligeti composes
21
a piece for metronomes only ); they help to provide a perspective on the music by locating its patterns
against a wall of accentless strikes. Time lines, on the other hand, are patterns rather than mere pulses; they
are integral to the music. Each individual time line is in principle structurally dependent on a metronomic
foundation, but the beating that constitutes such a foundation is more often implicit in the time-line
pattern than stated explicitly.

We do not know where time lines ultimately come from, but they are believed to be of ancient origins and
22
unique to Africa. They are especially common in parts of West and Central Africa (Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire,
Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo); they have also been noted in
23
Tunisia, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, and elsewhere. They seem to be aligned with polyrhythmic cultures
24
linked to speakers of Bantu languages.

Time lines are heard in genres belonging to the three main varieties of African music. Any Ghanaian or
Nigerian who has ever danced to highlife (E. T. Mensah, Victor Olaiya, Daddy Lumba, Bobby Benson, A. B.
Crentsil, and others), to neotraditional music (like Wulomei’s hit song “Meridian,” Ewe Bɔ`bɔ´ bɔ`, Akan
Nnwonkorɔ`, Ga kpanlogo, or Dagomba simpa), or to traditional dances (like agbadza, gabada, adowa, kete,
atsiagbekor, and others) already knows what time lines are. They appear in art music as well. Nketia’s solo
piano piece Volta Fantasy (1967) uses the so-called standard pattern, as does Akin Euba’s opera Chaka and
25
p. 173 Fred Onovwerosuoko’s charming little etude for piano Agbadza. Robert Kwami’s piano piece Kpanlogo
uses that dance’s time line, a version of which is the familiar Cuban clave son pattern, and the maiden CD
26
recording of the Pan African Orchestra made in 1995 is rich in time lines. Time lines are also found in the
African diaspora and in Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, and Haiti. Given this wide provenance, it comes as
27
a bit of a surprise that no systematic inventory of time lines has yet been made. Proponents of “rhythm
wheels” and theorists of time-line properties have often mentioned a dozen or two, but there are surely
many more. And for readers interested in comparing di erent musical traditions, time-line e ects such as
those heard in the “Bransle Gay” of Stravinsky’s ballet Agon [1-1-2-2] or in various popular electronic
dance music pieces could be usefully juxtaposed with African usages.

A time line may be played by a single instrument to accompany singing or dancing, or it may belong to a
larger ensemble of bells, rattles, and drums. It may emerge as a resultant quality without being entrusted to
 any one instrument. Although they are isolatable objects (many people can remember and reproduce them
because they are brief and shapely and show up in a lot of the music they hear regularly), time lines are more
properly appreciated as elements within a larger nexus of rhythmic patterns. They are indeed critical to a
proper understanding of African rhythm. Some of them display interesting formal properties, such as
28
maximal evenness, symmetry, and rhythmic oddity.

As an orientation to the kinds of rhythmic imagination enshrined in time-line patterns, Example 4.1
assembles twelve of them. Many are well known, but a few (such as patterns 11 and 12) are obscure. Each
time-line pattern is described in four ways. First is an interonset interval structure (IOI) or durational
p. 174 pro le. For example, [2-2-1-2-2-2-1] refers to the so-called standard pattern, while [3-3-4-2-4] refers
to the kpanlogo or clave son pattern. Interonset intervals are especially felicitous for music played on drums,

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bells, and wooden clappers—music whose sound dies soon after it is made, but where there is no act of
resting that would warrant the use of rests. Second is meter, a regulating grid based on an unchanging beat
pattern that is subject to varying intensities of conmetric and contrametric accentuation. The common
meters are 12/8 and 4/4. Third is a notated mnemonic—a translation, really, of the IOI. These mnemonics
are best thought of as classes of patterns, paradigms perhaps. Their microrhythmic instantiation may vary
from one community to another, but the overall pattern of longs and shorts is stable across those
communities. Fourth and nally is a grouping, indicated by underlying brackets. A group encompasses the
span from the literal onset of a pattern to its end. Each group has been written out twice to dramatize the
relationship between grouping and meter. It bears repeating that a time line will be repeated hundreds of
times in the course of a performance. Thus, time line 3, for example, when heard in an Agbadza
performance, might sound 1,800 times per hour. Speaking or clapping each pattern repeatedly will enhance
29
appreciation of its qualities.

An excellent way to gauge creative attitudes in the area of African rhythm is to note the variety of expressive
qualities inscribed in time lines. Some begin o the beat rather than on it and maintain this pattern of
o beatness throughout. Some end on weak rather than strong beats. Some lack internal closure and so
cultivate a perpetual sense of ongoingness, while others are shaped as a beginning-middle-ending pattern
on a small scale.

What these qualities mean to performers and listeners varies from community to community. The 12/8 so-
called standard pattern, for example, is expressed typically as a seven-stroke pattern (two longs followed by
a short, then three longs followed by a short), and these strokes are distributed in such a way that the seven
p. 175 shorts and longs acquire a property of maximal evenness across the span of twelve. A certain dynamism
accrues from this never-settling-down quality. It is as if every sounding of the time line necessitates an
immediate repetition, as if the time line were seeking to discharge into itself without quite succeeding.
Invented and cultivated over many generations by African musicians, the standard pattern and other time
lines are popular precisely because they engage the listening mind.

p. 176 A task for the future is the hermeneutic interpretation of individual time-line patterns. While
ethnomusicology has so far not encouraged such speculative readings, we stand to learn from the kinds of
cultural resonances that these patterns have for culture bearers. Consider, for example, the highlife time
line (number 8 in Example 4.1). As heard in the classic highlife of E. T. Mensah from the 1950s and ’60s, this
time-line pattern consists of three onsets on the o beats of beats 2, 3, and 4 in a 4/4 meter. Although its
durational pattern from the rst to last sound is [2-2-4], the fact that it originates on the o beat of a weak
beat gives it special power; it is as if the time line were operating from the sides rather than centrally. No
other arrangement of eighths in a 4/4 pattern maximizes the energy in the margins, so to speak. This
delightful time line sports bright, positive, and optimistic a ects. Its internal structure may be interpreted
as a series of echoes—being o the beat means echoing that which is on the beat, even if that which is being
echoed is a silence. I hear a sense of self-satisfaction in the highlife topos, an aura of social attainment, a
feeling that one has arrived. These sorts of qualities are entirely appropriate for a music that is widely
regarded as the supreme popular music of West Africa in the years leading up to and immediately following
independence around 1960. This is music of aspiration and con dence, with little or no traces of
equivocation, doubt, or anxiety. Not unlike jùjú, which it later inspired, highlife carries an ethos that is
unanxious, unhurried, and perhaps even complacent. The enactment of that complacency, however, is done
30
in a thoroughly disciplined manner.

Example 4.1

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Twelve time-line patterns.

 Polyrhythm.
Time lines typically form one layer in a larger, polyrhythmic texture. Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of
two or more contrasting rhythms in a musical texture. “Contrast” applies only to the shape of individual
rhythms, not to the way they combine or are coordinated. In performance, polyrhythmic textures are
typically assembled one layer at a time. And once the whole is activated, the layers usually persist until the
end. A crucial feature of polyrhythm is that each constituent part is subject to extensive repetition. If the
individual patterns were to change frequently, the e ect of an irreducible multiplicity would be undermined.
We might think of a polyrhythmic texture as one in which several ostinato patterns are superimposed.
Superimposition is always based on a mutual understanding of a reference point, a shared beat. In some of
the horn ensembles of the Banda Linda studied by Simha Arom, the constituent parts may number as many

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as eighteen, meaning that the ensemble features eighteen di erent rhythmic patterns. In drum ensembles
found among the Kpelle, Vai, Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, and many others, the constituent parts may be fewer,
numbering from three or four to eight or ten, but the polyrhythmic e ect is no less palpable. And among
p. 177
the Chopi of Mozambique, some xylophone ensembles may consist of thirty or more players.

Examples 4.2 and 4.3 cite two typical polyrhythmic textures from Ghana and Cameroon made up of
instruments with contrasting timbres. The rst, whose signi cance in this context is partly historical (it
dates from 1957), was made by Ghanaian music teacher and composer F. Onwona Osafo. He calls it a “full
score” of a dance known as “Ahenemma Asaw” (the dance for the chief’s children). It encloses rhythms in
boxes in a manner reminiscent of the not-yet-invented Time Unit Box System. Each of Onwona Osafo’s
boxes represents a full bar in 2/4 meter. Larger patterns are marked by slurs. Taken as a whole, the
representation in Example 4.2 conveys both individuality and simultaneity. Individual patterns are shown
for each instrument, while their superimposition is an invitation to contemplate the resulting texture. The
other example of polyrhythm (Example 4.3) conveys a similar overall quality of complementary
individualism. It is an excerpt from a ute ensemble from Cameroon analyzed by French ethnomusicologist
Natalie Fernando. Only two cycles from a multicyclic ensemble performance are shown, but these are
enough to demonstrate the essential polyrhythmic principle. They embody a groove activated through
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manifold repetition.
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Example 4.3
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Central African polyrhythmic ensemble (Natalie Fernando).

Example 4.2

West African polyrhythmic ensemble (Onwona Osafo).

Another illustration of the dynamics of polyrhythm may be seen in Example 4.4, a brief moment from a
32
Pygmy music-dance performance. Subject to extensive repetition, the texture (comprising drumming,
 handclapping, and singing) is regulated by a strict metrical order. The most straightforward of the rhythmic
patterns is the [3-3-3-3] contributed by one of the handclaps. The second handclap adds a less commetric
pattern in the form [2-1-2-1-2-1-1-2]. Its [2-1] element (which may be regarded as a gure, the equivalent
of a word in spoken language) is sounded three successive times before yielding to a “reversed” [1-2] to
complete the cycle. The drum’s pattern is closer to the second handclap than to the rst; its [1-1-1-2-1-2-
2-1-1] pattern reinforces the rst three quarter-note beats. The most contrametric patterns are contributed
by the singer. In cycle 7, all her notes are o the beat. In cycle 8, only the rst note is on the beat, but even
this does not make much of a downbeat impact because the notes are short (two sixteenths) and delivered at
a rather fast speed. The net e ect is of a stable, recurring structure animated internally by competing
p. 178 accentuation and distinct timbres.

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Example 4.4

Matrix of a Ba-Benzele polyrhythmic dance drumming, “E Limbo.”

p. 179 The plurality enshrined in polyrhythmic playing (or singing) is a disciplined plurality. Maintaining the
integrity of one’s part while at the same time ensuring the coordination of the ensemble as a whole is an
impressive ability that has been cultivated over several generations. Super cial acquaintance has
sometimes led people to imagine a loose con guration in which individuals simply do their own thing, but
there is nothing loose about a polyrhythmic ensemble delivering dance rhythms. The manifest many-in-
oneness is invariably constrained by a central point of reference, one that is always felt but not necessarily
sounded.

It is worth emphasizing the existence of a coordinating mechanism at the background level to counter
pervasive claims that polyrhythm spells freedom, con ict, and a suspension of order. Nothing could be
further from the truth than Maurice Djenda’s assertion that “polyphony and polyrhythms are a profound
re ection of the freedom of vocal and instrumental musical expression in Central African societies, a
33
freedom exercised through an indi erent attitude to notions of time and space” (my emphasis). The fact that
my pattern has a di erent scheme of onsets and o sets from my neighbor’s does not in the least imply an
absence of synchronicity on a deep level or an “indi erent attitude” to time. On the contrary, it is precisely
because we are fully and securely synchronized—whether explicitly by another instrument or implicitly by a
shared internalized beat—that we are able to produce rhythms together.

In a similar vein, Cherno , while correctly endorsing the importance of participation, nevertheless denies
intentional synchronicity in polyrhythmic music:

The interweaving of diverse and multiple rhythms is coherent only when one actively participates
by nding and maintaining a point of reference from which to perceive the con icting rhythms as
an ensemble. Synchrony is incidental and derivative from the cross rhythms, not deliberate and
34
normal as in Western music.
 Knowing a repertory item means knowing its “point of reference.” It is strange to imagine community
members looking for a new point of reference every time a particular dance is performed. Only if one is
unaware of the point of reference is one likely to interpret the contrasting rhythms of a polyrhythmic set as
being in con ict. Insofar as each rhythm is a gure perceived against a ground—a ground, moreover, that is
not necessarily articulated by any of the other rhythms—it is di cult to see how synchrony can be only
“incidental” and “not deliberate and normal.” The plurality of African ensemble music is not a free,
p. 180 unconstrained, or abby plurality, according to which people express their individuality by doing
whatever they want. Rather, it is a disciplined and coordinated plurality. If it were not so, detecting and
correcting errors would be di cult if not impossible, and repeating sets of patterns from one performance
to the next would not be easy.

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Dancing to polyrhythmic music is surely one of the signs of constraint and discipline in the way the music is
35
put together. “When in doubt,” writes Meki Nzewi, “do the dance.” Similarly, Nketia writes that “it is
generally the rhythmic structure [of the music] that in uences the pattern of [the dancer’s] movements. He
derives his motor feeling from this rhythmic structure, whose elements he articulates in his basic
36
p. 181 movements.” The disambiguating role of

p. 182
dance in the understanding of African rhythm has either been ignored, understated, or insu ciently
appreciated. And yet, in many dances, the behavior of the feet will mirror the gross pulse that dancers feel.
Dance or “a rhythmical stirring of the body” is the most important clue to the domestication of polyrhythm.
Dancers embody the music, making the metric underpinning it apparent. The polyrhythmic textures
performed by dance-drumming ensembles should never be interpreted without reference to the dance or
movement patterns that they make possible. This is because the body grounds the apparent diversities of
timbres and patterns of onsets. Dance conveys a synoptic sense of locus, beat, or weight; the dancer’s feet
37
convey the centers of gravity.

The idea of polyrhythm has occasionally elicited some rather imaginative associations. John Collins, for
example, expatiates on what he calls “polysided life” as follows:

Relativism and pluralism permeates many aspects of traditional African life which encourages an
equitable distribution of symbolic or social weight. Things must come and be done in multiples. No
single rhythm, deity or time-scale should steal the show. African music is polyphonal, their
religions are polytheistic, their calendars polycyclic, their plastic arts polyangled and . . . their
social organisation polycentric. This polysided African view even applies to . . . traditional domestic
life. Marriage is customarily polygamous. . . . Just as no single rhythm is allowed to dominate the
African Beat, so too no single deity, soul or timescale is allowed to hog all the limelight of the
38
African ritual cosmos.

Are these analogies or homologies, or distinct systems sporting similar structural rhythms? Collins does not
specify. The a liation he draws, however, is echoed by others. For example, Nigerian writer Bibi Bakare-
Yusuf notes:

Although contemporary Nigerian society (and contemporary Yoruba culture) is, on the surface,
divided in terms of Christian and Islamic faiths, the deep structure of the society is polytheistic and
ordered by the spirit world of the accommodative traditional gods. This theological background is
revealed most readily in aesthetic practices such as dance and music. Polytheism in spirit
39
translates into the aesthetics of polyrhythm.

p. 183 It is hard to accept these formulations at face value because the principles according to which domains are
linked are underspeci ed. A discontinuity or dissonance between two expressive domains has just as strong
 claims to normativity as a continuity or consonance. Bakare’s wish to reject conceptual monothesism, for
example, is understandable as an expression of desire, but her argument is somewhat inconvenienced by
40
the fact that there is always a “mono” or “metric background” (borrowing from James Burns ) somewhere
at the back of the ensemble. Apparent surface plurality invariably subtends a regulating subsurface
p. 184 singularity.

Photo 4.4

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Young Gogo girl playing drum, Nzali, Tanzania.

 Photo 4.5

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Fɔntɔmfrɔm, Edwesomanheneʼs burial, Kumase, Ghana.

Lead-drum narratives.
The lead drummer (or “master drummer” or one who beats the “mother drum”) performs the most
involved and complex rhythms. Leadership here implies that he takes charge of the ensemble as a whole. His
playing depends on, and in turn supports, the playing (and singing) of the other musicians in the ensemble.
If things are not going well, the lead drummer may suspend his own playing and ensure the security of the
ensemble. Indeed, the soundness of the ensemble is what allows him to provide the community of singers
and dancers with meaningful, life-a rming dance drumming. The lead drummer cannot accomplish that
task alone.

One way to conceptualize the lead drummer’s art is in terms of rhythmic narratives: he essentially tells
stories on his drum using a variety of patterns. Narrating here is not the same as talking drumming,
although lead drummers may occasionally incorporate the iconic procedures associated with speech
surrogacy. Finely chiseled rhythmic patterns are manipulated in accordance with precise structural and
aesthetic goals. These stories are sometimes highly elaborate and original, sometimes conventional, and
often framed in liaison with the other musicians’ patterns. Di erent African dances call for di erent lead-
drum patterns. In the Southern Ewe Atsiagbekor dance, for example, the lead drummer’s patterns contrast
with those of the other instruments (bells, rattles, responses, and support drums). They are ostensibly
p. 185 “freer” and more speechlike in character owing in part to their improvisatory origins. By improvisation,
we mean that the patterns are assembled in the moment under pressure from the practical and aesthetic
exigencies of the occasion. No lead drummer arrives at a performance site with an empty head, hoping
perhaps that the muses will visit on that occasion. Rather, he has at his command a set of learned
procedures with which he can make his narration. He also has in his memory certain stock phrases
associated with the particular dance or with particular moments within the dance. These phrases are part of
a vocabulary shared with dancers and listeners. The art of lead drumming is a fascinating exercise in oral
composition. In a medium that employs wordless rhetoric, highly skilled individuals think, play, tease,
amuse, impress, and even deceive.

Although the lead-drum part is enabled by the musical security of the ensemble as a whole, there are
sporadic high-intensity moments during performances where drummers claim a measure of autonomy. So,
 although rhythmic conversations or sporadic interchanges with support drummers are normal fare, a lead
drummer may occasionally beat patterns that are not organically linked to what the rest of the ensemble is
playing. Such ights are only occasional, however, and they are possible in part because once the metrically
explicit polyrhythmic texture has been established, the lead drummer can play “against” its guaranteed
coherence to generate tension and interest. This is not to suggest that the ensemble is structured
polymetrically, that it features di erent meters in di erent parts as A. M. Jones, Steve Friedson, and others
41
erroneously claimed. It is simply to a rm that, at certain moments in the dance, a seasoned drummer is
free to advance certain temporary narratives without seeking immediate corroboration from the rest of the
ensemble.

As the gure who takes charge of the ensemble, the lead drummer directs the dance and responds to the

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needs and temperaments of individual dancers. Tightly choreographed dances may require the lead
drummer to beat certain signals at certain moments as cues to dancers. The time between signals may be
traversed in exible fashion depending on the developing synergy between musicians and dancers. An
inspired dancer may wish to extend her moment in the sun, revel in a particular style of playing, or simply
enjoy a favorite theme; another may be turned o by a drummer who “stammers,” or even be so
counterinspired by him that she will elect to curtail a particular dance sequence. The rapport between
dancers and drummers varies in intensity from dance to dance and from one performance to another. The
point is that dancers are not merely consumers of what is handed to them by drummers; they can actually
a ect the mood and progress of the dance drumming. Dancers and the providers of dance beats represent
p. 186 two sides of the same coin.

Photo 4.6

Kete dance, Koo Nimo and his group, Kumase, Ghana.

Transcriptions and technical studies of lead drumming have been made by several scholars, so readers
wishing to embark on a note-by-note study of the lead drummer’s art will nd a number of models to work
42
with. For the illustrative purposes at hand, I will mention just two brief examples. David Locke’s analysis
of the Southern Ewe dance Gahu shows that the spinning of lead-drum narratives relies fundamentally on
motivic manipulation. Patterns are introduced, manipulated through shortening or elongating of units,
displaced metrically in relation to the bell pattern, or replaced by other patterns. Impressive is the resulting
art of variation whereby patterns are repeated in varied form so that listeners delight in both the familiar
43
and the unfamiliar.
 Perhaps the most rigorous analysis of lead drumming is Willie Anku’s magni cent study of the Akan funeral
44
p. 187 dance drumming, adowa. Anku stresses the intellectual dimension of the lead drummer’s art to
undermine facile invocations of “improvisation” as an explanatory term. According to him, the lead
drummer arrives at the scene of performance armed with a set of procedures, and he deploys these in the
course of adowa performance. Anku’s version of the dance itself has seven themes interspersed with bridge
passages. The text of a typical performance would thus consist of a succession of thematic areas, and the
space between di erent areas would be occupied by a bridge. Within each area, the verbally derived theme is
subjected to motivic elaboration. This “composing out” process may be brief or extended depending on the
dynamics of the interaction between drummers and dancers.

The sophistication of the lead drummer becomes evident in this composing-out process and in the speci c

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technical manipulation of the grouping structure of individual themes. Working with sets of twelve as a
reference point, and always aware of the ostinato bell pattern, the drummer devises patterns that are
sometimes aligned with twelve, exceed it, or fall short of it. Anku refers to them as sets, supersets, and
subsets. If a pattern introduced by the lead drummer exceeds the twelve-span, he carries forward the
surplus; if the pattern is a subset of the twelve-span, he knows that a compensatory gesture will be
forthcoming. And where the pattern is perfectly aligned with the reigning twelve, no credits or debits are
carried forward. In this way, the performance proceeds logically and in full awareness of the shifting
relationship between bell and lead-drum pattern. The result is a deep level of coherence that may come as a
surprise to those who have underestimated African intellection or who would prefer a mystical explanation
to a rational one.

It bears emphasizing that the kinds of lead drumming and ensemble playing we are discussing here take
place within cultures of primary orality. No traditional lead drummer worth his salt plays from a chart,
score, or notation. All of the modulo twelve arithmetic that Anku describes takes place in the heads of
drummers, not on paper. Aurality enforces a regime in which sounds have speci c origins and destinations;
patterns and actions must be at their most palpable. The vibrant life of African rhythm derives precisely
from this incredible awareness of the aural and choreographic potentialities of its constituent patterns.

p. 188
A Generative Approach

What are the sources of the patterns played by a performer on a given occasion? There are two related
answers, one having to do with memory, the other with knowledge of procedures. First and obviously,
musicians repeat rhythms that they have memorized. If you’ve grown up in an environment in which bɔbɔbɔ,
gabada, baakisimba, or egwu amala are beaten and danced regularly, chances are that you will have
internalized their rhythms and songs and are able to participate in a performance in some capacity. Second,
performers internalize a range of procedures that they use selectively on each occasion of performance.
They know the tricks and licks of the trade. They know when and how to begin, how to intensify a
sentiment, and how to end; indeed, they may choose to stop rather than conclude. They know how to create
tension, how to resolve it, and what to play to delight a favorite dancer. This is not knowledge of particular
rhythms as such; rather, it is knowledge of how to make rhythms, techniques for ordering rhythms—
compositional knowledge. The distinction is not categorical, however, because knowledge of procedures
necessarily entails acquaintance with actual materials, while the ability to retrieve patterns from memory
may be facilitated by knowledge of certain tricks. Nevertheless, the two emphasize di erent aspects of
rhythm production.

Con dence in the deployment of procedures bespeaks a compositional ability that forms a necessary part of
the lead drummer’s arsenal. The ability to generate rhythms is one sign of compositional prowess. By
“generation,” I simply mean production from simpler patterns. The belief here is that every rhythmic
 pattern, process, or narrative subtends a simpler pattern, process, or narrative. Both are well formed, but
the one that is heard is a more elaborate form of the one that lies in the background. The generative
approach is well known (even if not designated as such) and widely shared by many world cultures; it is
exempli ed in everything from the composition of medieval chant through improvising on jazz standards
to elaborating the hidden melodies of gamelan music. In African expressive systems, the generative
approach may well be the single most potent tool for understanding oral composition. Just as the oral poet
relies not only on what has been memorized but also on strategies for generating new content, so the
musician succeeds precisely because he or she is able to “say” something new in a way that is nevertheless
consistent with the ways of “speaking” a particular “language” using particular “idioms.”

Theorists as diverse as Hornbostel, Nketia, Cooke, Pressing, John Blacking, David Locke, Anku, Nzewi, and

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p. 189 Arom have promoted approaches that may be characterized loosely as generative, so readers seeking in-
depth studies may turn to the works of these authors. Here I will only add a simple demonstration of some
of what lies behind relatively simple patterns. Let us return to time-line patterns and recall an earlier claim
that they typically presuppose enabling structures. Supposing that my task is to generate a particular time
line, here is a generalized two-stage scheme that we might follow:

1. Establish the beat (on the basis of the dance feet or the choreographic center of gravity) and the
metrical cycle (on the basis of repetition, with hints from archetypal clap patterns).

2. Invoking a mix of culturally relevant habits associated with creative manipulation (play, maneuver,
tease, withhold, extend, disguise, exaggerate), manipulate the foundational pattern postulated in
45
stage 1 to arrive at the target time line.

These two stages may be subdivided as necessary. The origins postulated in stage 1 are usually available as
nuggets of rhythm within the culture. Similarly, the techniques of manipulation associated with stage 2 are
culturally sanctioned; this stage may also splinter into several steps. For example, suppose our aim is to
generate the so-called Mmensuoun time line, [2-2-2-1-2-3]. We may postulate the pattern’s origins in the
dance feet, [3-3-3-3]. This pattern may be elaborated by substituting [2-2-2] for the initial [3-3]. In e ect,
we have crossed two threes with three twos, and we can cite any number of rhythmic practices, including
many associated with children’s music, to justify this transformation. A third and nal stage involves
further variation, this time breaking up the rst of the threes into [1-2] to yield [2-2-2-1-2-3]. Notice that
the shorter note is placed on the stronger part of the beat rather than the other way round: [1-2] instead of
[2-1], or in terms of metrical feet, a trochee rather than an iamb.

Let us be clear that this procedure is not so much a reconstruction of how this particular pattern came to be;
it is not an account of a known compositional genesis. Rather, it is a rational reconstruction, a speculative
derivation of what makes the pattern possible, what enables it. In this process of reconstruction, I have
responded to two imperatives: simple logic and cultural relevance. The logical imperative is necessary to
p. 190 ensure the pattern’s structural integrity at each stage; the cultural imperative acknowledges the origins of
these (and other) patterns in habits of thought and action particular to those cultures. The idea is to
“culturalize” logic by bringing it under an African thought regime.
 To Notate or Not to Notate?

Most African music—perhaps 95 percent of it—is not written down. What scores exist are original works by
composers of art music or transcriptions made by ethnomusicologists for scholarly study and
46
documentation. Even though scholars have described mnemonic association as forms of “oral notation,”
and even though “electronic notation” became widely available in the second half of the twentieth
47
century, the primary medium for the preservation and transmission of African vocal and instrumental
music is oral/aural and tied to individual and collective memories.

If we overlook some of the earliest known e orts to notate music (as in Ethiopia, for example), we can say
that African music began to be reduced to notation in earnest from the nineteenth century on, largely as a

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result of contact with the West—missionaries, merchants, and colonial o cers—and of the education of a
local elite. At rst, sta notation was used to notate melodies, simple rhythms, folk songs, or even drum
ensemble patterns. Similarly, tonic solfa aided the teaching of previously notated songs while providing a
means for many local composers to write down their choral works. With the rise of ethnomusicology in the
1950s, interest in other forms of notation grew, and with it a critique of Western notation. Alternatives
suggested included the Time Unit Box System, tablature notation, circular notation, “Greenotation,” pulse
48
p. 191 notation, and geometrical representation. Meanwhile, many born-in-the-tradition scholars continued
49
to use sta notation or tonic solfa.

Which forms of notation adequately represent African musical realities? No consensus has been reached on
this issue, but one thing is clear: it is no longer productive to ask whether one should notate African music.
All forms of notation have their limitations, of course, but this is a universal problem rather than a
speci cally African one. A pragmatic approach to the problem of notation is to ask if any tasks are helped
along by the use of notation. It then emerges that all the major analytical discussions of African music, for
example, have drawn on notation. Notating provides a concrete basis for informed discussion. To say that
African musicians did not conceive their music in (Western) notational terms does not mean that nothing
can be learned from “translating” it into Western or standard terms. We do not normally make the same
argument for language or literary expression, whether it is in the use of the Roman alphabet (or a modi ed
version thereof) or writing in an indigenous language as opposed to the metropolitan one. No translation is
perfect, and few translations are such that the texts on either side can be said to be identical. But these
limitations notwithstanding, transcription can and does shed light on such things as the role of repetition,
the question of meter, the interplay of timbres, and the internal dynamics of polyrhythm. Moreover, the
existence of Western repertoires that were originally conceived with minimal reference to notation (as were
many forms of jazz) but have subsequently been reduced to notation to facilitate both study and
50
p. 192 performance suggests that similar gains are likely to come from African adaptations of notation.
Students of African music have bene ted immensely from the transcriptions in extenso made by A. M. Jones
in the 1950s, those supplied by David Locke in several publications, those included in Simha Arom’s study of
African polyphony and polyrhythm, those supplied by Gilbert Rouget in his study of the vocal repertories of
King Gbefa’s wives, those included in Branda Lacerda’s study of Fon drumming, and those included in Willie
Anku’s original theory of African rhythm. As analyzable texts, transcriptions continue to serve as a basis for
close study and informed discussion of structural principles.

Conclusion

I began the previous chapter with the claim that “in or near the beginning was the spoken word.” This one
could have started with a parallel construction, “in or near the beginning was rhythm.” Rhythm seems to be
at once everywhere and nowhere in particular. Here is how Curt Sachs put it in 1953:
 Rooted deep in physiological grounds as a function of our bodies, rhythm permeates melody, form,
and harmony; it becomes the driving and shaping force, indeed, the very breath of music, and
reaches up into the loftiest realm of aesthetic experience where description is doomed to fail
because no language provides the vocabulary for adequate wording. Disenchanted, the author is,
alas, compelled—as more or less every writer on art—to describe the technical traits, the dactyls
and double dots, proportiones and metrical patterns, rather than the elusive, indescribable essence
51
of rhythm.

The products of the rhythmic imagination are di use and not easily con ned de nitionally. Although
Western discourse identi es a parameter called “rhythm,” there is no single word for rhythm in most of the
indigenous African languages. The site of the most intense rhythmic behavior is not at the same time the

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site of critical discourse about rhythm! While one can converse around the subject, one cannot name it
precisely, exclusively, or exhaustively. Rhythm indeed has a transgressive quality; it is an entangled
p. 193 parameter, permanently imbricated in other dimensional processes. While theoretically conceivable,
ferreting out the rhythmic dimension of a composition as distinct from, say, its melodic, polyphonic, or
timbral dimensions is practically impossible. The analysis of rhythm takes one beyond duration, accents,
and grouping to more subtle, sometimes unnameable qualities.

Although African music has often been portrayed as radically di erent from Western music (“based on
52
entirely di erent principles,” wrote Hornbostel in 1928, or representing “a di erent way of being-in-the-
53
world,” as Friedson has recently claimed ), there is essentially (i.e., at a certain level of abstraction) no
di erence between the organizing principles of African rhythm and those of Western rhythm. Both sets of
repertoires feature speech rhythms, a palpable tactus, symmetrical and asymmetrical rhythmic phrases,
superior beats and groups of beats, periodicities governed by processes distributed across multiple
dimensions, degrees of polyrhythm, and the interplay between precomposed and improvised material.
African rhythm indeed manifests the same kind of hierarchic patterning that one nds in Western music,
namely, an elaborate surface and a simpler subsurface, a foreground and a background.

What “di erences” there are stem from idiomatic and aesthetic choices made by individual communities
for particular genres and occasions. For example, it is not that Western music lacks o beat patterns; rather,
it is that some African music (especially drum-based repertories that have acquired symbolic status as
exemplars of authentic African music) invests heavily in persistent o -beat patterning. It is not that African
music lacks downbeats; rather, it is that some African music takes the weight o the downbeats to create a
more uid or mobile process. It is not that Western instrumental music is not dependent on language;
rather, it is that the speech mode in instrumental music, for example, has been obscured in the writings of
theorists with di erent agendas. Comparisons like these can seem naïve or counterintuitive, especially for
people for whom the sound of African music is self-evidently di erent from that of Western music. But
peering beneath the surface to behold the speci c organizational procedures will show a degree of
subsurface convergence that is likely to be missed by those whose inquiries are con ned to the musical
surface. Western and African rhythm share patterns of well-formedness; in thematizing that well-
p. 194 formedness, preferences, some of them marked, are exercised. This is why I have recommended a broad,
cross-cultural framework for analysis and for pursuing the question of what is ultimately distinct about
individual African cultures. The African rhythmic genius is best appreciated not from separatist accounts
postulating radically di erent foundations but from comparative studies showing how African musicians
excel at the things we all do.

Notes
1. M. Brandilly, “Chad,” Grove Music Online, accessed April 1, 2013.
2. Hornbostel, “African Negro Music,” 52.
3. Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 [orig. 1968]), 10.
4. Friedson, Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land, 144.
5. Locke, “The Metric Matrix: Simultaneous Multidimensionality in African Music,” Analytical Approaches to World Music 1, no.
1 (2011.
6. Schae ner, Jacket notes for African Music from French Colonies, ed. Alan Lomax, The Columbia World History of Primitive
Music, vol. 2. (New York: Columbia Records, 1955–1956).
7. Tamara Levitz draws admirably on Schae nerʼs wisdom to develop her argument about the representation of the Dogon.
See her “The Aestheticization of Ethnicity: Imagining the Dogon at the Musée du quai Branly,” Musical Quarterly 89 (2006):
600–642. Similar adaptations of Schae ner for music-analytic purposes will, I believe, enhance Anglophone Africanist
ethnomusicologyʼs theoretical project.
8. Merriam, “Concepts of Time Reckoning,” in African Music in Perspective, 457.

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9. Prominent works on African music that take time into account are Ruth Stone, Dried Millet Breaking and Kubik, Theory of
African Music vol. 2. The latter includes a listing of a variety of African-language words for time.
10. Curt Sachs, Rhythm and Tempo: A Study in Music History (1953); elaborated by Harold S. Powers, “Rhythm,” in The New
Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don M. Randel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1986).
11. Powers, “Rhythm,” in The New Harvard Dictionary, 704.
12. For a brief discussion, see Agawu, Music as Discourse, 98–102.
13. Agawu, African Rhythm: A Northern Ewe Perspective, 27–30 and 180–185. Sachsʼs distinction between rhythms of speech
and rhythms of the body discussed earlier is incorporated into Figure 4.1 and the ensuing discussion.
14. Nketia, Drumming and Dancing in the Akan Communities of Ghana, 17–31. For a comment, see Agawu, Representing African
Music, 112–114.
15. Blacking, How Musical Is Man?
16. Locke, “Africa/Ewe, Mande, DAgbamba, Shona, BaAka,” 78.
17. A. M. Jones devotes more than half the number of pages of an article on rhythm to handclapping and clapping patterns.
See his “African Rhythm,” Africa 24, no. 1 (1954): 26–47. Jonesʼs understanding of meter and rhythm, however, di ers in
several fundamental respects from the viewpoint given here.
18. For a ready example, listen to the opening track, “Dada ada do,” on Disc 1 of the CD, Agbadza!Professor Midawo Gideon foli
Alorwoyie and his Afrikania Culture Troupe of Ghana, West Africa (Denton, TX: 2003).
19. See JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Africa, clip 8, “Ostrich Mating Dance-Game
Anthology.”
20. CD, Anthologie de la musique Congolaise, vol. 2, track 10, “Babolibo.”
21. Ligeti, Poème Symphonique (1962).
22. Kubik, Africa and the Blues (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 54.
23. See Kubik, Theory of African Music, vol. 2.
24. Christopher Ehret, “Languages and Peoples,” in Cultural Atlas of Africa, ed. Jocelyn Murray (Oxford: Elsevier Publishers,
Phaidon Press), 28; quoted in Kubik, Theory of African Music vol. 1, 9.
25. See J. H. Kwabena Nketia, African Pianism: Twelve Pedagogical Pieces (Accra, Ghana: Afram Publications, 1994), 22–27; CD,
Chaka. An Opera in Two Chants by Akin Euba; and Fred Onovwerosuoke, Twenty-Four Studies in African Rhythms, vol. 1 (St.
Louis, MO: African Music Publishers, 2007, 32–33.
26. See CD, Asa: Piano Music by Composers of African Descent (Newtown, CT: MSR Classics, 2008), track 7, and Pan African
Orchestra Opus 1 (New York: Real World, 1995).
27. In an unpublished seminar paper from 2001, ethnomusicologist and drummer Bertram Lehman counted no fewer than
110 time lines.
28. For in-depth studies of the formal properties of time lines, see Jay Rahn, “Asymmetrical Ostinatos in Sub-Saharan African
Music: Time, Pitch and Cycles Reconsidered,” In Theory Only 9, no. 7 (1987): 23–36; Je Pressing, “Cognitive Isomorphisms
Between Pitch and Rhythm in World Musics: West Africa, the Balkans and Western Tonality,” Studies in Music 17 (1983): 38–
61; Godfried Toussaint, A Geometry of Musical Rhythm; and Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of
Musical Meter, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). For detailed study of a single time line, see Agawu,
“Structural Analysis or Cultural Analysis? Competing Perspectives on the ʻStandard Patternʼ of West African Rhythm,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 59 (2006): 1–46.
29. The twelve time-line patterns listed in Example 4.1 may be heard on the following recordings: (1) CD, Ghana: Rhythms of
the People, track 2, “Agbadza (Music of the Ewe)”; (2) CD, Pan African Orchestra, track 3, “Mmenson”; (3) CD, Anthologie de
la musique Congolaise, vol. 1, track 18, “Mayamb”; (4) CD, Structural Set Analysis: Adowa (Anku); (5) CD, Legendary
Wulomei, heard on most tracks; (6) CD, Drum Gahu (Locke); (7) CD, Music of Africa Series 29: Musical Instruments 8: Drums 2
(Grahamstown: International Library of African Music), track 10, “Ngoma.”; (8) CD, Seperewa Kasa (Osei Korankye), track 1,
 “Towoboase”; (9) CD, Togo: Music from West Africa, track 16, “Mitoe ne ayehawo” and CD, The Rough Guide to African Music
for Children, track 2, “Nono Femineh”; (10) CD, Songs of War and Death from the Slave Coast (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Folkways Recordings, 2007), track 6, “Gabada” and Web Example 4.1 ; (11) Anthologie Congolaise, vol. 3, track 4,
“Neike”; and (12) CD, Un roi Africain et sa musique du court, track 10, “Si le brigan rencontre le maisonnier suivi de.” As
always, the examples could be multiplied a hundredfold.
30. For further discussion, see Agawu, “Structural Analysis or Cultural Analysis?”
31. F. Onwona Osafo, “An African Orchestra,” 11; Natalie Fernando, Polyphonies du Nord-Cameroun, 262.
32. “E-limbo,” track 3 of CD, Polyphonies vocales des Pygmées Mbenzele.
33. Djenda, “Central African Republic,” Grove Music Online, accessed April 1, 2013.
34. Cherno , African Rhythm and African Sensibility, 117.
35. Nzewi, A Contemporary Study of Musical Arts, vol. 4: Illuminations, Reflections and Explorations (Pretoria: Centre for
Indigenous Instrumental African Music and Dance,2007), 76.

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36. Nketia, The Music of Africa, 210.
37. Cherno , African Rhythm and African Sensibility, 117.
38. Collins, African Musical Symbolism in Contemporary Perspective: Roots, Rhythms and Relativity (Berlin: Pro Business, 2004),
111.
39. Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, “ʻYorubaʼs Donʼt Do Genderʼ: A Critical Review of Oyeronke Oyewumiʼs The Invention of Women: Making
an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses,” accessed December 19, 2014,
http://www.codesria.org/IMG/pdf/BAKERE_YUSUF.pdf.
40. Burns, “Rhythmic Archetypes.”
41. Jones, Studies in African Music; Friedson, Remains of Ritual, 139. For a critique of polymeter, see my Representing African
Music, 71–96.
42. Besides Jonesʼs transcriptions from the 1950s, there are others by later writers like Pantaleoni, Branda-Lacerda, Locke,
Polak, and Euba from which one can study the principles of lead drumming.
43. Locke, Drum Gahu: An Introduction to African Rhythm (Tempe, AZ: White Cli s Media, 1998). For a rigorous empirical study
of another West African tradition, see Rainer Polakʼs article on jembe music, “Rhythmic Feel as Meter: Non-Isochronous
Beat Subdivision in Jembe Music from Mali,” Music Theory Online 16 (2010),
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.10.16.4/mto.10.16.4.polak.html
44. Anku, Structural Set Analysis 1: Adowa. His Structural Set Analysis 2: Bawa (Legon: Soundstage Production, 2002) utilizes a
similar analytical procedure. Both booklets are accompanied by digitalized recordings. For the full exposition of Ankuʼs
theory, including copious transcriptions of other Ghanaian dances, see his forthcoming book, A Theory of African Music.
Zabana Kongo published several booklets containing transcriptions of Ghanaian dances; see his African Drum Music [Slow
Agbekor, Adowa, Kpanlogo, Agbadza] (Accra: Afram Publications, 1997). Transcriptions in extenso together with technical
explication of organizing principles may also be found in Marcos Branda-Lacerda, “Instrumental Texture and Heterophony
in a Fon Repertoire for Drums,” TRANS 11 (2007), accessed July 24, 2013,
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/a127/instrumental-texture-and-heterophony-in-a-fon-repertoire-for-drum, and in
Marcos Lacerda, Música Instrumental no Benim: Repertório Fon e Música Bàtá (Sɑ̃o Paulo: Editoria la Universidade de Sɑ̃o
Paulo, 2014).
45. Agawu, “Structural Analysis or Cultural Analysis?,” 31–36.
46. Kubik, “Oral Notation of Some West and Central African Time-Line Patterns,” Review of Ethnology 3 (1972): 169–176.
47. Kay Shelemay, “Notation and Oral Tradition in Africa,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 1: Africa, ed. Ruth
Stone (New York: Garland, 1998), 146–163. Reprinted in The Garland Handbook of African Music (New York: Garland, 1999).
48. A sampling of the varieties of approaches to notating African music may be found in the following: James Koetting,
“Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music,” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 1, no. 3 (1970): 115–
146; Hewitt Pantaleoni, “Toward Understanding the Play of Sogo in Atsia,” Ethnomusicology 16, no. 1 (1972): 1–37; Moses
Serwadda and H. Pantaleoni, “A Possible Notation for African Dance Drumming,” African Music 4, no. 2 (1968): 47–52; David
Rycro , “Nguni Vocal Polyphony,” Journal of the International Folk Music Council 19 (1967): 88–103; David Locke,
“Africa/Ewe, Mande, Shona, BaAka”; Doris Green, “About Greenotation,” accessed July 20, 2013,
http://www.tntworldculture.com/toa2/2011/12/about-greenotation/; Andrew Tracey, “The Matepe Mbira Music of
Rhodesia,” African Music 4, no. 4 (1970): 37–61; Godfried Toussaint, The Geometry of Musical Rhythm; Roderic Knight,
“Towards a Notation and Tablature for the Kora, and Its Application to Other Instruments,” African Music 5, no. 1 (1971):
23–36; and Burns, “Rhythmic Archetypes in Instrumental Music from Africa and the Diaspora.” See also Cherno ʼs
pertinent reflections in “The Rhythmic Medium in African Music,” New Literary History 22 (1991): 1093–1102.
49. On notation, see Shelemay, “Notation and Oral Tradition in Africa.” On tonic solfa in particular, see Christine Lucia, “Back
to the Future? Idioms of ʻDisplaced Timeʼ in South Africa Composition,” in Composing Apartheid: Essays of the Music of
Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), 11–34.
50. See Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), for a good
example of some of the “gains” that transcription has brought.
51. Curt Sachs, Rhythm and Tempo (New York: Norton1953), 11.
52. Hornbostel, “African Negro Music,” 30.
53. Friedson, Remains of Ritual: Northern Gods in a Southern Land, 9.

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