“Rhythm,” “Beat,” and “Freedom” in South Asian Musical Traditions

This chapter argues that a family of common rhythmic conceptions underlies many of the musical traditions of South Asia despite sometimes dramatic regional differences in language, culture, and religion. Two contrasting kinds of rhythmic representation are examined: one that objectifies through names and numbers, and one that points toward freedom and resists numeration. Evidence for the first is drawn from the analysis of ritual drumming in India and Pakistan as well as concepts and structures in the art music traditions of North and South India. The second concerns both drumming and the elastic rhythm of rāga ālāpana. Examination of a range of data turns many common conceptions of rhythm, beat, and freedom in South Asian music on their heads.

Temporal and Density Flow in Javanese Gamelan

This chapter discusses the concept of irama: the articulation and changing of temporal and density flow in Javanese gamelan that would guide and inspire musicians to render melody and rhythm in all sorts of variations. The chapter begins with a brief history of the development of gamelan theory. The main discussion of the chapter is on cross-cultural elucidation of irama by Indonesian and Western theorists. Beyond its technical and mechanical significance, the heart of irama is its impact on the melody and rhythm of gendhing (composition). The changing of irama, led by kendhang (drum), inspires musicians to elaborate, embellish, or simplify their melodies, resulting in ensemble’s togetherness, though not in a perfect synchrony. The drumming itself also affected by the irama, as the drummer selects the style of drumming accordingly. The chapter ends with listening guides to a number of compositions based on irama and textural and timbral changes.

Modern Drum Solos Over Ostinatos

Improvised drum solos by Steve Gadd, Vinnie Colaiuta, Dave Weckl, Trilok Gurtu, and Jojo Mayer are examined in the context of interactive frameworks comprising three distinct rhythmic elements: meter, ostinato, and drums. Meter and background ostinato provide complementary recurring cycles—one implicit, the other explicit—that the drummer uses as referents to create shifting contrapuntal configurations. These configurations can be understood in terms of degrees of synchrony between the three elements in the drums/meter/ostinato network, from full three-way convergence to total divergence and including intermediary states where one of the three elements is distinct from the other two. The chapter pays special attention to polymetric phrasing, an effective way for drummers to not only affirm their independence from meter and ostinato but also infuse the solo with playfully complex qualities.

An Approach to Musical Rhythm in Agbadza

The musical rhythm of Agbadza is analyzed as dynamic and multideterminant, that is, as emerging from the interaction of many different musical factors including dance, metric structure, and the accentuation and grouping of the parts in the drum ensemble (bell, handclap, rattle, and support drum). Response drum and lead drum parts are analyzed for accentuation and rhythmic motion; the singing of Agbadza is studied in terms of melodic motion, design of phrases, and call-and-response form. The temporal relationship of songs to instrumental music is examined. By integrating the performance modalities of dance, song, and drumming within a holistic, ethnographically informed analysis of musical rhythm, the chapter models a method for documenting and understanding traditions of African performance art.

Meter and Rhythm in the Sung Poetry of Iranian Khorasan

The rhythmic theory developed by al-Fārābī remains relevant to the analysis of sung poetry in the contemporary Middle East, not least with respect to the question of how duration comes to be determined and the conception of verse as a constituent of melody (Arabic laḥn) in the fullest sense. This chapter reviews some of Fārābī’s concepts in relation to Christopher Hasty’s discussion of projective potential. Analysis of eight examples of sung verse in Persian and Khorasani Turkish focuses on coordination of tunes with rhythmic cycles associated with different types of poetic meter. I argue that the best analytical work on Persian traditional music, notably that of Dariush Talā’i, provides an excellent foundation for studies of Iran’s regional musics.

Rhythm and the Physical

Of all musical elements, rhythm is the most closely associated with temporal experience. When rhythms are categorized as structural objects, their active qualities can be lost, obscuring the physical life of rhythmic performance. This chapter argues for understanding rhythmic objects as inherently active, with a necessary physical aspect. One way these aspects emerge is through the processes that undergird performance. When a rhythm is learned as a gesture, it brings with it a particular physical history, developed over periods of repetition. This chapter examines rhythmic objects in three case studies, including performances of piano music by Saint-Saëns and Chopin, and a hardcore punk song by the band Minor Threat. Close analysis of the gestures that produce rhythms in these varied musics suggests the role of metrical experience in creating rhythms and, consequentially, how rhythms may be valued for the physical gestures they demand.

Formative Processes of Durational Projection in “Free Rhythm” World Music

Recent theories of meter have been enriched by consideration of the time cycles and nonisochronous beats found in many musical cultures. However, these theories do not apply to music in which pulse is irregular. In many instances of this sort of “free rhythm” found throughout the world, durations can still be measured, but in relation to immediately preceding durations rather than to a persistent metric grid. Christopher Hasty’s theory of durational projection addresses just this situation. This chapter applies it in analyses of a Persian āvāz, a flute solo from Papua New Guinea, and an ālāp performed by sitarist Budhaditya Mukherjee. The guiding question is not whether there “is” meter or what that meter “is,” but how durational projections guide perception of process, pitch structure, and form, and so can be incorporated into coherent narrative that attributes purpose to the specific free rhythms in extended passages of music.

Time Changes

The chapter examines a distinction between isometric music, in which successive metrical cycles are of equal length, and heterometric music, where the length and structure of the cycle can change. In South Asia, most music is isometric. In the classical traditions, each composition normally employs one tāla, in which the length of the cycle is defined by a clap-pattern or instrumental time-line. There are, however, rare cases where the tāla changes in the course of a composition, and such cases are more frequent in the context of religious music, but the origins and purposes of such heterometrical complexity are unclear. Three examples are analyzed from the Hindu-Buddhist traditions of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, featuring metrical compression and proportional time spans. The possible significance of “time changes” in these and analogous cases is discussed in relation to cultural meanings, historical antecedents, religious and social behavior, and the cognitive processes of performance.

Rhythmic Metamorphoses

This chapter examines the temporal process of the principal musical acts of the Anti-Atlas, which unfold in musical suites through extended periods of time, often over several hours or days. It shows what the temporal process and its metamorphoses have to do with the main plants of this region, the barley and the date palm, and pursues the following questions with reference to botany: how do the social actors construct the temporal process through performance? What are the key moments and how do the performers conceive the spatial orientation of this development? What are the components involved and how are they articulated? What concepts are related to the musical acts and what do they say about temporality? It is argued that analyzing musical rhythm of such rural areas requires an approach that takes full ethnographic account of the agricultural environment and practices.

Thinking With and About Rhythm

This chapter argues for a construction of the word “rhythm” that might contribute to ways of thinking and speaking about music that would validate the activity, the on-goingness, and the actuality of musicing. If discourse about music is connected to music, and if nothing—neither words nor concepts—escapes time, then talk of rhythm is itself not without or outside rhythm. Following an exploration of several allied terms (“event,” “duration,” “dimension”), the argument turns to sonic examples and concludes with a detailed analysis of the first phrase of the “Pleni sunt coeli” from Josquin des Prez’s Pange lingua mass.