Rhythm in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest" that exhibits common characteristics in all regions of this vast territory, so that Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) has described the many local approaches as constituting one main system. C. K. Ladzekpo also affirms the profound homogeneity of approach. West African rhythmic techniques carried over the Atlantic were fundamental ingredients in various musical styles of the Americas: samba, forró, maracatu and coco in Brazil, Afro-Cuban music and Afro-American musical genres such as blues, jazz, rhythm & blues, funk, soul, reggae, hip hop, and rock and roll were thereby of immense importance in 20th century popular music. The drum is renowned throughout Africa.

Rhythm in Sub-Saharan African culture

Many sub-Saharan languages do not have a word for rhythm, or even music. Rhythms represent the very fabric of life and embody the people's interdependence in human relationships. Cross-beats can symbolize challenging moments or emotional stress: playing them while fully grounded in the main beats prepares one for maintaining life-purpose while dealing with life’s challenges. The sounding of three beats against two is experienced in everyday life and helps develop "a two-dimensional attitude to rhythm". Throughout western and central Africa child's play includes games that develop a feeling for multiple rhythms.

Rhythm

Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry" (Liddell and Scott 1996)) generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions" (Anon. 1971, 2537). This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to millions of years.

In the performance arts rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" (Jirousek 1995, ) and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston (Yeston 1976), Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty (Hasty 1997), Godfried Toussaint (Toussaint 2005), William Rothstein, and Joel Lester (Lester 1986).

Isochrony

Isochrony is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. Rhythm is an aspect of prosody, others being intonation, stress and tempo of speech.

Three alternative ways in which a language can divide time are postulated:

The idea as such was first expressed by Kenneth L. Pike in 1945, though the concept of language naturally occurring in chronologically and rhythmically equal measures is found at least as early as 1775 (in Prosodia Rationalis). This has implications for language typology: D. Abercrombie claimed "As far as is known, every language in the world is spoken with one kind of rhythm or with the other ... French, Telugu and Yoruba ... are syllable-timed languages, ... English, Russian and Arabic ... are stress-timed languages'. While many linguists find the idea of different rhythm types appealing, empirical studies have not been able to find acoustic correlates of the postulated types, calling into question the validity of these types.

Rhythm (Wildbirds & Peacedrums album)

Rhythm is the fourth full-length album by Swedish husband and wife duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums, released on The Leaf Label on 3rd November 2014.

Background

Rhythm was written, recorded and produced by Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin in their Stockholm studio and focuses almost exclusively on Wallentin's vocals and Werliin's percussion. “Sound-wise we wanted it to feel like a live experience,” Werliin explained in an interview. “Almost every song is one take. We recorded standing in the same room, no screens or isolation, looking each other in the eyes." The band described how after several busy years of touring they wanted to make a "going back to our roots" album, recorded in their own space with no time limits or external pressures.

Critical reception

On the Metacritic website, which aggregates reviews from critics and assigns a normalised rating out of 100, Rhythm received a score of 81, based on 2 mixed and 9 positive reviews.All About Jazz wrote that "Rhythm has rhythm, but it's also brimming over with melody, harmony and drama" and also praised Wallentin and Werliin's production, saying that it "gives the sound such richness and strength that its energy is almost palpable".