Rhythm in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest"[1] 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.[2] C. K. Ladzekpo also affirms the profound homogeneity of approach.[3] 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.

Contents
Rhythm in Sub-Saharan African culture
Instruments
Cross-rhythm
Key patterns
The standard pattern African drum made by Gerald Achee
Tresillo
References
Sources
Further reading

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 Drummers in Accra, Ghana
life’s challenges.[4] The sounding of three beats against two is experienced in everyday life and helps develop "a two-
dimensional attitude to rhythm". Throughout western and central Africa child's play includes games that develop a feeling
 for multiple rhythms.[5]

Among the characteristics of the Sub-Saharan African approach to rhythm are

syncopation and cross-beats which may be understood as sustained and systematic
polyrhythms, an ostinato of two or more distinct rhythmic figures, patterns or phrases
at once. The simultaneous use of contrasting rhythmic patterns within the same scheme
of accents or meter lies at the core of African rhythmic tradition. All such
"asymmetrical" patterns are historically and geographically interrelated.[6]
Traditional healer (sangoma) of
South Africa dancing to the rhythm
Instruments of the drum in celebration of his
ancestors
African music relies heavily on fast-paced, upbeat rhythmic drum playing found all over
Map of African Linguistic Groups the continent, though some styles, such as the Township music of South Africa do not
make much use of the drum and nomadic groups such as the Maasai do not
traditionally use drums. Elsewhere the drum is the sign of life: its beat is the heartbeat
of the community.[7]

Drums are classed as membranophones and consist of a skin or "drumhead" stretched over the open end of a frame or "shell". Well
known African drums include the djembe[8] and the talking drum[8]

Many aspects of African drumming, most notably time-keeping, stem from instruments such as shakers made of woven baskets or
gourds or the double bell, made of iron and creating two different tones.[9] Each region of Africa has developed a different style of
double bell but the basic technology of bell-making is the same all over the continent, as is often the bell's role as time keeper. The Kids in Alexandra township, South
South American agogo is probably a descendent from these African bells. Other idiophones include the Udu and the slit drum or Africa, playing around on their
log drum. father's drums

Tuned instruments such as the mbira and the marimba often have a short attack and decay that facilitates their rhythmic role.

Cross-rhythm
African rhythmic structure is entirely divisive in nature[10] but may divide time into different fractions at the same time, typically by the use of hemiola or three-over-two
(3:2), which Novotney has called the foundation of all West African polyrhythmic textures.[11] It is the interplay of several elements, inseparable and equally essential, that
produces the "varying rhythmic densities or motions" of cross-rhythmic texture.[12] 3 and 2 belong to a single Gestalt.[13]

Cross-rhythm is the basis for much of the music of the Niger–Congo peoples, speakers of the largest language family in Africa. For example, it "pervades southern Ewe
music".[14]
Key patterns
Key patterns, also known as bell patterns, timeline patterns, guide patterns and phrasing referents
express a rhythm’s organizing principle, defining rhythmic structure and epitomizing the complete
rhythmic matrix. They represent a condensed expression of all the movements open to musicians and
dancers.[15] Key patterns are typically clapped or played on idiophones such as bells, or else on a
high-pitched drumhead.[16] Musics organized around key patterns convey a two-celled (binary)
structure, a complex level of African cross-rhythm.[17]
The standard bell pattern in simple
and compound time

The standard pattern

A djembe drum
The most commonly used key pattern in sub-Saharan Africa is the seven-stroke figure known in ethnomusicology as the standard
pattern.[18][19][20] The standard pattern, composed of two cross-rhythmic fragments, is found both in simple (4/4 or 2/2) and compound (12/8 or
6/8) metrical structures.[21]

Until the 1980s this key pattern, common in Yoruba music, Ewe music and many other musics, was widely interpreted as composed of additive groupings. However the
standard pattern represents not a series of durational values, but a series of attack points that divide the fundamental beat with a cross-rhythmnic structure.[22]

Tresillo
The most basic duple-pulse figure found in sub-Saharan African music is a figure the Cubans call tresillo, a Spanish word meaning 'triplet' The basic figure is also found within
a wide geographic belt stretching from Morocco in North Africa to Indonesia in South Asia. This pattern may have migrated east from North Africa to Asia with the spread of
Islam: use of the pattern in Moroccan music can be traced back to slaves brought north across the Sahara Desert from present-day Mali.[25] In African music this is a cross-
rhythmic fragment generated through cross-rhythm: 8 pulses ÷ 3 = 2 cross-beats (consisting of three pulses each) with a remainder of a partial cross-beat (spanning two
pulses). In divisive form the strokes of tresillo contradict the beats while in additive form, the strokes of tresillo are the beats. From a metrical perspective the two ways of
perceiving tresillo constitute two different rhythms. On the other hand, from the perspective of the pattern of attack-points, tresillo is a shared element of traditional folk
music from the northwest tip of Africa to southeast tip of Asia.

References
1. Stapleton C. and May C., African All-Stars, Paladin 1989, page 6
2. Jones, A. M. (1959), Studies in African Music, London: Oxford University Press. 1978 edition: ISBN 0-19-713512-9.
3. Ladzekpo, C.K. (1996), Cultural Understanding of Polyrhythm http://home.comcast.net/~dzinyaladzekpo/PrinciplesFr.html.
 4. Greenwood, David Peñalosa; Peter; collaborator,; editor, (2009). The clave matrix : Afro-Cuban rhythm : its principles and
African origins. Redway, CA: Bembe Books. p. 21. ISBN 1-886502-80-3.
5. Steppin' on the Blues by Jacqui Malone. University of Illinois Press. 1996. page 21. ISBN 0-252-02211-4
6. Kubik, Gerhard (1999). Africa and the blues ([Nachdr] ed.). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 54. ISBN 1-57806-145-
8.
7. Bakare, Sebastian (1997). The Drumbeat of Life.
8. http://search.eb.com/eb/article-57072
9. Uribe, Ed. The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion & Drum Set. Alfred.
10. Novotney, Eugene D. (1998), The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics,
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, page 147
11. Novotney, Eugene D. The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois (1998), page 201. UnlockingClave.com.
12. "The Myth of Cross-Rhythm" (https://home.comcast.net/~dzinyaladzekpo/Myth.html). Home.comcast.net. Retrieved
2014-01-30.
3.2 construction of standard
13. Agawu, Kofi (2003). Representing African music : postcolonial notes, queries, positions. New York, N.Y. ; London: Routledge.
compound-meter bell-pattern. The
ISBN 0-415-94390-6.
four notes at the bottom are the
14. Locke, David (1982). "Principles of Off-Beat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Ewe Dance Drumming” Society for primary beats. The upper parts
Ethnomusicology Journal Nov. 11. (1982), p.231 show; a) two cells of 3:2, beginning
15. Agawu, Kofi (2006: 1-46). “Structural Analysis or Cultural Analysis? Comparing Perspectives on the ‘Standard Pattern’ of West on beats 1 and 3; b) the same,
African Rhythm” Journal of the American Musicological Society v. 59, n. 1. beginning on beats 2 and 4; c) one
16. Peñalosa (2009: 51). cell of a) and one of b) giving d) the
standard bell pattern notation
17. Peñalosa (2009: 53).
18. Jones, A.M. (1971). Studies in African music ([1st ed., repr.]. ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-713512-9.
19. King, Anthony (1960). “The Employment of the Standard Pattern in Yoruba Music” American Music Society Journal.
20. "3-2 THESIS ABSTRACT" (http://www.unlockingclave.com/3-2-thesis-abstract.html). Unlocking Clave. Retrieved 2014-01-30.
21. Greenwood, David Peñalosa; Peter; collaborator,; editor, (2009). The clave matrix : Afro-Cuban rhythm : its principles and
African origins. Redway, CA: Bembe Books. pp. 58, 63–64. ISBN 1-886502-80-3.
22. Novotney, Eugene D. The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics, Urbana, IL: Tresillo.[23][24] Play
University of Illinois (1998) page 158
23. Garrett, Charles Hiroshi (2008). Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century, p.54. ISBN 978-0-
520-25486-2. Shown in common time and then in cut time with tied sixteenth & eighth note rather than rest.
24. Sublette, Ned (2007). Cuba and its music : FROM THE FIRST DRUMS TO THE MAMBO (1. ed.). Chicago: Non-Approval
Trade. ISBN 978-1-55652-632-9.
25. Greenwood, David Peñalosa; Peter; collaborator,; editor, (2009). The clave matrix : Afro-Cuban rhythm : its principles and
African origins. Redway, CA: Bembe Books. p. 236. ISBN 1-886502-80-3.

Sources
Agawu, Kofi (2003). Representing African music : postcolonial notes, queries, positions. New York, N.Y. ; London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-94390-6.
Novotney, Eugene D. (1998). The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois.
Greenwood, David Peñalosa; Peter; collaborator,; editor, (2009). The clave matrix : Afro-Cuban rhythm : its principles and African origins. Redway, CA: Bembe Books.
ISBN 1-886502-80-3.
Ladzekpo, C. K. (1995). "The Myth of Cross-Rhythm" (https://home.comcast.net/~dzinyaladzekpo/Myth.html), Foundation Course in African Dance-Drumming (webpage,
accessed 24 April 2010).

Further reading
Godfried T. Toussaint, “On the question of meter in African rhythm: A quantitative mathematical assessment,” In Proceedings of Bridges: Mathematics, Music, Art,
Architecture, and Culture, G. Hart and R. Sarhangi, (Eds.), Enschende, The Netherlands, July 27–31, 2013, pp. 559–562, Phoenix: Tessellations Publishing.

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