African music is (was?) more rhythmically complex...

[pjme]

But then most music gets better when you know something about it...

[karlhenning]

I've played some of it (or, better put, tried to).  One of the professors I assisted in Virginia had studied drumming in Ghana for two years.  He led a seminar;  and as he knew me for a performer with a strong sense of rhythm, he asked me to sit in as one of the drummers.  I had a great time.  There is certainly a sense in which it is "simple" (though not only "simple"), but there is rich interplay with very basic elements.  The fact is, I learnt rhythmic lessons, from sitting in on that seminar, that I continue to use in my composition.  It is a robust and adaptable practice.

"Just listening to it" is a variable-quality criterion, depending upon the critical tools of the listener.  And some listeners' critical tools are corrupted by prejudgment at the outset, you know.

[karlhenning]

No, but there may limits on how far you can go if you don't know what a diatonic major scale is.

I'm sorry, you seem to think that's an answer, but I don't understand it at all.

If you can find one single instance in which African music has achieved the same level of brilliance of anything coming from the civilized west, well, by means, i'm all ears.

Give us the bullet-points which define levels of brilliance, please.

Yet another conversation on this forum chasing its tail;  most of us already acknowledge the problematic nature of comparison.

And here you are, playing cultural Darwinist, holding one tradition as a bludgeon to beat another tradition.

[MN Dave]

All I know is that these rhythms led to a rich legacy of blues and jazz, etc.

[jochanaan]

All I know is that these rhythms led to a rich legacy of blues and jazz, etc.

And they're loads of fun!  (Oops!  Self-indulgence rears its ugly head! )

Several years ago I went to an African drum and dance "performance."  (I put that word in quotes because of the music's participatory nature.)  I found the rhythms not particularly complex, but definitely hypnotic in the best sense.  Same with the dancing and singing.  Four hours went by like minutes!   (The white drummers tended to tap their drums, while the Africans pounded.  And pounded.  And... )

African music, though, has a much different function than Euro-American classical music.  While "our" music has become identified with quasi-dramatic performances, their music is meant for community-building.  They often celebrate peace agreements between villages with a dance that involves drummers and dancers from both villages drumming and dancing together.  The effect is more like that of a community sing-along than a concert.  Definitely apples and oranges.

[greg]

CONLON NANCARROW!!!!

yep, him or Ferneyhough...... African rhythms will never be as complex as those guys' rhythms, no music will be except anything that's written down (and would end up being classified as avant-garde classical if it's that complex anyways)

I've played some of it (or, better put, tried to).  One of the professors I assisted in Virginia had studied drumming in Ghana for two years.  He led a seminar;  and as he knew me for a performer with a strong sense of rhythm, he asked me to sit in as one of the drummers.  I had a great time.  There is certainly a sense in which it is "simple" (though not only "simple"), but there is rich interplay with very basic elements.  The fact is, I learnt rhythmic lessons, from sitting in on that seminar, that I continue to use in my composition.  It is a robust and adaptable practice.

"Just listening to it" is a variable-quality criterion, depending upon the critical tools of the listener.  And some listeners' critical tools are corrupted by prejudgment at the outset, you know.

wow, sounds like fun! 
and the participation thing, too..... yeah, that has to be half the fun!

[Josquin des Prez]

most of us already acknowledge the problematic nature of comparison.

A self imposed limitation. I pose myself no such problems. By this i don't proclaim to be absolute arbiter of artistic truth, and i expect to be proven wrong on many an occation, but i can still try.

And here you are, playing cultural Darwinist, holding one tradition as a bludgeon to beat another tradition.

As opposed to playing cultural egalitarianism, holding one tradition within the same breath of the other even though there's a difference of 8000 years of accumulated knowledge between them?

Give us the bullet-points which define levels of brilliance, please.

With pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzj6Q61h3oA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXYbGr5RaKM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR7eUSFsn28

What say ye?

[gmstudio]

Karl, you are not being perspective enough.

Gotta say, that's the most ironic statement in the whole thread. 

[MN Dave]

Here's what prompted this thread:

"[Gunther] Schuller claims that African rhythm is, by far, the most complicated form of music that exists. Only in the last half of this century [the 20th], and only with the aid of sophisticated electronic devices, has the non-African mind been able to measure and comprehend the complexity of African rhythm. We have learned that master African drummers can sense and create differences of 1/12 second while engaged in ensemble playing and produce seven to eleven different musical lines. What is remarkable is not the number of lines, but, as Schuller notes: "in the case of a seven-part ensemble, six of the seven lines may operate in different metric patterns...staggered in such a way that the downbeats of these patterns rarely coincide." (Schuller, Early Jazz.) In Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, Schuller finds "the American Negro was again asserting an irrepressible urge to maintain two rhythms simultaneously within the white man's musical framework." and maintains that "jazz inflection and syncopation did not come from Europe, because there is no precedent for them in European 'art music'."" -- Grover Sales, Jazz: America's Classical Music

[greg]

Here's what prompted this thread:

"[Gunther] Schuller claims that African rhythm is, by far, the most complicated form of music that exists. Only in the last half of this century [the 20th], and only with the aid of sophisticated electronic devices, has the non-African mind been able to measure and comprehend the complexity of African rhythm. We have learned that master African drummers can sense and create differences of 1/12 second while engaged in ensemble playing and produce seven to eleven different musical lines. What is remarkable is not the number of lines, but, as Schuller notes: "in the case of a seven-part ensemble, six of the seven lines may operate in different metric patterns...staggered in such a way that the downbeats of these patterns rarely coincide." (Schuller, Early Jazz.) In Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, Schuller finds "the American Negro was again asserting an irrepressible urge to maintain two rhythms simultaneously within the white man's musical framework." and maintains that "jazz inflection and syncopation did not come from Europe, because there is no precedent for them in European 'art music'."" -- Grover Sales, Jazz: America's Classical Music

ok, i'm about to take a drive over to his house (shouldn't be too far) and hand him a Ferneyhough CD.

[not edward]

ok, i'm about to take a drive over to his house (shouldn't be too far) and hand him a Ferneyhough CD.

Ferneyhough is rarely as rhythmically complex as Schuller's description, though.

At least, not in the scores I've seen.

[12tone.]

You think all this is complex?  Nothing is as complex as what this puts out!






























































































 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Gunther Schuller is an exceptionally learned and intelligent man, with a superb ear for rhythm (as a reading of his The Compleat Conductor will attest). I would put more credit in his judgments than in the opinions of several on this thread.

[Josquin des Prez]

All I know is that these rhythms led to a rich legacy of blues and jazz, etc.

Nobody is saying either wise, and from the get go i have already given my due to African's rhythmical mastery. However, that goes a long way from claiming African drumming, regardless of it's staggering virtuosity, just isn't as accomplished as anything produced by European art. It's not even a question of complexity (if that meant anything who would need Beethoven when we have Ferneyhough?), you cannot expect primitive societies to produce anything akin to a Bach for the same reason they cannot produce an Aristotle. How is this not common sense?

[Josquin des Prez]

haha...

& Schuller/Sales are off the mark, starting from the opening line...

He's partially wrong about the last line too, since there is a precedence of syncopation in western art. Not that it played any role whatsoever in the formation of Jazz, which is obviously based on African tradition (as if anybody ever doubted this).

[Josquin des Prez]

Gunther Schuller is an exceptionally learned and intelligent man, with a superb ear for rhythm (as a reading of his The Compleat Conductor will attest). I would put more credit in his judgments than in the opinions of several on this thread.

Gunther Schuller fails to mention that 'negroes' have a genetic advantage in reaction time, endurance and muscular strength, which is why today they dominate sports, even though they represent circa 10% of the population (do the math).

Of course, if he did mention that, he would be crucified faster then any African polyrhythm.

[MN Dave]

Not that it played any role whatsoever in the formation of Jazz, which is obviously based on African tradition (as if anybody ever doubted this).

It played a partial role. Jazz isn't purely African.

[Josquin des Prez]

It played a partial role. Jazz isn't purely African.

Jazz rhythm is based on African music, which is what i meant.

Not to mention, percussions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D3UL24Ogtk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrKShqNkcnI&feature=related

[jochanaan]

Gunther Schuller fails to mention that 'negroes' have a genetic advantage in reaction time, endurance and muscular strength, which is why today they dominate sports, even though they represent circa 10% of the population (do the math).

Of course, if he did mention that, he would be crucified faster then any African polyrhythm.

I hear the hammers pounding now...Wait!  That's really an African polyrhythm!

[lukeottevanger]

Beethoven, who wrote piano sonatas in 3/8, 12/8, 9/16 and 11/16, and string quartets in ; Bach, who wrote in 7/8 and 12/16; Chopin, who wrote in 2/8, 6/4 and 12/4; Bartok, who wrote in 7/4, 8/4, 9/4 and many others; Barber, who wrote in 9/4, 14/8, 18/8 and many others; Leos Janacek, who wrote in 13/8, Elgar, who wrote in 9/8; and Stravinsky, who wrote in too many bizarre signatures to count.

I can't quite understand why this has been allowed to pass uncommented upon. James's general point is good - between the incredible complexities of the ars subtilis and the mertical modulation of Carter, the irrational time signatures and multiple nested tuplets of Ferneyhough et al, the polytempi of Nancarrow lie reams of extraordinary rhythmical complexity in western music, quite unlike the polyrhythms and accumlating ostinati of African music in technique and in intention. An important thing to be noted is that western music developed a sophisticated rhythmic notation which allowed such complexities to be codified, written down, pondered upon, refined, practised etc. etc. The complexities of African music - and there are certainly complexities there - are of a different sort.

But this bizarre list of time signatures occurring in the classical canon leaves me baffled, for two reasons.

1) it presupposes that if a time signature has an unusual number on the top or the bottom, it is therefore ultra complex. Someone needs to break it to James that none of 3/8, 12/8, 9/16, 12/16, 2/8, 6/4, 12/4, 9/4 or 9/8 are complex or unusual in any way, at least not intrinsically (some of them are amongst the most common time signatures of all). Presenting them as if they are in themselves indicative of great rhythmical complexity, I'm afraid, betrays a real lack of musical understanding on a technical level.

2) where the hell is the Beethoven sonata movement in 11/16???  Or the Bach piece in 7/8? Why mention that Chopin wrote things in such straightforward time signatures as 2/8, 6/4 and 12/4 but not the much more obvious and unusual 5/4 that is found in his first piano sonata (though it's something of a failed experiment)?

a third point, too:

3) time signatures are not in themselves indicative of complexity, even when they are irregular or asymmetrically grouped, which most of James' examples are not. Complexity is more likely to be found in subdivisions of the metre, in changing meter, in changing tempo, in polyrhythms, or in combinations of these. Bach never wrote a piece in 7/8, then, AFAIK, but he did write a piece (the G major violin sonata) which begins by layering implied metres of 3/8, 3/4 and 4/4; Beethoven never wrote in 11/16 but there is enough complexity in the subdivisions of the beat in op 111 to keep most people busy for a while. Likewise Janacek's rhythmical complexity is best shown not in irregular time signatures (I don't recall the 13/8 James mentions, but there is a recurrent 17/16 in Mladi, and 5/4 is important in the Glagolitic Mass and the Intimate Letters quartet, for starters) but in the tricky polyrhythm 5:7:3 (also therefore the subdivisions of some of these - 6, 12 etc) also to be found in the Glagolitic. Or in the original version - it was too tricky for the orchestra who performed the premiere, so Janacek straightened it out into simple 3/4; supposed to be a temporary measure, unfortunately it remained in all scores and performances until recently, when the correct version began to be played again.