RHYTHMIC STRUCTURES IN THE AFRICAN CONTINUUM Dr. Julian Gerstin Keene State College For several decades, scholars have discussed the continuity of musical structures in African and African Diasporic music, particularly in the realm of rhythm (e.g., Waterman 1952; Wilson 1974). However, I believe the analysis of underlying similarities in this realm can be pushed much further than it has been. We ought to be able to name and describe basic structures of African and Diasporic rhythm. And we ought to do so in an analytically powerful way. That is, instead of a few banal generalities like “syncopation” or “polyrhythm,” we need well-developed concepts that guide us to detailed analysis and deep understanding of specific pieces of music. Our account of concepts underlying the whole should also illuminate the innumerable ways in which different musical styles develop different musical possibilities (Koetting 1970). Think, for instance, of what Brazilian samba does with suspended rhythms, or what Ewe ensembles do with 3 v. 2 permutations, or of the development of swing in African American music. These are very different musical achievements. And yet there is continuity between them: historical, social, and musical. We ought to be able to compare them. But—and this “but” is the subject of my talk—if we look for underlying structures, we need to look at the whole of Africa and its diaspora. The immediate problem is that academic studies of African rhythm have focused on a relatively few cultures. The Ewe of Ghana, a relatively small ethnic group, have amassed a huge literature (e.g., Chernoff 1979; Jones 1959; Koetting 1970; Locke 1982; Pantaleoni 1972). Other groups commonly studied include the Akan and Ga of Ghana; the Yoruba of Nigeria; the Mande in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea; and in the New World primarily Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil. These particular cultures have been readily accessible to U.S. and European researchers, and expert musicians from those cultures have been more active in the U.S. and Europe. As a result, analysis often proceeds from what has become an implicit bias towards these cultures. They get taken for granted as an African norm (which in this paper I call the “Ewe-Cuban complex”). I became aware of this tendency because after many years studying and performing music of Ghana, Cuba, and Brazil, I spent two years living and doing research in Martinique, in the French Antilles. I found Martinican music to be familiar yet different, in ways that at first felt awkward and uneasy. But as I learned more, my feelings adjusted, and my concepts of the music expanded to take into account both my older models and newer experiences. So my method today is: (1) set up a concept from a long list of general African rhythmic principles; (2) show how that concept works in familiar cases such as Ghana and Cuba; (3) show how it doesn’t seem to work in Martinique; and (4) deepen and strengthen the general concept by reworking it to include the Martinican case.

I’ll do this with three different aspects of performance: dancing, orientation, and ternary rhythm. Another point: In Africa and the Diaspora, dance, song, and instrumental accompaniment (on drums or other instruments) form a whole (Thompson 1966). If any of these three arts is primary, it’s dancing, so if any gets preferential treatment in the analysis, it should be dance. In other words, if we have a question about interpreting music, we should look to the dancing for help. But more generally, a good analysis ought to reveal how dance, song and music interact (Gerstin 1998). Finally, we should also take indigenous analysis into account whenever possible. I was not often able to get Martinican dancers or drummers, traditional or schooled, to analyze the issues raised below. Inasmuch as they did, I’ve taken their views into account.

1. DANCE STEPS, 3-3-2, AND THEIR COMPOSITES Most African and Diasporic movement is in duple meter, and the most common phrasing is four main beats. The meter remains duple whether the beats are divided binarily (giving us 2/4 or 4/4) or ternarily (giving us 6/8 or 12/8). The way you tell this (besides asking the performers) is by watching dancers. The main dance movements (weight-bearing movements) are in the great majority of cases duple. After all, your body is bilaterally symmetrical and you’ve got two feet.

Almost as often as moving on all four beats, dancers step on 3 beats of 4, with a pause or small movement on the remaining beat. This allows dancers to change direction: L-R-L (pause) R-L-R (pause). Often, such steps start on beat 1, and go “1-2-3-pause.” But it’s equally common for steps to begin halfway through the phrase and resolve on the first beat (Chernoff 1979: 56): 3-4-1 (pause). Beat 2 is a rest or minor motion, or in some cases a counter-motion, a tension against the on-beat steps on 3-4-1. I call this pattern “3-4-1.”

If the movement is doubletime, the same principle holds: three movements and a pause. The steps can begin on beat 1 and go 1+2, 3+4. This is the case for the most common binary dance steps in Martinique:

Again, it’s equally common to begin in the middle and resolve at the end, in this case on beats 3 and 1: 2+3, 4+1.

Now we need to look at how these steps combine with music. In all these styles the music is organized by a timeline (Kubik 1998; Rahn 1986) or, as I prefer to call it, a guide pattern, which both musicians and dancers match against in order to keep their place (Jones 1959; Pantaleoni 1972). In binary time, the 3-3-2 pattern is widespread in itself and, as we’ll see, is the basis for additional patterns. 3-3-2 is known as tresillo in Latin American musicology, but the pattern isn’t unique to Latin America and I don’t want to privilege a Latin American viewpoint by using that term, so I’ll stick with the culturally neutral term “3-3-2.” When dancers dance on main beats, their steps combine with 3-3-2 to create the composite rhythm of Example 5.

This composite is called habanera in Spanish-speaking Latin America: the rhythm of Havana. Again I don’t want to privilege a given musical culture, but this time I have yet to come up with an alternate name, so for the purposes of this talk I’ll stick with “habanera.” Just don’t think that this means it originates in Cuba. Here’s an African example: the Ewe dance kinka again, with the 3-3-2 guide pattern played on bell, the basic dance steps on the four main beats, and a rattle accompaniment that combines the two:

Dancing on either 1-2-3 or 3-4-1 against a 3-3-2 guide also gives you habanera, in the first or second half of the phrase, respectively.

Dancing doubletime 2+3, 4+1 creates habanera in both halves.

Dancing doubletime 1+2, 3+4 gives you a composite that has habanera in it, if you ignore one note in each half-measure (the note with the arrow):

So far all these common dance steps give you a nice habanera in combination with the 3-3-2 guide pattern. But let’s look more closely at what happens in Martinique.

The usual binary guide pattern in Martinique is called tibwa (a.k.a. cinquillo in Spanish-speaking Latin America) and is played with a pair of sticks, also called tibwa. This pattern is an elaboration of 3-3-2, as the sticking makes clear: the right hand plays 3-3-2, the left adds the remaining notes.

As noted above, the common Martinican dance steps bèlè and bidjin are on 1+2, 3+4; drummers accompany them with an imitative rhythm also on 1+2, 3+4.

This combination is where we can begin to sense a difference between Martinican dancing and styles from elsewhere. The strong combination of dance and drum beginning on beats 1 and 3 is not something I have found in many other African and Caribbean styles. In Ewe or Cuban traditions you get some doubletime 1+2, 3+4 dancing, but not so heavily reinforced on drums. Yet this doesn’t fully explain the difference in feel. To dig deeper, let’s look at another group of Martinican steps. These steps are only two beats long (or in the case of djaka, just one beat). Drummers accompany all of them with a pattern called danmyé:

The danmyé drum pattern is habanera. But it’s habanera starting on beats 2 and 4 instead of on beats 1 and 3.

Since this drum pattern is habanera, it contains 3-3-2, but again this is 3-3-2 starting on beats 2 and 4.

The 3-3-2 inside the danmyé drum accompaniment clashes with the 3-3-2 of the guide pattern.

This clash between drum and guide pattern truly troubled me at first. To hear two conflicting 3-3-2’s, and to hear habanera in the “wrong place,” was both confusing and irritating. It was very much like hearing two clashing tonalities played together when you’re not expecting it. Such a clash might occur in Ewe or Cuban music, but it would be in an accompaniment part, not the basic rhythm. Let’s return to the first group of Martinican steps we considered, biguine and bèlè, danced on 1+2, 3+4. Above, I mentioned that this pattern occurs in other places, but in the Martinican context clashes more strongly with the 3-3-2 in the guide pattern. Now we can see why. These dance steps, and their identical drum accompaniment, are part of habanera on beats 2 and 4:

Note that this is the same as the combination of habanera on beats 1 and 3 with dancing on 2+3, 4+1—with a different starting place.

In both cases, the dancing is an expression of habanera. In the Martinican case it’s habanera on beats 2 and 4. The alternate habanera in the danmyé pattern of Examples 13-16 helps us see that this is the underlying feel. Meanwhile the guide pattern (tibwa) continues playing 3-3-2 on beats 1 and 3. The two feels clash. In an Ewe or Cuban

context dancers can move on 1+2, 3+4 without it feeling at so much at odds with a 3-3-2 in the guide. But Martinican rhythm is infused with the feel of an alternate starting point in the drumming and dancing. In this context, the dance steps and drumming contrast to the guide. To summarize this extended example, we can’t take the Ewe/Cuban/Nigerian, etc., sense of 3-3-2 or habanera as basic to African and Diasporic rhythm, even though it’s extremely widespread. We have to look beneath it to more fundamental concepts: the 3-3-2 pattern set polyrhythmically against main beats, but not necessarily always in the same relationship; dancing in 3 out of 4 places, but not necessarily resolving on beat 1 (nor, in doubletime, resolving on beats 1 and 3); combinations of these that create habanera (and other widespread composites I haven’t gone into), but sometimes starting in different places, sometimes with parts reinforcing one another, sometimes with parts contrasting. In fact, even in the Ewe/Cuban complex there are varied approaches. For instance, the basic “salsa” step in Cuba (where they call it son, not salsa) is a doubletime, 3-out-of-four move with yet another starting point: +2+, +4+. This version may look anti-intuitive, but it’s not: it begins and ends on the first and last notes of its guide pattern (arrows). The dancers don’t keep time by counting; they keep their place by matching steps to the guide.

This idea of Cuban son steps resolving on notes of the guide pattern alerts us to the importance of the guide, which takes us to our next topic.

2. ORIENTATION Cuba’s son clave is a different sort of guide pattern than 3-3-2 or Martinique’s tibwa. Those are two beats long; son clave is four beats long, with two distinctive halves or “sides.” This four-beat type is widespread in African and the Diaspora. It has many variations, but there is an underlying structure: 3-3-2 (or a close cognate) in one half and, in the other, a selection of 8th notes.

Either side can vary, and there are endless examples; here’s a few to get the idea:

You’re familiar with the first example. This is son clave in Cuba, but also kpanlogo in Ghana and congo in Brazilian candomble; let’s not make the mistake of labeling it “clave” just because that’s the most familiar example. Note that this pattern resolves on beat 4. In contrast, the guide pattern for gahu, an Ewe dance, remains rhythmically suspended on the offbeat 8th notes of the straight side. Konpa direk, from Haiti, varies the 3-3-2 by dropping the last note; it includes both beats 3 and 4 on the straight side for a more grounded feel. For our purposes, the important thing is that there are two sides and they have contrasting feels. 3-3-2 takes you into the edgy realm of 16th note offbeats. The straight side can be rhythmically suspended on offbeat 8th notes, but without the offbeat 16th note it’s not as suspended as the 3-3-2. So this type of guide pattern sets up an alternation between its two halves, with a different feel in each half. Tension/release; call/response; suspension and grounding. Dance and melody are oriented towards this alternation; that is, they match up to one side or the other. In particular, the 3-4-1 dance step corresponds to the more grounded straight side:

Or perhaps I should state this the other way around: 3-4-1 dance steps demand oriented patterns in their musical accompaniment. Similarly, the offbeat 16th of the 3-3-2 side expresses the fast, small movements that often cluster around beat 2:

The effect of these two distinct sides, or what Cubans call clave (Mauleón 1993; Washburne 1997), is pretty widely recognized these days even in American musicology. If I’d just called it “clave” to begin with most of you would have known what I was talking about. But I see no reason to be Cubano-centric when this effect occurs in so many musical cultures. We might just as well use the equivalent French Antillean term compas (or in Creole, konpa). But rather than privilege any particular musical culture, I opt for the neutral word “orientation.” Melodies are also oriented. In practice, this is usually obvious because melodies are rhythmically structured around the notes of the guide pattern, and they very often follow 3-4-1 to resolve on beat 1. Here’s a Cuban example that people sing either on the 3-4-1, or starting a 16th note earlier and more strictly following the notes of the guide: EXAMPLE 23

Beginning this song in what may seem the obvious place, on beat 1, would violate the rhythmic feel set up by the guide pattern. Some guide patterns appear not to be oriented. They are simply two beats long, 3-3-2 or a cognate repeated over and over. Nonetheless, dance movements may still be four beats long, and so are accompanying instrumental patterns as well as songs. In these cases the guides are treated as two-beat patterns repeated, for a total of four beats. Drum accompaniments and songs are oriented. For example, in the Ewe dance kinka, the bell is simply 3-3-2. But in Example 24, you can see that the basic dance step has two differentiated halves, one beginning on the left and the other on the right. It is oriented. So the singing and drumming are also oriented. An orientation is set by the lead drummer or by a song at the beginning of performance, and continues unchanged, even though in kinka the dance steps, drum patterns and songs all vary frequently. When dancers leave the basic step to do something fancier, they return to it in the same orientation. The three drum patterns I’ve shown here are all busy in the first half, while their second halves are relatively quiet and based on four straight 8th notes. (Regular note heads are open tones, x’s are muted.)

Kinka songs are oriented as well. In this example (lyrics from Gorlin 2000: 127), both call and response begin with four even 8th notes on the back half of the measure. (The call actually has a pick-up into those four notes, on “A-.”) The four even 8ths create an implicit 3-4-1. In addition, the call, and the first phrase of the response, end with “ble vio” on the first two notes of the initial 3-3-2 (as indicated by arrows). In other words, underlying this song is the archetypical structure of 3-3-2 followed by even 8ths. EXAMPLE 25

But although orientation is widespread in dance, song, and instrumental accompaniment of Ghana, Nigeria, Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil, we should not assume it is universal in African/Diasporic performance. Things are different in Martinique. In the bèlè genre, in binary time, most songs are four or eight beats long. The shorter songs cram both call and response into two tibwa patterns, or four beats: EXAMPLE 26

More often, call and response each take four main beats (two tibwa patterns), so the whole song is eight beats long: EXAMPLE 27

This appears to correspond to the Ewe-Cuban model; as in the kinka example above, we have a two-beat guide pattern but four- or eight-beat songs. But let’s take a look at the dance. Back in Examples 12 and 13 we saw some steps that take four beats to complete (bèlè, bidjin) and others that take two beats (aléviré, grajé, tonbé lèvé) or just one (djaka). None of these steps are oriented. You might think that in the four-beat steps, at least, dancers would stick to an orientation, but they don’t. They begin dancing on either side of the song, and the drummers follow them: EXAMPLE 28 Starting the dance on either side of the phrase (beats 1 or 3)

Dancers also stop on either side of the song (often with an emphatic landing on two feet that I’ve marked RL), and again drummers follow them:

EXAMPLE 29 Stopping the dance on either side of the phrase (beats 1 or 3)

Martinican dancers and drummers respect the sanctity of the guide pattern: they stop or start where it begins, on beats 1 or 3, never on beats 2 or 4. Even so, by starting and stopping sometimes at the beginning of a phrase and sometimes halfway through, they change their relationship to the song. To me, as a novice bèlè dancer, this was like dancing to a song while ignoring its melody and phrasing. To broaden this point a bit: as a drummer used to accompanying songs from all over Africa and the Diaspora—salsa, jazz, funk, rock, highlife, afrobeat, reggae, samba, soca, and others—I’d long since learned to think in groups of twos: two beats, four beats, one bar, two bars, four bars, eight, sixteen, thirty-two. But drumming and dancing for bèlè, I had to let that go. This was fully as disorienting as the issue I discussed earlier, beginning habanera in the “wrong” place. It would be too easy to say, “Ewe and Cuban music is in 4/4, Martinican in 2/4.” You’d have to ignore the Martinican songs, which are mainly in 4/4. Also, there are two dances (bèlè pitché and kalenda ticanot) where the dance steps really are four beats long and oriented, adhering strictly to the song. Any full theory of African and Diasporic rhythm, or even just Martinican rhythm, has to take all these variations into account. For the time being I suggest this formula: orientation is a widespread principle in African/Diasporic music, but some cultures develop it more fully, others do not.

3. TERNARY RHYTHMS No analysis of African or Caribbean rhythm would be complete without consideration of ternary as well as binary rhythms. Here again most analysis in the literature derives from Cuban, Haitian, Yoruban, Ewe, or similar models. Most of the music and dance patterns are in 12, and the dancing divides them into four triplets. Dancers most often move on all four main beats or on 3-4-1:

It’s common for non-Africans to hear 12/8 with six beats, but in the African context that’s a variation on the basic feel.

As the presence of 3-4-1 steps suggests, 12/8 musical patterns are usually oriented, with an edgier half and a more grounded half using the main beats. Here’s a common guide pattern that shows the two sides clearly. Notice the tension and rhythmic suspension of the first half, with its three notes contrasting against the two underlying beats (hemiola, cf. Brandel 1973), as well as the grounding of the second half, with beats 3 and 4 leading back to 1.

In short, the basic structure of ternary rhythms replicates that of binary. They are alternative expressions of the same underlying idea. But in Martinique the structure of ternary rhythms is different, or perhaps I should say it’s ambiguous. Compare the most common binary guide pattern, tibwa, to the most common ternary guide (also called tibwa). It’s the same pattern plus two more notes. The binary pattern lies over two main beats, and dancers and musicians alike treat the ternary pattern as adding one more beat, in other words as 3/4:

Both folkloric dances (bélia, bèlè marin) as well as the popular style mazouk treat this rhythm as 3/4.

The 3/4 of these dances is quite distinct from the 12/8 that predominates in ternary rhythm in Ghana, Cuba, Haiti and the other familiar places. In fact, in the dance djouba, from Haiti, you find the same pattern as Martinique’s ternary tibwa, but treated as 12/8 instead of 3/4:

So far we have a found clear contradiction between Martinican and other, more widespread treatments of ternary time. However, to make things more ambiguous, Martinique has another folkloric dance, gran bèlè, which can be seen as either triple or duple meter. Example 36 shows the basic step, a right-left alternation with the right foot on the three main beats of 3/4. However, the same steps can also be felt as two groups of three, suggesting an underlying duple meter.

Other gran bèlè steps also suggest duple meter. Aléviré (which we already saw in the dance bèlè, in Example 13) may be done with the left foot landing lightly on quarter-note triplets, the stronger right foot suggesting duple meter as in Example 37. It may also be done with the left foot landing more strongly on dotted quarters. Now we have the four main beats familiar from the Ewe-Cuban complex.

Overall, in Martinique, the three-main-beats feel seems to be the main one, four-main-beats a variation. But in some cases this is ambiguous. Perhaps such ambiguity is part of Martinican rhythmic sensibility, in contrast to other African and Diasporic styles where the distinction is sharp.

CONCLUSION

Martinican rhythms diverge from the West African-Diasporic traditions discussed in much ethnomusicological analysis. However, these differences should not dissuade us from attempting a comparative analysis of African/Diasporic rhythm. They require us both to broaden the familiar model so as to take in more possibilities, and to sharpen it, to get more specific about how it works in certain instances. Analysis should both allow us to compare different styles, and to deepen our understanding of unique styles. It should point us to unities that have kept African music alive for hundreds of years through the trials of the Diaspora, and yet keep regenerating new, beautiful, creative musical forms. I especially urge analysts to investigate dance and song as well as instrumental accompaniment, since in Africa and its Diaspora all three intertwine in performance.

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