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The Invention of The Invention of "African Rhythm" Author(s): Kofi Agawu Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 48, No. 3, Music Anthropologies and Music Histories (Autumn, 1995), pp. 380-395 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3519832 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 15:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and American Musicological Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.229.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:03:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Invention of "African Rhythm"* BYKOFI AGAWU Inventing "AfricanRhythm" THE NOTIONthat the distinctive quality of African music lies in its rhythmic structure, and consequently that the terms Aftican musicand African rhythm are often interchangeable, has been so persistently thematized in writings about African music that it has by now assumed the status of a commonplace, a topos. And so it is with the related ideas that African rhythms are complex, that Africans are essentially rhyth- mic people, and that Africans are different from "us"-from Euro- Americans. Consider a few of these characterizations. The eleventh-century Christian physician and theologian Ibn Butlan, in a tract entitled "On How to Buy Slaves and How to Detect Bodily Defects," claimed that "if a black were to fall from the sky to the earth, he would fall in rhythm."' In other words, even while facing certain death-speaking as metaphorically as Butlan did-blacks (especially black women) continued to exhibit an essential and irreducible rhythmic disposition. The association of dancing with death, the racialist conferral of particular sensibilities on particular groups of people, and the con- struction of African rhythm as complex, superior, but ultimately incomprehensible: these and other implications of Ibn Butlan's casual remark are found reproduced in diverse ways and with diverse accents throughout the history of discourse about African music.' *I wish to thank Daniel Avorgbedor, Stephen Blum, Arnd Bohm, Olakunle George, Martin Hatch, Patrick Mensah, Roger Parker, Ronald Radano, and Chris- topher Waterman for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. 'Paraphrased by Amnon Shiloah in The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings (c. 9oo-900oo): Descriptive Catalogueof Manuscriptsin Librariesof Europe and the USA (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1979), 160. ' This history is yet to be written, but some of its materials may be gleaned from, among other sources, Zentralafrika, ed. Jos. Gansemans et al. (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag fiir Musik, 1986); Westafrika,ed. Gerhard Kubik et al. (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag fiir Musik, 1989); A. M. Jones, "Drums Down the Centuries," AfricanMusic i, no. 4 (1957): 4-1o; Walter Hirschberg, "EarlyHistorical Illustrations of West and Central African Music," AfricanMusic 4, no. 3 (1969): 6-18; Kofi Agawu, This content downloaded from 91.229.229.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:03:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE INVENTION OF "AFRICANRHYTHM" 381 Leaping from the eleventh century to our own, we encounter the following. Erich von Hornbostel describes a piece of Africanxylophone music in which he found one of the parts "syncopatedpast our compre- hension."3W. E. F. Ward, writing in 1927, finds "the basis of African rhythm ... to be so completely differentfrom that of Europeansthat the European system of bar lines is foreign to African music." (Incidentally, the use of bar lines remains one of the most contested issues in transcriptionsof African music.) Echoing the medieval Arabic writer quoted earlier, Ward further claims that "Africans have not merely cultivated their sense of rhythm far beyond ours, but must have started with a superiorsense of rhythm."4 In the inauguralissue of this JOURNAL, RichardA. Waterman opens his study " 'Hot' Rhythm in Negro Music" with the claim that "those who have had opportunity to listen to Negro music in Africa or the New World have been almost unanimous in agreeing that its most strikingaspect is its rhythm."5And the Reverend A. M. Jones, writing with characteristicenthusiasm and confidence in 1949, declares that "if anyone were to ask, 'What is the outstanding characteristicof African music?', the answer is, 'A highly developed rhythm.' " Furthermore, "the African is far more skilled at drumming rhythms than we are-in fact our banal pom, pom, pom on the drums is mere child'splay comparedwith the complicatedand delicateinterplay of rhythms in African drumming."6 Any suspicion that these are simply "older" characterizations of African music (they were all written before 1950) is quickly laid to rest by the continuing reproduction, in slightly-but only slightly- sanitized form, of the same motif. Helen Myers writes in a reference article that "rhythmic complexity is the hallmark of African music."7 "RepresentingAfrican Music," Critical Inquiry 18 (1992): 245-66; andEric S. Charry, "MusicalThought, History, and Practiceamong the Mandeof West Africa"(Ph.D. diss., PrincetonUniversity, 1992). In an unpublishedpaper, Stephen Blum, citing BernardLewis (Raceand Slaveryin the MiddleEast: An HistoricalInquiry [London: OxfordUniversity Press, 199o0]),notes that "theMedieval Arabic literature on racial stereotypes provided many of the images that were subsequentlydeployed by Europeanand Americanwriters." 3 Erichvon Hornbostel,"African Negro Music,"Africa I (1928): 52. 4 W. E. F. Ward,"Music in the Gold Coast,"Gold Coast Review 3 (1927): 203-4, 222. s RichardA. Waterman, " 'Hot' Rhythm in NegroMusic," this JOURNAL I (1948): 24A. M. Jones, African 24? Musicin NorthernRhodesia and Some OtherPlaces, The Occasional Papers of the Rhodes-LivingstoneMuseum (Livingstone,Northern Rhodesia,1949), 13, 7-8. 7 Helen Myers,"African Music," in TheNew Oxford Companion toMusic, ed. Denis Arnold(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1:28. This content downloaded from 91.229.229.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:03:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 382 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY Among the "pervasiveprinciples" of sub-SaharanAfrican musical style recognized by Bruno Nettl, "complexdevelopment of rhythm"is judged to be "most prominent."8 Francis Bebey identifies "an instinct for rhythm" among Africans,while Philip Gbeho, like Ward, believes that "where rhythm is concerned, the African is ahead of the European."9 Henry Weman, in a book entitled AfricanMusic and the Churchin Africa, states that "the African is supreme in his mastery of rhythm; we might even begin to speak about contrapuntalrhythm in this connection, since independent voices appearas rhythmic lines and weave a strangepattern of rhythmic excitement and vigour.""' Leopold Senghor, principal architect of the negritude movement, devoted several publications to demonstrating a specific and uniquely black rhythmic sensibility. He identifies "imageryand rhythm [as] the two fundamentalcharacteristics of the African-Negro Style," arguing that "nowhere else has rhythm reigned as despotically[as in BlackAfrica]."" Again, in a set of guidelines for adjudicatingmusic festivalsin Africa,judges were told that "complex- ity of rhythm is often a fair guide to the authenticity of an African song."" A review by the Reverend Dr. Brian Kingslakeof A. M. Jones's magnum opus, Studiesin Afiican Music,includes a colorful descriptionof African rhythm as strange and complex: [Jones's book] introducesus into a strange enchantedworld of pure sound, made up almost entirelyof complexpatterns of drum and gong taps.To call these "complex"is an understatement;the very thought of them makesone dizzy!Imagine two drummersplaying together in cross rhythm,3 against2. Now staggerthem so that theyare out of phase.Now add two other drummers,and a singer, and clap accompaniment,all rhythmicallyat cross purposesand out of phasewith one another.'3 Finally, Kwabena Nketia, the most prominent African scholar of African music, justifies the apparent poverty of other dimensional 8 Bruno Nettl, "Africa," in The Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Randel (Cambridge,Mass., and London:The BelknapPress of HarvardUniversity Press, 1986), 18. 9 Francis Bebey, African Music: A People'sArt, trans. Josephine Bennett (New York: LawrenceHill, 1975), 17; and Philip Gbeho, "Musicof the Gold Coast," Music no. I African I, (1954): 63. 'oHenry Weman, African Music and the Churchin Africa, trans. Eric J. Sharpe (Uppsala:Svenska Institutet f6r Missionsforskning,1960), 58. " Leopold Senghor, "Africa-Negro Aesthetics," Diogenes 16 (1956): 37, 30. " "MusicFestivals in Africa:Notes for the Guidanceof Adjudicators,"African Music 2, no. I (1958): 62. '" Rev. Dr. Brian Kingslake, review of Studies in African Music, by A. M. Jones, no. 2 African Music 2, (1959): 85. This content downloaded from 91.229.229.129 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:03:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE INVENTION
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