Thought and play in musical rhythm : Asian, African, and Euro-American perspectives

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm seeks to explore representations and implicit as well as explicit theorizing of rhythm in relation to aspects of performance that resist objectification and/or are elastic. Authored by ethnomusicologists and music theorists, the chapters provide detailed case studies of art and vernacular musical traditions, historical and contemporary, in South, West, East, and Southeast Asia; West and North Africa; Europe; and North America. Together these case studies highlight the multiple dimensions of musical rhythm. Considering rhythm as a topic involves a set of terminologies, methods, assumptions, and efforts at generalizing and abstracting that together point to a larger dynamic in scholarly discourse between universalizing and local approaches to rhythm and music more generally. However, from a theoretical standpoint, the volume rejects the kind of abstraction that removes “rhythm” from musical process and experience. "Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm offers new understandings of musical rhythm through the analysis and comparison of diverse repertoires, performance practices, and theories as formulated and transmitted in speech or writing. Editors Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty address a productive tension in musical studies between universalistic and culturally relevant approaches to the study of rhythm. Reacting to commonplace ideas in (Western) music pedagogy, the essays explore a range of perspectives on rhythm: its status as an "element" of music that can be usefully abstracted from timbre, tone, and harmony; its connotations of regularity (or, by contrast, that rhythm is what we hear against the grain of background regularity); and its special embodiment in percussion parts. Unique among studies of musical rhythm, the collection directs close attention to ways performers and listeners conceptualize aspects of rhythm and questions many received categories for describing rhythm. By drawing the ear and the mind to tensions, distinctions, and aesthetic principles that might otherwise be overlooked, this focus on local concepts enables the listener to dispel assumptions about how music works "in general." Readers may walk away with a few surprises, become more aware of their assumptions, and/or think of new ways to shock their students out of complacency."--Site web de l'éditeur Cover 1 Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Figures and Tables 8 Preface 14 Contributors 16 About the Companion Website 18 Introduction 22 1. Thinking With and About Rhythm 41 2. Formative Processes of Durational Projection in “Free Rhythm” World Music 55 76 3. Meter and Rhythm in the Sung Poetry of Iranian Khorasan 75 96 4. An Approach to Musical Rhythm in Agbadza 100 121 5. Rhythm and the Physical 146 167 6. Modern Drum Solos Over Ostinatos 174 195 7. Temporal and Density Flow in Javanese Gamelan 196 217 8. Layers and Elasticity in the Rhythm of Noh Songs: “Taking Komi” and Its Social Background 212 233 9. Rhythmic Metamorphoses: Botanical Process Models on the Atlas Mountains of Morocco 232 253 10. Mapping a Rhythmic Revolution Through Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century Sources on Rhythm and Drumming in North India 253 274 11. Time Changes: Heterometric Music in South Asia 273 294 12. “Rhythm,” “Beat,” and “Freedom” in South Asian Musical Traditions 314 335 13. New Music— New Rhythm 337 358 Glossary 402 Bibliography 414 Index 436