Commentary on “Rhythm: Africa and Beyond”

[1] As the first issue of Music Theory Online (MTO) to be dedicated in its entirety to structural analysis of African and African-influenced music, this publications stands as a milestone in the field. It is not the first time that Music Theory Online has included articles addressing world music (c.f. Anku 2000, Martinez 2000), but the issue confirms a renewed surge of academic interest in structural analyses of non-Western music. Most importantly that surge of interest is reaching beyond the field of ethnomusicology to include theorists and music scholars in general.[2] In February 2009 the University of Amherst hosted a much-celebrated conference dedicated to "Analytical Approaches to World Music," an effort that has led to the formation of a new journal dedicated to the topic. Readers working outside the field of ethnomusicology may not realize that after 1960 the discipline's growing emphasis on practice and cultural studies pushed structural analysis, in tandem with comparative study, to the periphery of the field (see Nettl 2010 for details on this history). Music theory and ethnomusicology seemed destined to travel separate paths until recently, when the "trial-separation" now appears to be headed towards reconciliation rather than divorce (c.f. Blum 2009). The new enthusiasm for the examination of musical structure confirmed by the Amherst conference, now recurring biennally, may have resulted simply from a growing awareness that scholars now have at their disposal a rich array of in-depth studies of music in their specific cultural contexts. That conference was preceded by a series of summer seminars and pioneering courses in comparative music theory, taught from a global perspective, led by Brenda Romero and Victoria Lindsey Levine at the University of Colorado and Colorado College dating back to the 1990s. Some of that work received sponsorship from the College Music Society(1) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The appearance of Analytical Studies in World Music in 2006, a collection of case-studies edited by Michael Tenzer, brought an even larger public to structural analysis. Even then MTO led the way; Tenzer's article "Theory and Analysis of Melody in Balinese Gamelan," appeared well before that in the August 2000 issue of this very journal. Tenzer's second book in this area, Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music, co-edited with John Roeder, is coming to press on the heels of this issue of MTO in 2011.[3] As co-authors of this review, we find that our own work and experiences offer further evidence of the timeliness of this MTO focus. As a percussionist and ethnomusicologist with expertise in the traditions of drumming and gyil music in Ghana, Michael Vercelli brings a performer's perspective to this review and notes the utility of this collection for his teaching as Director of the World Music Performance Center at West Virginia University. Janet Sturman, whose work as an ethnomusicologist includes studies of Afro-diasporic traditions and whose service as a board member of the College Music Society includes efforts to build bridges between disciplines, is pleased to note the coincidence of this publication with the recent establishment of the doctoral program in music theory with an emphasis in ethnomusicology at the University of Arizona.[4] Like the composite parts of a well-rehearsed African percussion ensemble, the five articles that comprise this issue interlock in many ways. All the authors are respected scholars with a history of previous publication and performance credits. Three of them directly address African musical practice, while the other two move our attention to musics influenced by African aesthetics and practices. In "Yewevu in the Metric Matrix," David Locke examines five selections from the religious drumming repertory of West Africa's Ewe people, who are situated in the modern nations of Ghana and Togo. In "Rhythmic Feel as Meter: Non-Isochronous Beat Subdivision in Jembe Music from Mali," Rainer Polak examines a different West African tradition, focusing on aspects of performance repertories associated with the goblet-shaped hand drum known as jembe; while in "Temporal Geometries of an African Music," Martin Scherzinger takes the reader to Southern Africa with his examination of temporal organization in the repertories associated with the mbira and other lamellophone instruments in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. …