{"id":2696,"date":"2011-01-31T18:21:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T22:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2011-01-31T18:25:35","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T22:25:35","slug":"some-thoughts-on-rhythmic-cycles-and-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/some-thoughts-on-rhythmic-cycles-and-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on Rhythmic Cycles and Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late 1994 I was invited to give a lecture-demonstration on “world music” to a local cultural society in Pune. I talked about the similarities and differences in structure, conception and aesthetic values between, principally, Hindustani music, Ghanaian music and Jazz (since these are the musics I know best and love most); Vijaya and I demonstrated some ideas and patterns from these idioms, and I played a lot of examples from our collection. <\/p>\n

For instance, I wanted to demonstrate how a jazz standard is used as the starting point for improvisation \u2014 so Vijaya sang “Body and Soul,”<\/em> accompanying herself on guitar, and then played Coleman Hawkins’ version, which seemed to go over big.<\/p>\n

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Lecture-demonstrations are hard to predict, and the fellow who’d arranged this one had invited quite a few of his Hindustani rasika<\/em> friends. For the most part they listened carefully, nodding appreciatively and making sage remarks sotto voce<\/em> during our singing. Toward the end of the two-hour program, I started taking questions, and P______ B_______, an elderly vocalist, stood up. His question went more or less like this:<\/p>\n

“All of these examples you have played us, they are all in medium or fast speed. Isn’t it true that only in Hindustani music do we have the vilambit tempo?”<\/em><\/p>\n

This was another manifestation of the “only in India” concept, and as with all such, an answer requires considerable care in order to avoid either error or offense. <\/p>\n

I asked him: “When you listen to a khyal in vilambit ektaal, do you actually count beats so slowly? One every five seconds?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Immediately there was a corrective tumult. Nobody, it seemed, wanted me to believe that they really<\/em> felt a pulse that glacial; several people fell over themselves in their eagerness to disabuse me of my misunderstanding, and began reciting the rhythm syllables of a vilambit<\/em> cycle, showing me its internal subdivisions.:<\/p>\n

Audience members: <\/strong>“No, no! Of course not \u2014 each beat has divisions, like te \u2014 re \u2014 ke \u2014 ta \u2014…”<\/em><\/p>\n

Warren:<\/strong> “So in vilambit ektaal, each beat is actually a larger unit, not a pulse you actually feel?”<\/p>\n

Everybody agreed that this was so.<\/p>\n

Warren:<\/strong> “So, a vilambit ektaal cycle is basically a kind of framework that forces the singer to organize his ideas in time, and fit his improvisation to the structure?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Audience members:<\/strong> “Yes, yes, exactly!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Warren:<\/strong> “But somebody who knew nothing of Indian music could listen to a vilambit ektaal piece, hearing only the subdivisions, and might not understand how the larger structure is outlined?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Also yes.<\/p>\n

Warren: “This is exactly what happens when you listen to our jazz pieces. In much music of the jazz tradition, there is a basic laya, which moves at a comfortable tempo and is maintained by the drums \u2014 and there is another rhythm, which moves much more slowly, and is maintained by the piano by changing harmonies according to a preset structure. Because you are used to hearing the large structure played by the tabla, you find it difficult to understand a large structure outlined by a totally different instrument.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, the dialogue went on and on, and I’m not sure if I convinced anybody. After all, they sure didn’t hear any large structure in Hawk’s “Body and Soul!”<\/p>\n

But the point I’m getting at is that all musical cultures have some way of organizing their performances in larger time-frameworks, and that we won’t find them by looking (or listening) where they’re not. Both khyal singing and traditional jazz of Hawkins’ ilk rely constantly on large-scale structures; the first articulated by tabla, and called the tala, the second articulated by piano, guitar or other harmonic instrument, and called, well, “the form.” Western musicians have adopted the generic term “form” to denote any structural constructs which guide a performance over time: “Repeat the first four bars of the A section under the sax solo, but play the bridge straight through”<\/em> is a statement of form, as is “When the minuet begins, let’s remember to keep the tempo steady until we begin the decelerando at bar 37,”<\/em> as is “Hey, let’s have a couple of choruses of guitar solo!”<\/em><\/p>\n

In singing a khyal<\/em>, by contrast, the form is the rhythm, writ large. Note the following example, and note it well, for it embodies a crucial principle:<\/p>\n

Ektaal is a pattern of strokes played on the tabla; the same strokes, played in the same order, over and over and over. In fast and medium tempi, ektaal is a pleasant 6-beat or 12-beat groove, very catchy, easy to follow, each beat perhaps a third or quarter of a second; I just listened to a performance of madhya (medium) ektaal in which each complete rhythmic pattern took around four seconds to complete. When it’s performed in vilambit, however, ektaal’s drum strokes now occur once every four or five seconds \u2014 each cycle taking perhaps just under a minute!<\/p>\n

A groove slowed down by a factor of twenty becomes an important form for improvisation in khyal<\/em>. Now that’s<\/em> an expansion of time! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late 1994 I was invited to give a lecture-demonstration on “world music” to a local cultural society in Pune. I talked about the similarities and differences in structure, conception and aesthetic values between, principally, Hindustani music, Ghanaian music and Jazz (since these are the musics I know best and love most); Vijaya and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,7,23,9,310],"tags":[773,775,774],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-india","category-indian-music","category-jazz","category-music","category-personal","tag-ektaal","tag-form","tag-musical-conception"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}