SMT/AMS conference, Agawu takes on the elephant question everyone asks and nobody seems to answer: The Metrical Underpinnings of African Time-Line Patterns Kofi Agawu (Princeton University) A salient feature of West and Central African ensemble music is the so-called time line—a short, distinctly shaped rhythmic pattern typically played by an iron bell as an ostinato within a polyrhythmic texture. Although the term itself was coined only Abstracts 193 in 196 by Nketia, the phenomenon it models—of a fundamentally cyclical pattern- ing in traditional African music—was already evident in earlier writings. Recent tech- nical studies (by Pressing, Rahn, Kubik, Agawu, London, Lehman, Burns and Tous- saint) have unveiled a wealth of information about the structural values of time lines. Significant gaps in our knowledge remain, however. Historical origins are obscure, geo-cultural distribution has never been firmly established, comparative studies are few, and a universe of time lines has not appeared. Moreover, some misleading con- cepts have crept into the literature in part because of the relative paucity of thick descriptions of individual time lines. Most vexing, perhaps, is the question of meter, which has too often been sought exclusively from patterns’ internal properties. In this paper, I urge attention to dance and movement as promising sites for under- standing time lines’ metrical underpinnings. Referring to a handful (with inter-onset interval patterns [--1----1], [--1--4], [--4--4], [1--1--], [--4], [--]), I illustrate their usage in diverse repertories, and establish the kinds of metrical re- sponse they engender. I argue that sounding and moving forms entail each other, and that the so-called regulative beat is not inferable from sound alone, but must be sought in patterns of embodiment. Meter, then, is not a mechanically retrievable quality but a nexus of attitudes, some internal to the music, others external to it.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:54:41 +0000