Finding One
The greatest challenge to the classically trained western musician—or to any musician, including jazz, rock, country, Latin, whatever field, who has studied in the west—in adjusting to traditional African music (and here I include the entire continent) is the oral nature of its preservation. Until the arrival of European ethnomusicologists, none of this music was written down. Free of the printed page and the necessary strictures of notation (systems for recording meter, rhythm, duration, pitch), African musicians created music of incredibly complex polyrhythms with little or no regard to where the beat would fall. When they dance, they find it with their feet. When they play, it floats freely. Lacking this frame of reference, it can be difficult for a western musician to figure out the meter of an African piece. During a drum circle experience yesterday, Kofi introduced us to a new bell rhythm, then asked us what meter it was in. 2, 3, 4, 6, 8—we all felt those meters, in one...