Clave and the Caribbean Rhythms

Notes on Clave Rhythm in Caribbean Music

Origins

• When Africans and Europeans encountered one another in the Americas, the first as slaves and the second either as masters or as despised underdogs, in many cases scarcely better off than the slaves, these musical practices underwent profound modification on both sides to give us that kind of music we call Afro-American. Small (Small 46)

• Perhaps the most conspicuous sorts of Africanismevident in Caribbean music consists more of general principles than specific elements. (Bilby et al. 7)

Transitions

• In the survey of the Caribbean as a ‘musical region’, Kenneth Bilby (1985) has argued that its musics are characterized by ‘simultaneous newness and oldness’ and area complex syncretic’ or ‘creolized’ mixture of African and European (folk and art) elements. The forms of music found in the region have their ‘feet planted in both musical worlds yet belong to neither’ (Bilby, 1985: 194) (Negus 116)

• Bilby …varying degree of synthesis … ‘purely European derived’ to ‘neo-African’. (Negus 117 )

Deep Structure

• A related characteristic is the technique of building a piece on repetition, especially of a short musical cell, or ostinato. (Biilbey, Largey and Manuel 9)

• Pressing....African and Afro-Latin percussionists generally recognize that some patterns from 12/8/ and 4/4 meters may be used in either rhythmic framework (e.g. C.K. Ladzekpo, Pertout). Furthermore, a number of most clearly African-derived Latin percussion patterns exist in alternate 6/8 or 2/4 versions, or have such versions of the same pattern sounding simultaneously [italics mine]. This is found, for example in the Cuban guaguanco and bata drumming styles, in Brazilian candomble, and in the rhumba columbia [sic] (Pertout). (ibid.: 43) (Lehman 21)

• Revealing a synthesis of different musical ideas about the organization of time, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-North and South American polyrhythm is not held together by the African timeline; rather, its rhythmic group work within the context of meter. (Wade 76)

Clave

• In other words, a single note may, even in absence of any actually played clave, nonetheless be perceived as implying not only such pattern in general, but also suggesting a particular dynamic orientation within this framework. (Lehman 23)

• In these cases, the decision whether a particular note or short phrase is “out-of-clave”, or cruzado (crossed), may at times hinge on the position of just one attack in relation to the established clave direction. For instance, an accent played on “3” of a given bar usually suggests that this bar correlates with the‘2-side’ of a clave cycle. (Lehman 24)

• Certainly, musical conventions and cliches central to this genre also help establish these expectations and often build on or reinforce general syntactic tendencies. (Lehman 24)

Clave Audiences

• Important for our discussion will also be the idea that a particular musical syntax is congruent with a particular community of listeners, constituting a shared music contract as it has been called above. The perception of a ‘clave’ as a paradigmatic syntactical feature of much African music and in the diaspora is thus like “every syntactic field . . . a construct with an ideological determined basis . . . there is no such thing as a passive or even neutral ground. The fields associated with all signifying processes are the products of culture and reflect ideologically determined value systems enforced by explicit or implicit rules (1.3.12-13).” (Lehman 34)

• And if we may recall Swain’s (1995: 303) statement that a “shared syntax . . .resides not just in the musical productions . . . but is in the nature of an agreement between all members, producing or non-producing, of the musical community,”it becomes apparent that the proposition of a “syntax of clave” may be seen as a culturally unifying set of cognitive schemata, which define the boundaries of such a community. (Lehman 61)

Groove

• CK: Amiri Barak’s “changing same. (Keil and Feld 23)

• Underneath the often heavily orchestrated piece marked by complex melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic gestures lies an enlivening continuum or, in the African American vernacular, "groove." (Breckenridge 35)

References

• Breckenridge, S. L. "Grooving Body Movements Through Bass Lines: A Tradition of African American Music." The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3, Fall 2000, pp. 175-82, 2002.

• Lehmann, B. and M. "The syntax of 'clave'--perception and analysis of meter in Cuban and African music." Diss. Tufts University, 2002.

• Keil, C. and S. Feld. Music grooves : essays and dialogues. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.

• Manuel, P., K. M. Bilby, et al. Caribbean currents : Caribbean music from rumba to reggae. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1995.

• Sethares, W. A. Rhythm and transforms. Berlin; London, Springer, 2007.

• Small, C. Music of the common tongue : survival and celebration in Afro-American music. London; New York, J. Calder ; Riverrun Press, 1987