[Tango-L] 5/8s

[Jeff Gaynor]

Konstantin Zahariev wrote:

>Dear Igor,
>
>Someone wrote a whole PhD on these drum lines (or was it D.Mus.); I
>just have to find my notes and the materials at home. Will follow up
>soon.
>
>Konstantin
>Victoria, Canada
>
>
>On 7/18/07, Igor Polk <ipolk at virtuar.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Konstantin wrote:
>>
>>.. alternating or mixing 3-long and 2-long rhythm blocks is
>>something common in African drum lines) which was something
>>incomprehensible, with its implied 5/8 time signature, to western
>>Europe.
>>    
>>
Nope. It was not popular because it was not regular.  Heck, the Russians 
were doing it and Luigi Madonis (1690 - 1767), a pupil of Vivaldi wrote 
a piece in 5/8. Many, many great old hymns and chants are in anything 
other than regular meter. One that pops into my mind is a choral  by 
Phillip Nikolai (1556 - 1608) in 13/8, written it was said after the 
Plague had wiped out almost everyone else in his town. The point is that 
common folks running around a long time ago often wrote very irregular 
music. It is a fiction that nobody knew about it until Africans 
introduced it. Generally it came about in an attempt to mimic very 
closely the rhythms of speech, which are notoriously irregular. (There 
was even a very highly developed theory on this in the spoken word in 
the Baroque and I remember a particularly intriguing class based on the 
writings of Georg Lessing as applied to Shakespeare -- much more 
dramatic done that way.) Africans just made it a whole lot more fun and 
sexier which does wonders for anything's acceptance.

As for a very famous example -- which has no influence at all from 
African rhythms -- look no further than the driving 1st movement of 
Holst's "The Planets -- Mars, the Bringer of War." It not merely is in 
5/4 but also has hemiolas in  5/2 at the same time. Listen to that and 
you will pick up on the "limping" feeling it gives and then you will be 
a bit more likely to perceive it in other music. Try to march to it. 
You'll see. [Footnote: One of the most beautiful pieces written is 
Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead" in 5/8. Get the old Fritz Reiner 
recording. Very sad and tango-like in its ethos.]

NOTE: Tango rhythms are syncopated but within a regular framework. You 
will find driving 2/4 pieces with 3+3+2 (candombe) rhythms all over the 
place, but this is very different from a piece written using 5/8 as the 
main time signature which is too irregular to dance to. People who are 
not too familiar with music gets this wrong all the time. Snarky 
comment: Doesn't matter because they also tend to ignore it and dance it 
regularly anyway...

One more cultural aside for those slightly bewildered people from 
Argentina. There have been many instances of African influence in 
American culture. Up until the 1960's when the Civil Rights movement 
came into full swing these influences were completely and unjustly 
ignored. The style of corrective scholarship, as we may call it, that 
came into being tended to overstate the case to make it at all (does 
anyone remember the serious attempts to prove Beethove was Black?) This 
looks very odd to non-Americans who are a lot more comfortable with 
their history. Case in point is that quirky book by Robert Farris 
Thompson "Tango the Art History of Love" which leaves one with the 
distinct impression that tango is all but an African dance and that 
nobody white danced tango until very recently.

Cheers,

Jeff G