[Tango-L] 5/8s

[Konstantin Zahariev]

Dear Jeff,

I appreciate your examples. Perhaps I should not have mentioned a time
signature, as this was really irrelevant to the point I was making
about the suspected morphing of the 3-long block into a 2-long block
in the habanera in the process of oral transmission of music by
sailors and other travellers. I don't think providing some examples of
possibly related irregular rhythms in eastern Europe and elsewhere
necessarily discounts the possibility that this process occurred.

I have also not claimed that 5/8 and other irregular rhythms only came
from Africa or that they did not exist anywhere else. This would be an
absurd claim for me as I am Bulgarian by birth, and for me it is
natural to function in compositions in 5/8 (2-3), 7/8 (2-2-3 or 2-3-2
or 3-2-2), 9/8 (2-2-2-3), 11/8 or whatever else irregular rhythms you
may think of. I consciously excluded a discussion of the
Bulgarian/Balkan contribution to that as the context was tango (and
western Europe). In that regard, your Russian examples are also not
completely on point geographically..

A separate point is that it matters how the rhythm pattern or accents
are spaced. The time signature by itself does not provide that
information. So it is possible to have a piece in 5/8 or 5/4 that is
fundamentally different from a 5/8 or 5/4 piece that has a 2-3 rhythm
division, i.e. only two accents (strong pulses) that come at uneven
intervals. Another example, in Bulgaria a 9/8 would commonly be a
2-2-2-3 division (4 accents, irregular), whereas a 9/8 in western
Europe would commonly be  3-3-3 division, waltz-like and perfectly
regular.

I agree that the 3-long 2-long blocks are likely to have to do with
speech patterns. I also agree with the substance of your last
paragraph about the tendencies in first completely discounting and
later seemingly over-stating the black influence. We seem to be moving
towards a more objective view, however.

With best regards,

Konstantin
Victoria, Canada


On 7/18/07, Jeff Gaynor <jjg at jqhome.net> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Tango-L mailing list
> Tango-L at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
>