Rhythm is the way we do it. [low hum and sticks clacking] [cultural music montage] rhythm is the temporal organization of music. Its how music is organized in time. It divides time into an organized series of moments, periods, durations. Without rhythm, we wouldnt know how to perform the series of tones. Rhythm you can consider fluctuations or pulsations in time. But forgetting the whole technical thing, rhythm is feeling and its motion, and rhythm hits you at your core at your physical core. Rhythm is probably the most physical element of music. narrator for much of the worlds music, the foundation of rhythm is a steady reoccurring pattern or pulse. Pulse in music often evokes a physical response, moving us to dance, march, sway, or tap our feet. Pulse is the regular occurrence of rhythm in time, unemphasized, one after another [clapping] undivided. In many instances, we want to organize that pulse. In western music, well use an accent on every two. For example, one, two, one, two, one, two. If you watch a marching band, youll probably see a lot of duple time or time divided by twos or fours. If you watch the way they move, the way they step, its often divided one, two, one two, one. If you watch somebody dancing to a waltz, youll see the emphasis of their bodies moving on the first beat of every three one, two, three. One, two, three. And the choreography of their movement corresponds to that emphasis in time. Pulse is also something that people perceive as an audience not just the musicians using accents to organize time. When you listen to music, you feel music, and you start to dance. You can see it at a large crowd of people at a concert, and everybody seems to be moving together. The rhythm is sort of a glue that holds the band together. It keeps everybody playing in time, as they say. And it keeps everybody thinking about the music the same. The beginning of the melody is here, you know, the beginning of the song is here, and the end is here, and the rhythm and the organization of it through the use of accents provides all of that framework for the musicians. [fans screaming] narrator while the rhythmic framework for much of western music is based on groups of two, three, and four beats, other cultures may use larger units. In the Classical Music of north india for example, rhythm is organized into structures of up to 108 beats the most common being a 16beat cycle called teentaal. In indian Classical Music, rhythm is organized into taal or taala this is the name. Youll pt this is the name. Taala is a rhythmic cycle. In other words, if you think of if you visualize or think of a rhythm in the west, you may think of a time signature and some bars. But for indian music, you must envision a circle. Its a cycle or a circle. We start at one part and we go around, and we always come back to that same part. The very first beat of the cycle is called the sum, and its the most important beat. When we improvise, we start from the sum and we go out in our improvisation, and come back to the sum. [ensemble playing a taal] man when i go on my individual rounds of improvisation, i have to keep count, and land back in an interesting manner so that that particular note on my main theme lands back on the first beat of the cycle. If it does not, that is a very disreputable state of affairs. [music continues] the basic beat is called the theka in any taal. Teentaal theka it has 16 beats. [counting the beats] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. The role of tabla player in north indian Classical Music is basically an accompanist role. We are not considered the main artist. That would be the singer or instrumentalist, unless we are in the situation of playing a tabla solo. Otherwise, were a supportive instrument. We provide the rhythmic structure, and we should provide some sort of artistic support, rather than getting in the way of the main artist. narrator there are many musical traditions in which rhythm progresses freely without a regularly reoccurring beat. In the japanese shakuhachi tradition, rhythm is guided by the breath of the performer. woman in shakuhachi music, time doesnt really force its way forward in a marching way. Its more that you are enjoying the sounds and the shapes within the moment of time. Theres free rhythm in shakuhachi music. We dont have strict downbeats. Were not playing with anyone else so theres no reason to be precisely in time with someone else. Youre playing just solo. In shakuhachi music, the silence is just as important as the notes were playing. And if we can somehow see the parallel in japanese painting if you imagine where the canvas is completely blank on threequarters of the silk. The breath, which comes from the zen meditative style, is what each phrase is built upon. We have the inhale, and then the note, and the end of the phrase. In between each phrase, we have silence, and then the taking in of the breath. This is actually the pace of all of the units, and how they connect. averill when you watch a west african Percussion Ensemble, youll find a family of drums of different sizes. Each of these sizes of drum have a different pitch associated with it. Striking the drum sounds a different pitch. When put together in an ensemble, these relate to each other at different pitch levels. It may be difficult to hear Something Like a meter in the music, Something Like one, two, three. Rather whats heard is the relationship of the tones of the various drums in their own rhythmic relationships. One drum may be doing something as simple as, dadat. Dadat and another might be entering with something a little bit more complex, datida da, datida da, and the relationship between the two would be, dada, bidada, bada, badabum. They converse in this way. sharriff the drum is an extension of theuman voice. It is used to communicate. But you must know the language to communicate. Many times when there are dancers involved, the music will change, and will tell the dancer when to change the step, when to move, how to move, when to stop. When you travel from ethnic group to ethnic group, you will find thatlets say in nigeria with the yoruba, where they have a very tonal language they might say, hello modupwe. So theres a lot of variation in tone many of their instruments and their drums, like the donno and the talking drums, they sound just the way they talk. You might hear dodo do, dodododododo, do. In senegal, the wolof, the people of the mande cultures which is the sousou, malinke, the bambara they speak very fast. You might hear, naga def, so you might hear, bla ga da, mangi flec, blanka da, blankadi bla dah, bleat blablablablabla. So as you could see theres a direct connection with the spoken language, and what is being played, and how you express it on the drum. Mandiani is a rhythm that comes out of the old malian empire. The drums and the instruments that they use for the rhythm mandiani come from the djembe orchestra. The djembe orchestra encompasses maybe two or three djembes, usually one principal musician and the bass. This is the djundjun, and this is the song na. You have the bottom here which would be considered the one, or the downbeat. Thats more of the gravity part of the rhythm. This is the upside of the rhythm. And then you have the bell part which is playing, what i learned as an african six. And usually is one, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. When you put all the parts together [rhythmic drum beats] its always the principal musician wholl give the cue to start, to stop, and to change the rhythm. He is the conductor of the orchestra. All the cues come from the principal musician, and the person who is playing the improvisation. He plays what we call a break or ausical cue, and that will sound different depending on whatever style theyre playing. We hear the cue its an established rhythm and once we hear it, we know to start our step. You have to follow their feet, you know, how their hands move, and if the dancer gotta move like that, you got to make sure you got the connection and the language the language you have to do from all her movement from her body, you have to go together. Maybe you can go baaaaadaaaadum, baaaaadaaaadum. sharriff there is a direct relationship we like to say a marriage between the music and the dance. The musicians actually control the tempo. Mandiani is a social dance which means that its not ceremonial or ritualistic. I like to say that mandiani is like doing our street dance you know when were just hey, thats what we do here to self entertain, or to have a house party, or to celebrate in some fashion. We have to remember what we do in this country is for the stage, yes this is great thank you very much we applaud the entertainment of it. Traditionally, this is how people explain their existence. This is how they honor holy spirit. This is how they honor their own life force and their connection with spirit. This is not a performance for them. This is their life. male translator mantanzas is a province where a group of friends from my neighborhood the neighborhood of simpson we always enjoy ourselves with a rumba. Were always ready to put a rumba together at a moments notice. The caribbean is a very vibrant area of musical encounters for the past 400 years encounters primarily between musics of europe, and musics of africa. You have, in the caribbean, types of music that e very cle to african ptypes. In rumba, especially the best known example rumba guaguanco you have a couples dance. Man and woman dance together in a dance that pantomimes courtship. The man attempts to get close to thwoman. The woman coquettishly dances arou him and avoids his efforts. translator the woman thats dancing moves this way and that. She covers herself so that she doesnt get impregnated. averill in rumba, you have a clave. The clave pattern is the key to the rhythmic structure of the ensemble. In rumba guaguanco the clave sounds like this [claps] the first side, if you divide this pattern in half, has three beats. And the second half has two beats. And this is an asymmetric pattern and its asymmetry is critical to the sound of the entire ensemble. The musicians have to take this key and relate their drumbeats to this fundamental pattern that structures the entire musical ensemble. African musics and afrocaribbean musics have had a profound influence on pop musics throughout the world. Notably in the development of the rhythm section. Africanamerican musicians, who were marching in the early brass bands in new orleans used bass drums, snare drums, cymbals put them together into a repeating rhythmic unit. And later on, when this music moves indoors, musicians put these together into a single setthe drum set. [band playing dixieland] the drum set and the bass are called the rhythm unit in a band and they interact much in the way the Percussion Ensemble would an african Percussion Ensemble would and they provide the rhythmic drive and the rhythmic vitality to popular musics and jazz. redman rhythm is something which is important in all musics. In jazz it may be even a little bit more important, because rhythm is at the heart and soul of jazz, and a certain way of phrasing rhythm a certain approach to rhythm which we call swing, is at the heart and soul of jazz. Its very difficult to define what swing is. You can technically try to define it in the sense that swing is a subdivision of rhythm which is in a certain way offcenter. Its uneven. If i play a series of notes eighth notesvery straight let me do that. [playing notes] those eighth notes are played straight; theres no swing involved. Now, if i put a swing feel on those eighth notes, theyre gonna become uneven. One is going to be a little bit longer than the other, and the shorter one is actually going to have a certain accent that the longer one doesnt have. The rhythm comes alive; it dances a little bit. So we can take that concept of the swing rhythm, and apply it to any melody, or just about any melody, and turn that melody, turn that composition into a Jazz Performance a jazz interpretation. And that gives it a jazz flavor, and so that swing element is one of the key things which defines jazz and one of the key elements in the language of jazz. man when you perform music, you do it across time, and you do it in organized units. This is what rhythm is. It can be extremely regular, it can be extremely irregular. It can be extremely complicated, or very, very simple. How you break up the units is extremely important, because when you enter musical time, your watch stops working. Youre in a different zone of human experience, and the music takes over your sense of how time is going by. Funding for this program was provided by the Annenberg Cpb project. This is pbs. Welcome back to the studio here. Youre watching live from paris. Lets take a look at our top stories this hour. Local authorities have declared a state of emergency in charlotte, north carolina, in the united states, after a violentight of protests. One person business shot and and 44e person was shot others arrested as demonstrators denounced the killing of a black man by police earlier this week. Hundreds are still missing in the waters of the mediterranean. 169 survivors have been rescued after the fishing vessel capsizedem to europe wednesday. The boat sank, a mere 12 lefteters after it