Standard ("6/8") Bell Pattern - analysis of bell patterns

[pcastag]

The main rhythmic structure of US popular music today centers on the backbeat. Carlos Santana once said that in order to make Cuban rhythms accessible to Americans, you needed to add the backbeat. A lot of North American music with the clave pattern is a matter of a clave motif being superimposed over the backbeat structure. On the other hand, I hear a lot of timba with the backbeat superimposed over the clave structure.
-David

You could make the same argument for samba ( backbeat in reverse, but still the strong beat on 2 and 4) but it still follows a "clave".
PC

[Berimbau]

OK. The Dixie Cups recording of Iko Iko is from the late 1950's and therefore well into the post-mambo craze era I'm speaking of. It is SO Cuban, in fact, as to have a marimbula player in lieu of a bass. Very much a self-conscious appropriation of Cuban musical values. So was much of Bo Diddley's music from that same era.
But what of such traditional African-American children's game songs as hambone? Now that might be better ammunition than any thing you can cook up from fter WWII.
Now as to the "spirit" of clave, that is just such a subjective thing that I suppose that one can even find it Mozart as I said previously. At least if that's what's gonna heat your grease.



Saludos,



Berimbau

[davidpenalosa]

I tend to agree with David on the tresillo, and think that this motiff is what Gottshalk and other composers were actually employing in their works. This was the "Latin tinge" that Jelly Roll Morton spoke of, as well as the "Spanish beat" used in early NOLA blues drumming that Baby Dodds referenced in his as told to book.

According to Dizzy Gillespie, who would know such things, "Our music in the United States and that of the African concept of rhythm have one difference - the African is polyrhythmic and we are monorhythmic.

When people talk about how clave is in African-American music, they often mean tresillo, which is a simpler pattern (I know that you are clear on the difference PC).

|XooX|ooXo|XooX|ooXo| tresillo
|XooX|ooXo|ooXo|Xooo| clave

I believe this is the case in the original version of "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups. I don’t have that recording with me at this time, but I remember hearing the cinquillo pattern, which is an embellishment of tresillo, not clave.

|XooX|ooXo|XooX|ooXo| tresillo
|XoXX|oXXo|XoXX|oXXo| cinquillo

If somebody has that recording handy, perhaps you could confirm that for me?

This was also the case on a segment of "Afropop Worldwide", concerning the Cuban influence in North American music. The segment was produced by Ned Sublet. The narrator was talking about how in old African American ring shout churches, the participants stomped clave on the floor with their feet. They then played an old recording of the ring shouters stomping the tresillo pattern.

I’m not sure that Dizzy’s term "monorhythmic" is exactly accurate, but I get what he means. It seems he was trying to say what I tried to say.
-David

[davidpenalosa]

The main rhythmic structure of US popular music today centers on the backbeat. Carlos Santana once said that in order to make Cuban rhythms accessible to Americans, you needed to add the backbeat. A lot of North American music with the clave pattern is a matter of a clave motif being superimposed over the backbeat structure. On the other hand, I hear a lot of timba with the backbeat superimposed over the clave structure.
-David

You could make the same argument for samba ( backbeat in reverse, but still the strong beat on 2 and 4) but it still follows a "clave".
PC

PC,
I make a clear distinction between how timeline patterns function in Brazilian samba and any African-American music that uses a "clave motif". I get what you mean, but samba is not based upon a backbeat structure. Samba is based upon a clave structure. Since it’s now common for the Brazilian tamborims to play both the son and rumba clave pattern, I fell OK using the Cuban term "clave" here.

In samba, the tamborim pattern has off-beats in the three-side and on-beats in the two-side. A more accurate description is that the three-side is represented by the eight-beat cycle (BEAT and "AND"), while the two-side is represented by the off-beat eight cycle ("E" and "AH"). These two beat cycles are diametrically opposed and therefore aptly represent the opposing sides of clave:

|1o2o3o4o|5o6o7o8o| eight-beat cycle
|oEoAoEoA|oEoAoEoA| off-beat eight cycle
|oXoXoXXo|XoXoXooX| tamborim part
|XooXooXo|ooXoXooo| clave

This way of expressing the two halves of clave is the basis for the Angolan kachacha pattern Berimbau posted. It can also be found in the Brazilian rhythm afoxe, which predates samba. Afoxe contains the complete four-part rhythmic counterpoint. It could be argued that samba does not always have the complete counterpoint. The on-beat/ off-beat quality of samba is maintained within all the possible rhythmic variations though. In this way, all the parts in samba follow clave .

On the other hand, when a "clave motif" is used in African-American music, the instruments not playing the motif do not rhythmically reinforce the motif in any way. In other words, beyond the motif, the overall rhythmic structure does not follow clave. If anybody has an example of an exception to this rule, I’d love to hear it. Even if an R & B band uses a "clave motif" in a song, the audience will not clap clave when they are inspired, they will clap the backbeat. They are feeling the backbeat because that's the underlying structure. If any R & B song was truly based on clave, with the essential contrapuntal elements, it would not be as "dancable" to the Americam audiences as a backbeat-based song. I want to read that article you mentioned Berimbau.

Whenever African-American music has been rhythmically "re-Africanized" it seems like it has borrowed from Afro-Cuban instruments and rhythmic sensibilities. In 1945 on Armed Forces Radio, Johnny Otis’ band used clave-based rhythms in R & B for the first time. For that date he hired the rhythm section of Miguelito Valdez’s band. In his "Willy & The Hand Jive", Otis clearly uses a "clave motif" that became a common rock and roll motif in countless songs.

It seems clear to me that African-American music borrowed the idea of 3-2 and 2-3 chord progressions from Cuban music. James Brown’s "I Feel Good" has a 3-2 "clave motif", while "Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine" has a 2-3 "clave motif".

One of the things I like about R & B and funk tunes that use "clave motifs", is that the complete Cuban-type contrapuntal structure can be easily added. In other words, it's not a strech to arrange one of those tunes using a complete and authentic salsa rhythm section. A significant portion of Mongo Santamaria's career involved doing just that in the 1960's. It was a great formula. His arrangements of Motown songs like "Cloud 9" worked well.
-David



Edited By davidpenalosa on 1140130416

[pcastag]

OK. The Dixie Cups recording of Iko Iko is from the late 1950's and therefore well into the post-mambo craze era I'm speaking of. It is SO Cuban, in fact, as to have a marimbula player in lieu of a bass. Very much a self-conscious appropriation of Cuban musical values. So was much of Bo Diddley's music from that same era.
But what of such traditional African-American children's game songs as hambone? Now that might be better ammunition than any thing you can cook up from fter WWII.
Now as to the "spirit" of clave, that is just such a subjective thing that I suppose that one can even find it Mozart as I said previously. At least if that's what's gonna heat your grease.



Saludos,



Berimbau

Please, don't inslut me! You are not going to find clave in Mozart, I am not being subjective here, you can find many melodic and vocal examples that CLEARLY follow the clave pattern in African American music. I'm sure it was not done intentionally, but rather as a rhythmic sensibility. Just as many cuban melodies follow clave ( son de la loma ) many dixieland tunes folow a similar pattern in which, ( if you listen carefully) a dinstinction can be found in the melody. just apply 2-3 clave to maple leaf rag and you'dd see what i mean. try applying it as well to Kyrie Elayson in Mozarts requium and you'll also see. My analysis is not objective, ####, I'm the most onbjective person you'll ever meet! Just ask me! (lol)

PC

[Berimbau]

Dear PC,
Now NO disrespect was intended, and Mozart aside, you did say "spirit" of clave, a term which doesn't have a "ghost" of a chance of getting by me! It's just TOO John Storm Roberts for words.
Again, Cuban music DID have somewhat of an impact on US popular music, but AFTER WWII. Now I personally like to clap clave along with Britney Spears videos.........................


With the sound OFF, of course.............


................and a Celia Cruz cd ON!!!




Saludos,



Berimbau

[davidpenalosa]

"spirit" of clave, a term which doesn't have a "ghost" of a chance of getting by me!

Again, Cuban music DID have somewhat of an impact on US popular music, but AFTER WWII.

If I may say something about the "spirit if clave" in African-American music.

I think it’s reasonable to imagine that after about a century of using the tresillo pattern, adoption of the complete two-sided clave pattern was a natural development. PC, thanks for turning me onto the 2-3 melodic phrases in "Maple Rag". I was not aware of them. I have been aware of the 3-2 melodic phrases in "The Entertainer" though and I heard 3-2 phrases in "Maple Rag" just now too.

There’s so much American music from the turn of the Century emphasizing only the three-side (tresillo), that it kind of cries out for the two-side. Even if American composers were not familiar with the full binary clave, it makes sense that they might for variety, use a phrase that rhythmically opposes tresillo. Does tresillo inevitably leads to clave? That’s what I think I hear in Scott Joplin’s music. The fact that Joplin, played both 3-2 and 2-3 phrases in the same piece, leads me to believe he wasn’t fluent in the full clave phrases of the Cuban danzón. I don’t hear the two-sides of clave repeating in any fashion in Joplin's music like I do in James Brown’s music. I agree with Berimbau that the "clave motif" did not appear in North American popular music until WW II. At least, I have not heard any evidence to contradict that. With all the historical American music with tresillo, it's note worthy that when the full, two-sided clave began being used, tresillo was not used simultaneously with clave, like in Cuban music.

|XooX|ooXo|ooXo|Xooo| clave
|XooX|ooXo|XooX|ooXo| tresillo

In salsa and other son-based music, the bass tumbao is founded on tresillo.

The term "clave" means "code" or "key", like "key to a puzzle". The pattern represents a larger structure. That’s why those five strokes are considered a code. When "clave motifs" are used in American music, that structure which clave implies is absent.

Here’s something that could be considered the "spirit of clave" story. I participated in a workshop that featured classes taught by John Santos, C.K. Ladzekpo and Ray Holman. Steel drum master Ray Holman is the first person who wrote original music for the genre called panorama. Holman took John and C.K.’s classes and became fascinated with the clave pattern, which he was not very familiar with. So he thought. In fact, Holman wrote long, rhythmically complex compositions that consistently conform with a 2-3 vamp:

|ooXo|Xooo|XooX|ooXo| 2-3 clave
|oooo|XoXo|oooX|oXXo| 2-3 calypso vamp

The calypso vamp is similar to the "Manicero" vamp.

Ray Holman intuitively composes 2-3 pieces, pieces that consistently maintain their 2-3 orientation. And yet, he doesn’t conceive of a binary timeline within his music! Is the spirit of clave coming through? ???
-David

[davidpenalosa]

Berimbau,
I was wondering if you were familiar with the following Brazilian bell part?:

X||oXXo|XoXo|XoXo|XXoX||

I’ve written it in a "3-2 sequence" with a pick-up. I took this off of "Afro-Brasileiros" from my old vinyl copy of Batacuda Fantastica Vol. 3. The record is from the 70’s or early 80’s. The cut is a medley of what I take to be five Candomble rhythms.

I’ve heard Macumba drumming playing what I hear as samba de roda, or something very close to that, but I’m wondering if you are aware of a Candomble rhythm with a samba-like bell pattern like the one I wrote? Or, is there any Candomble bell pattern like the samba tamborim pattern, or that Angolan kachacha pattern you wrote in an earlier post?
-David

[davidpenalosa]

I'm back with a correction. I heard that Brazilian agogo bell part totally wrong! There was one single stroke on the high bell, with the other strokes on the low bell. It was a way of playing the pattern that was unfamiliar to me. I feel like I flunked a Gerhard Kubik "blindfold" test!

Kim Atkinson set me straight on the part tonight. It's just the old favorite afoxé (duh!). :p I wrote it below with the familiar two tones of the agogo bell and in relation to clave:

||XooX|ooXo|ooXo|Xooo|| clave
||HHoL|oLLo|HoHo|LoLo|| afoxé agogo bell

Kim was able to answer my question concerning the Candomble bell part that’s probably the ancestor of the samba tamborim part.

||XooX|ooXo|ooXo|Xooo|| clave
X||oXoX|oXXo|XoXX|oXoX|| Candomble bell
X||oXoX|oXXo|XoXo|XXoX|| samba tamborim

The rhythm is called cabula and is Congolese in origin. It’s similar to the Angolan kachacha pattern Berimbau posted:

||XooX|ooXo|ooXo|Xooo|| clave
X||oXoX|oXXo|XoXo|XoXX|| Angolan kachacha pattern

Sorry for the confusion.
-David

[Berimbau]

Well...... my best to bro Kim Atkinson! I hope he's well, it's been some 25 years since he and I last talked.
Now why don't ya'll use . to denote rests with those X beats, the O rests make it hard for seniors like me to read. After mispending my youth in dimly lit bars and jungles, not to mention the dank Firestone Library at Princeton, I find myself increasingly blind.
The time line you posted IS the familiar Afoxe agogo part, fondly remembered from when I played with the Filhos de Ghandi in Salvador a few years ago. However, I doubt if any candomble time line is the ancestral model for the kachacha pattern. The kachacha time line pattern and it's associated choreometric organizational patterns originated centuries ago in Angola.
As you know, the African origins of Brasilian candomble and samba are worlds apart. As in Cuba, social institutions were orginally organized by slaves more or less along African ethnic lines. Much of this activity still occurs in Cuba and Brasil only now these have become nearly always CULTURAL institutions, and membership is not dependant on ethnic lineage. For example, one can really come from nearly any ethnic background and participate fully in the cultural worlds of samba, candomble, maculele, or capoeira.
During his field work in Salvador in 1974, Gerhard Kubik's research team included the Malawiian musician Donald Kachamba. After a few evenings spent in Bahian candombles, they encountered some street samba musicians, and Kachamba declared, "Now Nigeria is finished, we are in Angola." All of this African cultural diversity within the same Brasilian city!
Although Salvador is rightfully thought of as a stronghold of Yoruba and other West African cultures, Bantu cultural bearers did filter in during the turn of the 19th/20th century, significantly altering the local scene. After a century of transculturative activity in Bahia, there are certainly now some grey areas of African cultural demarcation where such distinctions have begun to blur. I feel fairly confident that the cultural nexus of the Filhos' clubhouse is one such place.
Of course there are also some minority Kongo/Angolan candombles in Bahia as well, but even these few seem to follow the dominant Yoruba/Ewe model. Competing for followers in the Bahian market place of religious affiliations, these Kongo/Angolan houses often also feature strong influences from the worlds of Native-American and European spiritism. Bahians might just be the most spiritual people on the planet, for shrines and various offerings could easily be encountered day and night on the street, on the beach and in many other public places.
My point is that a certain cultural fidelity can still be assumed for most of the Yoruba/Ewe candombles in Bahia, but carnival and other such secular organizations are more open to culture change. The ultimate African source of any time line patterns employed in the music of such organizations should be most carefully scrutinized.



Saludos,



Berimbau

[Berimbau]

A corrigendum for David with my appologies. At 6:15AM, with only a sip or two of coffee in my system, I hastily answered your last post. It was the origins of the samba TAMBORIM pattern to which you attributed that candomble bell pattern as a source, not the kachacha time line pattern. Now I will still have to meditate on THAT possibility.
It also seems possible after such a lengthy, and I'm certain for some, a tiresome thread, that we are now being dubbed as "conga snobs" by someone posting here.
Now my own conga playing is certainly somewhat good, but nowhere in the league of such heavies here as say Johnny Conga or David Penalosa, so please count me OUT as a "conga snob."
I am, however, an "anthropology snob," a distinction which I will proudly accept with appologies to no one!



Saludos,



Berimbau

[davidpenalosa]

... I doubt if any candomble time line is the ancestral model for the kachacha pattern. The kachacha time line pattern and it's associated choreometric organizational patterns originated centuries ago in Angola.

As you know, the African origins of Brasilian candomble and samba are worlds apart.

After a century of transculturative activity in Bahia, there are certainly now some grey areas of African cultural demarcation where such distinctions have begun to blur.

Of course there are also some minority Kongo/Angolan candombles in Bahia as well, but even these few seem to follow the dominant Yoruba/Ewe model.

My point is that a certain cultural fidelity can still be assumed for most of the Yoruba/Ewe candombles in Bahia, but carnival and other such secular organizations are more open to culture change. The ultimate African source of any time line patterns employed in the music of such organizations should be most carefully scrutinized.

Hi Berimbau,
Glad to have you present for this topic. Sorry about the use of the small "o’s" for rests, I’m going blind too. I find "o’s" for rests easier to read than periods. However, since you requested periods, I’ll use them.

I think you may have misunderstood at least a portion of my last post. I wasn’t claiming that the candomble timeline in question is the ancestral model for the kachacha pattern. I said that the candomble bell part is probably the ancestor of the samba tamborim part. I take your point that there are grey areas of African cultural demarcation in Brazilian music where distinctions blur. I definitely don’t know enough about Brazilian music to assert with confidence the ultimate African sources of samba, but I am pointing out specific rhythmic qualities found in both samba and the candomble rhythm cabula.

Cabula shares the identical bell part and some drum parts with samba de roda. That’s what I’m hearing on the samba de roda "Pomba Gira" from Sergio Mendes "Primal Roots". In candomble the high drum plays the most repetitive part, with the low drum playing lead and in samba de roda the low drum plays the most repetitive part and the high drum plays lead. The mid-drum appears to be the same and is very close to the dominant rhythmic motif in batucada. I had intuited these similarities for years, but this week I decided to check out what’s actually going on. Kim hipped me to the Cabula/samba de roda connection last night.

About twenty years ago he made me aware of the Ijexá/afoxé connection. In Ijexá the low drum is the lead and in afoxé the high drum plays the lead, with an identical mid-drum part. Their relationship is similar to the Cabula/samba de roda connection. That’s how it has been explained to me and that’s how I hear it.

I only said that the Angolan kachacha pattern was similar to he cabula bell and samba tamorim part. I didn’t draw any conclusions. However, I do think it’s interesting that cabula is from Congo/Angolan candomble.

Is there something I’m missing? Or maybe I should say, how much am I missing? I realize that I have limited Brazilian resources compared to my Cuban material, so I may have enormous blind spots.
-David

[Berimbau]

I assume that you have already read my corrigendum so that my mistake regarding the tamborim/kachacha pattern may be tabled for the moment. That done, let me jump to your final remark for a comment. We ALL have our own blindspots, which is why it's great having so many other people around here with our passion for knowledge. I think that we are all missing something, which is why I come to this board, to learn. My own knowledge of Afro-Cuban music is fairly elemental, but I have learned MUCH from you and the others posting here. Here I also try to return the favor and share what I do know.
Some quick facts to help us all navigate the musical universe of Afro-Brasil:
1.) Nearly half of ALL slaves taken from the continent of Africa ended up in Brasil, a country which today boasts the highest population of African peoples living outside of Africa itself.
2.) The vast majority of these people were Bantu speaking peoples from not only the Kongo/Angolan region and Mozambique, but also from FAR within the hinterlands of Central Africa.
3.) Distinct pockets of West African culture bearers may also still be encountered in the coastal cities of Maranhao (Fon), Recife (Yoruba), Salvador (Yoruba & Ewe), and Rio (Yoruba) where each of them dominates the local candombles.
4.) Despite being in the numeric majority of the Afro-Brasilian population, the terreiros of Kongo/Angolans have always been marked by the strongest transculturative tendancies, absorbing liturgical ideas and impulses from the local Yoruba terrieros as well as from various European and Native-American spiritual sources. I postulate that a similar social dynamic was also encountered in the formative years of the African-American Christian church, which also contained a Bantu majority population. The Southern US is marked by a very strong Bantu cultural influence, one that even reaches far into its European population.
Cabula is an old term for the Bantu-derived religions of Brasil, especially in Espirito Santo. Macumba and Umbanda are more contemporary religious organizations informed by Bantu theophilosophy in Brasil. The Bantu are far more comfortable and relaxed than many Africans and certainly most Europeans in their worldview of the seperation between things secular and non-secular. I think this tendancy gave the Bantu more of an edge in successfully culturally assimilating in the Diaspora.
Pomba Gira literally means crazy dove in Portuguese. In the synthetic Cabula pantheon Pomba Gira is the wife of Exu. As Bastide wrote of the Bantu in Brasil, they were incapable of resisting the prestige of the Yoruba candombles, and they adopted much of their sacerdotal organization from them. Within this looser social framework was a context for the adaptation of samba de roda and other secular musical forms. Not so surprizing then to find such similarities between the two musical forms in their associated drum and bell parts.
Now I did have that Sergio Mendes lp back in the 1970's until an old girlfriend made off with it. Why do they always steal my records? Weren't the percussionists Airto, Laudir de Oliviera, and Rubens Bassini? I think they learned that Candomble tune from fellow Brasilian percussionist Guillherme Franco, who learned it from a Macumba priest in Rio. Guilherme later recorded Pomba Gira himself on his solo cd.
If you discovered that the pitch relationships of the lead and supporting drum parts have some how become inverted from the African cultural template, that is also not too surprising considering the similar reinterpretation that occured in Cuban guaguanco. The European requinto clarinet or flute served as a model for culture change in Afro-Cuban music, and now it is the high-pitched quinto drum that is the soloist in guaguanco.
Another example is the Angolan puita wooden friction drum originally associated with healers and the cult of the dead. In Brasil the puita was adopted into a new cultural context, the European directed carnival. Here it became the high-pitched tunable metalic cuica that we know from the samba schools of Rio. Both Cuban and Brasilian cultures were mixing African and European musical values in new social contexts and arriving at new musical formulas to fit these new criteria. I think that lessons learned in the field and careful comparative work using evidence from both of these distinctive cultures might shed a little light on the overall picture of each.



Saludos,





Berimbau

[davidpenalosa]

Berimbau,
All your points are well taken. Indeed, in both Cuba and Brazil the pitch relationships of the lead in the sacred drumming and that of many of the secular leads are inverted. However, I'm not certain this can be completely attributed to European influence. There are African drum systems where the high pitched drum is the lead. The most obvious example are the djembe, where the high djembe is lead and the very low djun djun plays the foundation. Bonko, the abakua lead is played on a mid or high pitched drum. Rhythmically speaking, bonko is the transplanted African drum part closest to the Cuban hybrid rumba quinto. The quinto's high pitch could be due at least in part, to it's simularities to bonko. Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

As I understand, the vast majority of slaves brought to both Cuban and Brazil were Bantu speaking peoples. Also, they came earlier than the Yoruba and Fon/Ewe. I know that the most significant African influence in Cuban music is Bantu. Speaking of assimulation, there are a fair amount of Spanish words in the Cuban-Bantu songs, where it's almost non-existent in the Cuban-Yoruba songs.

I'm afraid I can't help you with the credits right now for "Primal Roots". My LP is in storage and my CD is a copy (busted!), I do remember though in the 70's noticing Airto's name, as he was the only name I recognized.
-David



Edited By davidpenalosa on 1140560732

[Berimbau]

No need to unearth Sergio Mendes. Like our good friend Carlos Santana he deserves to sit in the dark recesses of your dusty lp collection for the crime of recording with rappers to sell records! Well at least Carlos had the good sense to record another song with the lovely Michelle Branch, doubtless a favorite with all the other dirty old men in my sansa belt size. Sergio shoulda called in Jessica Simpson. Her Portuguese lessons alone would have made for a great video! Tudo bem, Jess!
Now I will have to disagree with you on the djembe. The pitch level of that instrument has been raised significantly since the recent advent of the ubiquitous Ballets Africains with their attendent showy lead drummers as well as through the introduction of Western made nylon rope to tune them. The old time leather strap tuned djembes had a much lower pitch.
Although many peoples from the Western Sudanic belt were also major players in the formation of African-American culture, there is no evidence that the djembe was ever actually played on US soil. Ditto for Cuba and Brasil, where Manding speaking peoples were a distinct minority.
This alone doesn't prove my case, but in the Diasporan market place of ideas, European influences were strong competing factors. In both Brasilian and Cuban cultures nearly every African-derived chordophone and aerophone was supplanted by an acoustically superior European model, and only the African drums and percussion instruments, far more developed than their European counterparts, survived the cut. Today Ortiz's Los Instrumentos seems like a graveyard of African instruments, for many have disapeared.


Saludos,




Berimbau