jorge wrote: . . . yes the cinquillo pattern and in places tresillo was what I was referring to. Not clave, but with a little bit of a danzon-like feel. Or given that this predated the danzon, probably the danzon was influenced by pieces like this from the US and Europe.
Jorge,
I think you were the one who turned me onto Peter Manuel’s
Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (2009), when you mentioned the book in this forum. From everything I’ve read, the earliest known written music to use tresillo and its single-celled variants, was the Cuban contradanza, and its subsets, the habanera and danza. The Cuban contradanza influenced Gottschalk's compositions, the cakewalk, ragtime, early jazz and other nineteenth-century Caribbean popular genres. The Cuban contradanza’s offspring was the danzón, the first two-celled genre.
Most of my recent posts in this thread have been focusing on the difference between single-celled and two-celled rhythms, the former being simpler and the latter being more complex. A lot of writing I’ve encountered refers to single-celled patterns as
clave. In an otherwise excellent
Afropop Worldwide segment on early African American music produced by Ned Sublet, tresillo was referred to as
clave.
X . . X . . X . tresillo
. . . X . . X . bombo—ponche cell
X . . X X . X . habanera (also known as tango, congo, and congo-tango)
X . X X . X X . cinquillo
The cinquillo is often attributed to Bantu-based music, but the cinquillo and the other single-celled figures are found throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Since they are in duple-pulse (2/4) they were easily adaptable to European popular genres of the nineteenth-century. They are heard in Afro-Haitian, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Puerto Rican, and Afro-Brazilian music, but they were probably used extensively throughout the entire Caribbean.
Thomas,
I’m still listening to your recent recommendations. I would like to comment though on the two charts you posted. The modern New Orleans parade rhythms you show definitely consist of two-cells. Here is the snare portion:
|| X . X . . X . . | X . . X . . X . ||
It is almost identical to the snare accents played in Baby Dobbs’s 1946 solo, posted by PC:
|| . . X . . X . . | X . . X . . X . ||
Unlike the classic funk pattern I posted earlier, these patterns do not seem to have an obvious connection to the Cuban mambo or conga. Instead, they are based on a pattern of five consecutive cross-beats, beginning on the first
and offbeat (I'm thinking of the measures as 2/4). The patterns above are intriguing and I am very happy to have learned of them. I might have more to say later after I acquaint myself further with these modern NOLA rhythms.
It’s ironic that the Nazis had a particular interest in African musical traits in jazz. I saw a documentary in which it was stated that the Nazis allowed the Dutch jazz bands to continue to perform, but they could not play high notes, or employ other techniques which the Nazis deemed to be of African origin. In other words, the bands could only play jazz in the most “whitebread” fashion possible.
-David