Great article Ted, for sure many important viewpoints that deserve to be kept at the core of understanding rhythm and pulse -- but I would like to propose, as I often do with your takes, that this does not go quite far enough.
"Embodied" means what? A somatic and consciously cultivated connection to one's own body and its relations to others' bodies. Okay I just made that up, but it gets me to my point: sure lots of dance has roots in group rituals -- and some of these have to do with being mounted by spirits, yet another direction to go, but a lot of it, and certainly many 20th century forms has much more to do with sex.
It's all about sex.
Sex is whats left out of these conversations, not feet.
It's not hands v. feet v. brain & math -- it's disembodied brains in jars versus sweaty mammals that physically and gloriously copulate and procreate.
The OG Kokopelli has a huge erection. Where did that go? He's been castrated by our body-shaming, sex-perverting twisted "Judeo-Christian" mores. That's my speculation anyways. Fertility gods and goddesses need swollen bellies and/or swollen members, that's obvious.
Also, you said: "rock ‘n’ roll, another term that is now used as the name of a music genre, but obviously began as a description of body movements on the dance floor."
Um: not really, right? Again these are euphemisms for good old coitus.
"Roll with me Henry" Etta James' answer song to "Work with me Annie" wasn't about just dancing otherwise they wouldn't have RE-titled it "Wallflower" for release, that's some sterilizationing at work, just like with Kokopelli.
So yes, until we take it back to the mystical union of the primoridal practice of fucking, I don't believe we have yet cracked the cork on the deeper conversation about rhythm. But: it is a good start to get some distance from math as a derivation rather than simply a mode to just keep track of what's happening, which is how I see it.
You're on to something (though exaggerating it for effect), which is why much of American was wasn't crazy about early jazz or rock, when it was explicitly sexual.
And I think most people would disagree that the sex-soaked culture that you so strongly and vulgarly long for would be a positive thing for society.
(By the way, which mores would you replace Judeo-Christianty with? Viking? Akkadian? Ancient Egyptian? Aztec? Just curious.)
YES! Bach is *the perfect* composer to illustrate your point. It is indeed astonishing that only one book about his many musical dance forms has yet been written. I am similarly surprised to know how little research has been done on Baroque dance forms in general.
Two further classical anecdotes come to mind:
1) Lully, a French baroque composer and dance master who famously died of gangrene after stabbing his own foot with the emphatic downward movement of his time-keeping stick. The beat reigned supreme, and he quite literally paid for it with his life… !
2) the riots after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring — which was, after all, a ballet. My small children are most captivated by ballet music (Firebird, Nutcracker, etc). I think instinctively they feel the natural rhythms and patterns more keenly than in musical forms more removed from dance.
Love your work, Ted. Always nice to see what you are reading, thinking, and doing. Hi from Los Angeles!
Good insights Ted. Many African countries dance their traditions through music. Just my personal taste but I would rather listen to jump blues and than experimental free jazz.
Another great essay; I was a math major in college and on-the-side songwriter in high school and college, and you're absolutely spot-on here.
The rhythm of music is the rhythm of walking, as well. I realized this when I went to graduate school and walked to school every day, vs. a commuting experience as an undergraduate. Rhythms and original songs repeatedly came to my mind during those 20-minute walks.
I think some of the decline of today's music is because so few people walk--they may run sprints or marathons, or conversely they may sit on their butts all day, but very few people in the U.S. actually walk on a daily basis while paying attention to the world around them. The rhythm is lost.
The rhythm of music can also be the rhythm of modern laundry, too. Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown's "funky drummer" said to be the most sampled of all drummers, once said that he derived inspiration for his inimitable style from (among other sources) clothes dryers. Put some shoes in the dryer, turn it on, and you'll immediately realize why.
The Bee Gees’ tune ‘Jive Talking’ was written as they drove over a bridge on leaving the studio each night. They called the bumps and bleeps and susurrations “bridge talking.” Which led to hand and foot taps, rudimentary vocals and later, a whole song. Maybe art is just us, talking back.
In a tv doc on the bee gees Barry Gibb said of that song that they wrote it(can't recall but it was similar to what you've said) then they changed the word to Jive as they thought it sounded more 'street" and they'd heard the techie guys in the music business use the phrase,so after they had recorded the song one of the musicians,a black guy said that Jive Talking was in fact street Argo for talking BS. Louis Jordan uses it to mean seduction talk in a 1940s song. I'm a bit sceptical that bee gee wouldn't have known but it made a good story well told.
And I’ve heard that the rhythm of Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man was inspired by the clunking of the watermelon seller’s cart as it moved along an uneven street surface.
That is so true ! I was walking behind these girl in heels one time heading home and she had that rhythm that I started riffing on her cadence . A lot can inspire you especially when walking around in nature or the hustle and bustle of city life . Music is everywhere!!
I dance Tango for over 2 decades. I was formerly a musician. Tango is often referred to ( here in Argentina anyway) as 2x4 on the floor, because the bare bones Basic of the dance is walking 2 of the 4 beats in a measure. And we liken the rhythm we walk on to a heartbeat. ( stepping on 1 and 3 or 2 and 4). When I began to teach Tango ( the Dance) I knew immediately I had to make it understood mostly in the body. To teach it as music theory class… or a math class would easily have been Death sentence, for both me and my students. Also my BODY has Always understood complexity, and nuance in music. Expressing it was easy. But explaining something that came so naturally to my body but less so to my brain became a challenge to be conquered. It was a Great oppurtunity and gave me even greater appreciation for the music itself as well as the innate wisdom and rhythm of my body. Loved this article! Obvio!
I had the pleasure of seeing Derek Bailey perform many times and attended a workshop or two held by him and other British free jazz musicians (Tony Oxley, Barry Guy, etc). They said they played "non-time" music and when I asked Derek about it, he said "well, everything is in 1".🤔 That was an eye, ear, and mind opening statement for me and I don't think I've ever quite recovered.😂
"In other words, the entire evolution of music is a battle over whether rhythm will be driven by the hands or the feet. The brain, I’m sorry to say, exerts no control over this process—although fingers and hips also make their occasional claims."
I like this post very much, but I think you're selling the brain short. First, the brain is more than the prefrontal cortex exercising its executive function ("thinking"). It also governs the hands and the feet, and the specialized lobes that prevail there do so in concert with other parts of the brain, including the prefrontal lobe. If you cut us up we're not going to be able to dance at all!
Second, the brain itself is part of the rhythmic orchestra of the body (Gyorgy Buszaki, now at NYU, published his semi-accessible "Rhythms of the Brain" twenty years ago), and its activities negotiate among the many available rhythm intervals we experience that underlie of feeling of what time is and how we are in it and the external realm of sounds that we hear or make.
Your recent post discussing Flow and music ties intrinsically rewarding (autotelic) skill performance to music, and reminded me of an ancient depiction of preternatural skill execution that was described as appearing to follow the beat of ceremonial music. Flow states are "hypofrontal," also involving relative suppression of the prefrontal cortex, but the holistic activity of the brain remains fully engaged. It seems to me the way the rhythmic brain and rhythmic body align in harmony is an underlying theme of both posts. Dance is an easy ground to create a flow state on.
But it's also true that although math doesn't generate the music of flow states, brain rhythms can be analyzed in mathematic terms. That math isn't being imposed on the brain and body, it's a representation of them, and I think it can also be used to create music that the brain and body will find new ways to accommodate their intrinsic rhythms to. I'm actually thinking of the Brubeck Quartet's old "Time Out" album, my initial inability to handle some of the rhythms as an incompetent high school drummer, and the way a combination of initial analysis, over-thought practice, and finally spontaneous performance demonstrated how math can propose non-intuitive ways to embody new rhythms. (And think about how the second movement of the Pathetique Symphony is so incredibly crafted that we are led into 5/4 without ever noticing that the waltz isn't 3/4).
Amazing how many rhythm section players are bad dancers. That’s probably got more to do with finding it easier to get girls from the stage than the floor. Not as in depth an analysis as this forum deserves and a rash generalization, but…kinda a basic truism.
It's interesting that you highlight a book by William H. McNeill. He's written some big ones. His Plagues and Peoples changed the way I see human history. Clearly, his interests are many.
Fascinating! The Body Keeps the (musical) Score. My gymnastics (floor exercise choreography) and competitive cheer/dance days from my youth tells me through experience that it’s not all counting beats. One must feel the music in every cell! It’s sacred. I have a lot of respect for ballroom, ballet dancers, etc.
It’s worth considering that 4/4 musical rhythms are prevalent in cultures where the horse was the dominant mode of transportation and powered labor. The 4-beat rhythm of the majority of horse gaits may have influenced music and dance, maybe from military drill, or just from everyday common equestrian practice. Upbeat dance beats in cut time, like the polka, resemble a trot; variants to the steady 4-beat are present in other gaits, but four legs and four beats seem to go together. My wife, the resident equestrienne, told me that she had seen a study where horses’ level of calm vs. agitation was observed when they were exposed to different types of music, and the music that disturbed them the most was jazz, I assume related to syncopation and rhythmic ambiguity.
As the British actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said "My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." Not sure she was referring to jazz but interesting that it has that effect.
I learned to dance in the early 1950's to jazz based dance bands... and I loved to dance, but when they disappeared from the scene their pop and rock replacements seemed very poor substitutes ...they never satisfied the feet and the body in the way that the jazz bands had. The rigid 4/4...thump thump thump thump, on the beat with no syncopation, always made my feet feel as if they were wearing lead shoes. Such a pity that jazz became music to sit to.
Great article Ted, for sure many important viewpoints that deserve to be kept at the core of understanding rhythm and pulse -- but I would like to propose, as I often do with your takes, that this does not go quite far enough.
"Embodied" means what? A somatic and consciously cultivated connection to one's own body and its relations to others' bodies. Okay I just made that up, but it gets me to my point: sure lots of dance has roots in group rituals -- and some of these have to do with being mounted by spirits, yet another direction to go, but a lot of it, and certainly many 20th century forms has much more to do with sex.
It's all about sex.
Sex is whats left out of these conversations, not feet.
It's not hands v. feet v. brain & math -- it's disembodied brains in jars versus sweaty mammals that physically and gloriously copulate and procreate.
The OG Kokopelli has a huge erection. Where did that go? He's been castrated by our body-shaming, sex-perverting twisted "Judeo-Christian" mores. That's my speculation anyways. Fertility gods and goddesses need swollen bellies and/or swollen members, that's obvious.
Also, you said: "rock ‘n’ roll, another term that is now used as the name of a music genre, but obviously began as a description of body movements on the dance floor."
Um: not really, right? Again these are euphemisms for good old coitus.
"Roll with me Henry" Etta James' answer song to "Work with me Annie" wasn't about just dancing otherwise they wouldn't have RE-titled it "Wallflower" for release, that's some sterilizationing at work, just like with Kokopelli.
So yes, until we take it back to the mystical union of the primoridal practice of fucking, I don't believe we have yet cracked the cork on the deeper conversation about rhythm. But: it is a good start to get some distance from math as a derivation rather than simply a mode to just keep track of what's happening, which is how I see it.
You're on to something (though exaggerating it for effect), which is why much of American was wasn't crazy about early jazz or rock, when it was explicitly sexual.
And I think most people would disagree that the sex-soaked culture that you so strongly and vulgarly long for would be a positive thing for society.
(By the way, which mores would you replace Judeo-Christianty with? Viking? Akkadian? Ancient Egyptian? Aztec? Just curious.)
Jazz and Rock & Roll mean the same thing.
YES! Bach is *the perfect* composer to illustrate your point. It is indeed astonishing that only one book about his many musical dance forms has yet been written. I am similarly surprised to know how little research has been done on Baroque dance forms in general.
Two further classical anecdotes come to mind:
1) Lully, a French baroque composer and dance master who famously died of gangrene after stabbing his own foot with the emphatic downward movement of his time-keeping stick. The beat reigned supreme, and he quite literally paid for it with his life… !
2) the riots after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring — which was, after all, a ballet. My small children are most captivated by ballet music (Firebird, Nutcracker, etc). I think instinctively they feel the natural rhythms and patterns more keenly than in musical forms more removed from dance.
Love your work, Ted. Always nice to see what you are reading, thinking, and doing. Hi from Los Angeles!
I think rock and roll comes from sex, not dance floor moves (though they overlap, if that is the verb I want)
My father once said “dance is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire”. I don’t know where he got that from but maybe someone can tell me.
One of my ex-girlfriends said the same thing. Doubt the your dad and her both came up with it. Bach, probably....
Dance floor moves lead to sex, rock and roll is an aural replication.
Why else would so many parents, churches, "decency" groups, etc., have cried out for it to be banned? I'm old enough to remember the bonfires!
Good insights Ted. Many African countries dance their traditions through music. Just my personal taste but I would rather listen to jump blues and than experimental free jazz.
Another great essay; I was a math major in college and on-the-side songwriter in high school and college, and you're absolutely spot-on here.
The rhythm of music is the rhythm of walking, as well. I realized this when I went to graduate school and walked to school every day, vs. a commuting experience as an undergraduate. Rhythms and original songs repeatedly came to my mind during those 20-minute walks.
I think some of the decline of today's music is because so few people walk--they may run sprints or marathons, or conversely they may sit on their butts all day, but very few people in the U.S. actually walk on a daily basis while paying attention to the world around them. The rhythm is lost.
The rhythm of music can also be the rhythm of modern laundry, too. Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown's "funky drummer" said to be the most sampled of all drummers, once said that he derived inspiration for his inimitable style from (among other sources) clothes dryers. Put some shoes in the dryer, turn it on, and you'll immediately realize why.
The Bee Gees’ tune ‘Jive Talking’ was written as they drove over a bridge on leaving the studio each night. They called the bumps and bleeps and susurrations “bridge talking.” Which led to hand and foot taps, rudimentary vocals and later, a whole song. Maybe art is just us, talking back.
In a tv doc on the bee gees Barry Gibb said of that song that they wrote it(can't recall but it was similar to what you've said) then they changed the word to Jive as they thought it sounded more 'street" and they'd heard the techie guys in the music business use the phrase,so after they had recorded the song one of the musicians,a black guy said that Jive Talking was in fact street Argo for talking BS. Louis Jordan uses it to mean seduction talk in a 1940s song. I'm a bit sceptical that bee gee wouldn't have known but it made a good story well told.
And I’ve heard that the rhythm of Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man was inspired by the clunking of the watermelon seller’s cart as it moved along an uneven street surface.
Gerry Mulligan’s tune “Maytag” he says was inspired by his mother’s or grandmother’s washer.
That is so true ! I was walking behind these girl in heels one time heading home and she had that rhythm that I started riffing on her cadence . A lot can inspire you especially when walking around in nature or the hustle and bustle of city life . Music is everywhere!!
Did you see the video made during lockdown by the Bill Frisell trio in a front yard? They locked into the rhythm of a boy going past on a pogo stick.
I would love to see that 👍👍I’ll check that out
I dance Tango for over 2 decades. I was formerly a musician. Tango is often referred to ( here in Argentina anyway) as 2x4 on the floor, because the bare bones Basic of the dance is walking 2 of the 4 beats in a measure. And we liken the rhythm we walk on to a heartbeat. ( stepping on 1 and 3 or 2 and 4). When I began to teach Tango ( the Dance) I knew immediately I had to make it understood mostly in the body. To teach it as music theory class… or a math class would easily have been Death sentence, for both me and my students. Also my BODY has Always understood complexity, and nuance in music. Expressing it was easy. But explaining something that came so naturally to my body but less so to my brain became a challenge to be conquered. It was a Great oppurtunity and gave me even greater appreciation for the music itself as well as the innate wisdom and rhythm of my body. Loved this article! Obvio!
I had the pleasure of seeing Derek Bailey perform many times and attended a workshop or two held by him and other British free jazz musicians (Tony Oxley, Barry Guy, etc). They said they played "non-time" music and when I asked Derek about it, he said "well, everything is in 1".🤔 That was an eye, ear, and mind opening statement for me and I don't think I've ever quite recovered.😂
https://archive.org/details/derek-bailey-improvisation-its-nature-and-practice-in-music-pdf
Leo Brouwer famously said something to the effect that what matters is flow, not rhythm.
I believe Allan Holdsworth also said essentially that everything is in 1.
"In other words, the entire evolution of music is a battle over whether rhythm will be driven by the hands or the feet. The brain, I’m sorry to say, exerts no control over this process—although fingers and hips also make their occasional claims."
I like this post very much, but I think you're selling the brain short. First, the brain is more than the prefrontal cortex exercising its executive function ("thinking"). It also governs the hands and the feet, and the specialized lobes that prevail there do so in concert with other parts of the brain, including the prefrontal lobe. If you cut us up we're not going to be able to dance at all!
Second, the brain itself is part of the rhythmic orchestra of the body (Gyorgy Buszaki, now at NYU, published his semi-accessible "Rhythms of the Brain" twenty years ago), and its activities negotiate among the many available rhythm intervals we experience that underlie of feeling of what time is and how we are in it and the external realm of sounds that we hear or make.
Your recent post discussing Flow and music ties intrinsically rewarding (autotelic) skill performance to music, and reminded me of an ancient depiction of preternatural skill execution that was described as appearing to follow the beat of ceremonial music. Flow states are "hypofrontal," also involving relative suppression of the prefrontal cortex, but the holistic activity of the brain remains fully engaged. It seems to me the way the rhythmic brain and rhythmic body align in harmony is an underlying theme of both posts. Dance is an easy ground to create a flow state on.
But it's also true that although math doesn't generate the music of flow states, brain rhythms can be analyzed in mathematic terms. That math isn't being imposed on the brain and body, it's a representation of them, and I think it can also be used to create music that the brain and body will find new ways to accommodate their intrinsic rhythms to. I'm actually thinking of the Brubeck Quartet's old "Time Out" album, my initial inability to handle some of the rhythms as an incompetent high school drummer, and the way a combination of initial analysis, over-thought practice, and finally spontaneous performance demonstrated how math can propose non-intuitive ways to embody new rhythms. (And think about how the second movement of the Pathetique Symphony is so incredibly crafted that we are led into 5/4 without ever noticing that the waltz isn't 3/4).
Amazing how many rhythm section players are bad dancers. That’s probably got more to do with finding it easier to get girls from the stage than the floor. Not as in depth an analysis as this forum deserves and a rash generalization, but…kinda a basic truism.
Ballet may be the truest form for the combination of brain, feet, and music.
It's interesting that you highlight a book by William H. McNeill. He's written some big ones. His Plagues and Peoples changed the way I see human history. Clearly, his interests are many.
A foot is a fundamental unit of measurement for rhythm and meter in poetry!
Fascinating! The Body Keeps the (musical) Score. My gymnastics (floor exercise choreography) and competitive cheer/dance days from my youth tells me through experience that it’s not all counting beats. One must feel the music in every cell! It’s sacred. I have a lot of respect for ballroom, ballet dancers, etc.
It’s worth considering that 4/4 musical rhythms are prevalent in cultures where the horse was the dominant mode of transportation and powered labor. The 4-beat rhythm of the majority of horse gaits may have influenced music and dance, maybe from military drill, or just from everyday common equestrian practice. Upbeat dance beats in cut time, like the polka, resemble a trot; variants to the steady 4-beat are present in other gaits, but four legs and four beats seem to go together. My wife, the resident equestrienne, told me that she had seen a study where horses’ level of calm vs. agitation was observed when they were exposed to different types of music, and the music that disturbed them the most was jazz, I assume related to syncopation and rhythmic ambiguity.
As the British actress Mrs Patrick Campbell said "My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." Not sure she was referring to jazz but interesting that it has that effect.
I learned to dance in the early 1950's to jazz based dance bands... and I loved to dance, but when they disappeared from the scene their pop and rock replacements seemed very poor substitutes ...they never satisfied the feet and the body in the way that the jazz bands had. The rigid 4/4...thump thump thump thump, on the beat with no syncopation, always made my feet feel as if they were wearing lead shoes. Such a pity that jazz became music to sit to.
I remember we called this washing machine music because of its metronomic thumping beat.
"Sewing machine" is the term often applied to Vivaldi.
Ah, the tug of war between mind and matter, brain and body. We live in the tug, and so does music.