Steve Reich - African Polyrhythms.pdf

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A
FRICAN
P
OLYRHYTHMICS
AND
S
TEVE
R
EICH
'
S
D
RUMMING
:
Separate but Related Worlds
Ali Momeni
5/18/2001
S
TUDYING
D
RUMMING
........................................................................................................................2
DRUMMING..........................................................................................................................................5
G
OALS
.................................................................................................................................................5
F
ORM
...................................................................................................................................................6
C
OMMON FEATURES BETWEEN
D
RUMMING AND TRADITIONAL
A
FRICAN MUSIC
.............................7
R
HYTHMIC
F
IGURES
..........................................................................................................................12
R
HYTHMIC COMPLEXITY VIA TWO ROUTES
......................................................................................13
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................15
APPENDIX I ........................................................................................................................................16
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SCORES AND RECORDINGS.................................................................20
Note:
denotes a sounds example; click on the icon to play it. Playback of examples requires
QuickTime to be installed on your computer.
1
Studying Drumming
In the summer 1970 Steve Reich went to Ghana to study drumming. With a travel
grant from the Special Projects division of the Institute of International Education, he
made his way to Accra in order to study with Gideon Alorworye, the resident master
drummer of the Ghana Dance Ensemble. Due to illness he returned from only after five
weeks. He spent the following year almost exclusively on the ensemble piece called
Drumming.
At first glance,
Drumming
appears to draw on Reich's non-western musical
influences more than any other of his compositions to date. The ensemble of
instrumentalists sharing their time between drums, mallet instruments and singing
testifies to the composer's attraction African traditions; as does the 12/8 rhythmic cell--
reminiscent of an African bell pattern--that accounts for the entire work's material.
However, listening to Steve Reich's
Drumming
with an ear that is thirsty for African
polyrhythmics is the recipe for misunderstanding and disappointment. The sort of strict
polyrhythmics that is found throughout central and west African music is not at all the
point of this piece of music. There is a drastic disparity between the complexity of the
rhythmic material in traditional African music and the single rhythmic cell present in
Drumming.
Furthermore, the multi-leveled construction of African polyrhythmics often
acts as a vehicle for the master drummer to flaunt his command over the pulse: with great
ease, he is able to play just a few of milliseconds ahead of the bell pattern, or ever so
slightly behind the low drum. This form of interaction is entirely absent from
Drumming.
The comparison begs the question: what did Reich learn by going to Ghana?
Parts of the answer are found in Reich's "Notes on Compositions 1965-1971":
2
The answer is
confirmation.
It confirmed my intuition that acoustic instruments could be used to
produce music that was genuinely richer in sound than that produced by electronic instruments, as
well as confirming my inclination towards percussion.
1
This passage certainly clarifies his choice of instrumentation in
Drumming,
but more
importantly it addresses the problematic comparison of
Drumming
with traditional
African music. After his return from Ghana he felt no desire to continue studying
African music; he did not wish to become either an African drummer or an
ethnomusicologist; neither did he have any interest in composing music in an "African
style". After his visit to Ghana, Reich felt anxious to get back to his own work, his own
style. With all but one of his "phase" pieces already behind him, it is safe to say the
Reich had found his voice prior to travelling to Ghana. What he learned in Ghana did not
promote a change in direction, so much as it gave confidence in his voice as well as some
ideas about what to do with his techniques. His strengthened sense of confidence led him
to expand the size of his operation: his ensemble grew from 5 to 12 people and the scale
of the composition reached a new height.
Even before his trip to Africa, Reich's aesthetics as a composer and his views on
musical performance strayed from those of most composers of western art music. The
most outstanding sign was his decision, in as early as 1963, to play in all of his own
compositions. His limitations as a performer focused his composition on the music that
was "natural to [his] abilities and inclinations."
2
In the program notes written for a
concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C in
1974--two years after Ghana--he articulates a generalized view about musical
performance that is undoubtedly affected by his exposure to the African tradition.
1
Reich, Steve. "Writings about Music". Halifax: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,
1974. p. 58.
2
Reich, p. 44.
3
The pleasure I get from playing is not the pleasure of expressing myself, but of subjugating myself
to the music and experiencing the ecstasy that comes from being a part of it.
3
This sentiment resonates with views like the one expressed by African international pop
super star Manu Dibango, in his forward to the book titled
Africa O-Ye
4
. Here he dissects
the very idea of what it means to be an "artist" in Africa. He asserts that in African
culture, the inseparability of music from day to day life renders the position of "the artist"
as "the creator" totally inapplicable. Similarly, in his chapter on musical types in the
book titled
African Music in Ghana
5
, world renown ethnomusicologist J. H. Nwabena
Nketia avers that all musical types in Ghana may be classified on a functional basis into
three groups: 1) those providing recreational music, 2) those used as "occasional" music
(e.g. celebrations and ceremonies) and 3) those used as incidental music (e.g. music to
accompany various occupational tasks, story telling sessions, or domestic situations like
nursing a baby). Studying African music and experiencing the culture first hand affected
Reich's views on the music making process more deeply than it did the specific ways in
which he worked with rhythm.
This paper is a documentation of my study of African polyrhythmics and its
possible overlaps with and connections to Steve Reich's
Drumming.
This composition as
well as every other piece that follows in Reich's output is written for the concert hall.
This very motive makes the aims of the music entirely different than those of traditional
African music (which according to sources like Nketia is always functional on some
level). Nonetheless, the material in this piece clearly concerns itself with the realm of
3
Reich, 44.
Ewens, Graeme. "Africa O-Ye: A Celebration of African Music". London: Guiness Publishing, 1991. p.
6.
4
5
Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. "African Music in Ghana". Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1963. p.
4
rhythm in a most prevalent fashion. This prevalence, the close proximity of
Drumming's
time of conception to Reich's west African experience, along with my own enthusiastic
interest in the music of the continent made the dual focus of this paper a worthwhile
pursuit.
D
RUMMING
Goals
In1964 Reich helped composer Terry Riley put together the first performance of
his
In C.
Using simultaneous repetition of many different melodic patterns,
In C
deals
with Riley's observation about the use of repetition:
I think I was noticing that things didn't sound the same when you heard them more than once. And
the more you heard them, the more different they did sound. Even though something was staying
the same, it was changing....
6
This experience motivated Reich to find a new way of working with repetition as a
musical technique. The resultant technique of "phasing"
7
took near complete control of
his output as a composer for the next 7 years. With the exception of
Four Organs (1970),
every other piece Reich wrote during this period directly dealt with the technique of
phasing. These works include
Gonna Rain
(1965),
Come Out
(1966),
Melodica (1966),
Phase Patterns
(1970),
Violin Phase
(1967), and
Piano Phase
(1967). In addition to
being his longest work to date using the phasing technique
Drumming(1971)
was "the
final expansion and refinement of the phasing process"
8
. In this piece, Reich introduced
6
Terry Riley, quoted in K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (1996), 35, acquired from
http://www.mta.ca/faculty/arts-letters/music/material/3241-51/readings/composer/riley01.html
7
See the section titled "Rhythmic complexity via two routes" for a description of the "phasing" technique.
Reich, p. 50.
8
5

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