PART TWO: BLACK RHYTHM TECHNOLOGIES, FOCUSING ON THE SECULAR BRANCH AS THE PRIMARY HOME OF DANCE MUSIC

...NO ONE MAN OWNS HOUSE BECAUSE HOUSE MUSIC IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, SPOKEN AND UNDERSTOOD BY ALL
YOU SEE, HOUSE IS A FEELING THAT NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND REALLY UNLESS YOU’RE DEEP INTO THE VIBE OF HOUSE

HOUSE IS AN UNCONTROLLABLE DESIRE TO JACK YOUR BODY
lyrics by Chuck Roberts on Rhythm Controll, My House

GROOVE IS WHEN OVERLAPPING PATTERNS OF RHYTHM INTERLOCK, WHEN BEATS SYNCROMESH UNTIL THEY GENERATE AN AUTOMOTION EFFECT, AN INEXORABLE, EFFORTLESS SENSATION WHICH PUSHES YOU ALONG FROM BEHIND UNTIL YOU'RE FUNKY LIKE A TRAIN. TO GET INTO THE GROOVE IS TO LOCK INTO THE POLYRHYTHMOTOR, TO BE ADAPTED BY A FICTIONALIZED RHYTHM ENGINE WHICH DRAWS YOU ON ITS OWN MOMENTUM.

Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventure in Sonic Fiction

WHAT IS RHYTHM? IT IS THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEING, THE INTERNAL DYNAMISM, WHICH GIVES HIM FORM, THE SYSTEM OF WAVES WHICH HE EMITS IN RELATION TO OTHERS, THE PURE EXPRESSION OF VITAL FORCE. RHYTHM IS THE VIBRATORY SHOCK, THE FORCE WHICH, THROUGH SENSES, SEIZES US AT THE ROOT OF OUR BEING.

Leopold Senghor, Spirit of Civilisation

Techno is most known for its associations with electric technology, but the more essential technology to Techno is rhythm itself. Rhythm is a primordial science that is Techno's immanent domain. Techno's wiring grounds to West Africa, preordaining a preeminent proficiency and obeisance to rhythm.1 Rhythm is a unique science, through which ephemeral tools can be forged to encode movement, memory and emotions into the body and the mind. Invisible patterns flow through the nervous system the way that electric signals flow within the wiring of hardware. The body and the machine are operated by the alternating signals of oppositional forces; the upstroke: the space, the silence, the zero; and then; the downstroke: the beat, the spark, the one.2 At the core of the body, a powerful stem cord, carrying signals and transferring data between the body and the mind, at a rate immeasurable, and imperceptible. Binary patterning induces a minutia of electrical responses, a trigger event, mimicked throughout the body; currents carrying data to the memory and instructions for operation. Rhythm's connection to the brain’s frontal lobes and hippocampus in relationship to our brain stem, implicates rhythm as crucial to the function of our motor and coordinative abilities.3

In an evolutionary story of rhythm, it is crucial for physical and collective efficiency necessary for survival, like the pounding of yam or the hammering of iron. Carefully timed movements so that no one gets injured. The logic of rhythm extended to other technologies like weaving and early calculative tools. Pair rhythm with language and rhyme to form a powerful lyric and become capable of reciting long histories from memory, like the griot and the rapper. Scientists have recently observed that rhythm perception comes innately wired in newborns. This seems logical since we are formed in our mothers' womb, where the first 8-9 months of human development happen in an echo chamber of heart beats. However, scientists observe that rhythm perception is unique to humans and maybe one of the few distinctions we have from animals. Scientists determined that beat perception is not a result of statistical learning, we are born with the ability.4

Considering the recent discoveries of epigenetics, it is more than a potential that rhythm perception, along with all the memory and motor skill benefits it comes with, get encoded into human DNA. This could explain why the descendants of West African people, or any people descendent of cultures with advanced and thriving rhythmic sciences, seem to be born with an innate ability to dance and sing, and generally possess above average bodily coordination and proprioception. It may not be racist or bigoted to point that out, it could simply be biological. Such deep encoding would not so easily be bred or beaten out. Even without the original environment, the tongue, or the drums, the rhythms would persist. This rhythmic intelligence is what Thelonious Monk may call a “mathematical subconscious”—an innate sense for rhythm as a kind of applied and embodied mathematics.5

Under the lens of the Western music episteme, West African drumming most often takes place on the 12/8 time signature. This is notable because it is a time signature that can sound like several other time signatures. Based on the polyrhythms within a beat structure, it can present itself as 2/2, 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 and so on.6 West African rhythmic technology effectively transports through different portals of time perception because it is polyrhythmic and polymetric, meaning that different rhythmic patterns occur in different time scales. This polyrhythmetrical mathematics has a fractal logic based on a concept of a beat continuum, where there are no true beginnings, and a beat can be within a beat that is within a beat structure. In the western metronomic sense, these advanced rhythmic sciences are summed into a single term: syncopation, colloquially known as swing—Take two beats, and envision in between them an infinitude of divisions. Then take either one or both of the two beats and rearrange them based on any point of division in between, before or after they were ‘meant’ to occur. This is swing—also known as groovy, funky, jazzy, the break, the jam, the pocket, and the cut

—TAKE TWO BEATS, AND ENVISION IN BETWEEN THEM AN INFINITUDE OF DIVISIONS. THEN TAKE EITHER ONE OR BOTH OF THE TWO BEATS AND REARRANGE THEM BASED ON ANY POINT OF DIVISION IN BETWEEN, BEFORE OR AFTER THEY WERE ‘MEANT’ TO OCCUR. THIS IS SWING—ALSO KNOWN AS GROOVY, FUNKY, JAZZY, THE BREAK, THE JAM, THE POCKET, AND THE CUT—

It provides the music with the ability to not only shift rhythmic structures, but also shift pitch and tonality, as pitch and tone are structured by the frequency of a beat. Even harmony could be understood as polyrhythms at a high frequency. It can bring somber emotional cadence into a song, or ramp up emotional excitement by utilizing suspension.

Traversing beat patterns create a web of cross-sections, enclosing a space within the beat continuum, a room that is maintained through time. A song is a familiar room that performs like an ark, transiting through time-space. Rhythm ignites and powers the vehicle, melody and harmony shifts its altitude, and syncopation gears the different velocities and turns the ark takes. Within the ark is the listener or the dance floor, carried through specific emotional and physical impulses. It jacks the nervous system of the body into the vast and ancient circuit board of emotion, synapsing messages, movement, and memory.

West African rhythmic technology’s advanced ability to transmute itself and engender emotion into the dancer may be the reason it was able to persist through the Transatlantic Slave Trade and centuries of extraordinary trauma. As people were forcibly transported, tortured into submission, and indoctrinated into the base of Western society and economic strata, the music of West Africa mutated, subsuming and disguising itself into Western musical instrumentation. Its transmutability became an agent for resistance, evasion, and survival.

A song is a familiar room that performs like an ark, transiting through time-space.

Ethnomusicologist Portia K Maultsby says the best way to describe the making of Black music is as a "participatory social event." She explains that the main through line connecting Black music of America to African music is the communal context in which it is created,

"WE DON'T CREATE AS INDIVIDUALS. I MEAN WE DO, BUT WHEN WE DO SO, WE ARE STILL WITHIN THIS COMMUNITY CONTEXT... IF EVERYBODY'S GOING TO PARTICIPATE, OR LOTS OF PEOPLE WOULD PARTICIPATE IN THE MUSIC MAKING ACTIVITY, THEN THE FORM OF THE MUSIC HAS TO BE SUCH THAT IT ACCOMMODATES COMMUNITY."

She makes it clear that the creation of Black music making is a co-emergent process involving the musician and also the audience, specifically the dancers. She says,

"THE CREATIVE PROCESS INVOLVES MOVEMENT AND DANCE. DANCE AND MUSIC ARE CONSIDERED TO BE THE SAME. THEY'RE NOT SEPARATE. IN TERMS OF A PLACE IN AFRICA, THEY ARE, WHEN YOU SAY MUSIC, THEY'RE AUTOMATICALLY THINKING ABOUT DANCE AND MOVEMENT."7

Master Dagombo drummer Alhaji Ibrahim Abdulai, interviewed extensively in John Miller Chernoff's African Rhythm and African Sensibility (1978), affirms Maultsby's description of the integrated relationship between dance and music in the Black and African music making process,

"SO IT IS THE PARTICULAR BEAT AND THE MOVEMENT OF THE FEET AND BODY THAT TELLS YOU HOW TO CHANGE YOUR [DRUMMING] STYLES. BUT WHEN WE ARE PLAYING ALONG AND THERE ARE NO DANCERS, AND I KEEP ON CHANGING THE BEAT, THAT MEANS THAT I AM TALKING WITH THE DRUM."

When Ibrahim says he is talking with the drum, he means that allegorically and literally. Because of the tonal nature of West African languages, the tonal and percussive instrument of the drum is considered as an extension of the body for language and expression. Many masterful drummers can literally talk with their drums. The Negro Act of 1740 banned Black subjects of colonial slavery from the use of drums for this reason. Passed by the South Carolina province in response to the Stono Rebellion8, which confirmed fears by slave owners and traffickers that African people were able to communicate through their drums. When master drummer Abdulai speaks about 'talking with the drum' in the absence of dancers, the referent communication is happening between him and the other drummers in the ensemble.

Chernoff recounts Abdulai's explanation of how he was able to generate beats, "Ibrahim felt that his isolated beating was meaningless without a second rhythm, but more than that, he could not even think of the full range of stylistic variations he might play without the beating of a second drum. There was no conversation, and this kind of responsiveness is given another, fuller expression in African musical arrangements..." The music is generated by a dynamic tension between the drums, and the entire creative ensemble, which includes the dancing participants. This interstitium of musical expression is what many researchers have named the "call-and-response" character of Black and African music. What is actually happening within the music is more interwoven and simultaneous than what the term "call-and-response" implies. Furthermore, the "call-and-response" feature not only occurs in the instance of music making, but also happens along vastly spaced distances in time and space. The ethos of Black music making is always happening in response to creative ensembles elsewhere, and prior to on the beat continuum. The sound coalesces and evolves in the multi-dimensional chorus of musicians and audiences throughout time-space.

Abdulai speaks pointedly about the beat continuum and the relationship between dance and rhythm (audience and player), in the evolution of musical style,

" DRUMMING HAS NO END, AND TO TALK OF DRUMMING YOU CANNOT TALK OF IT AND FINISH. AS WE ARE DRUMMING EVERY DRUMMING HAS GOT ITS NAME, AND AGAIN EVERY DRUMMING HAS GOT ITS DANCE. EVERY PLAYING IS DIFFERENT, AND IN DRUMMING EVERYONE HAS GOT HIS HAND. SO NO ONE CAN KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT DRUMMING; EVERYONE KNOWS ONLY TO HIS EXTENT. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO AND KNOW IT? THE KNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE TODAY AND YOU ARE TAKING TO BLUFF, THERE IS SOMEONE SOMEWHERE WHO KNOWS MORE THAN THAT. SO IN OUR DRUMMING WAY, NO ONE BLAMES ANOTHER. IF SOMEONE DOESN'T KNOW, YOU DON'T SAY, 'THIS MAN DOESN'T KNOW.' IF YOU SAY THAT YOU HAVE DEMEANED YOURSELF. MAYBE AS YOU SAY YOU KNOW, SOMEONE TOO KNOWS BETTER THAN YOU, AND AS YOU ARE BENDING DOWN LOOKING AT SOMEONE'S ANUS, SOMEONE IS ALSO BENDING DOWN LOOKING AT YOURS."

“AND AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO KNOW DRUMMING IT HAS MANY TYPES. IF A VILLAGER COMES TO DANCE, HOW WE ARE GOING TO PLAY WILL BE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WE WILL PLAY FOR A TOWNSMAN. THE MEN’S DANCING IS DIFFERENT, AND THE WOMEN’S DANCING IS ALSO DIFFERENT. AS THE DANCING IS DIFFERENT, THE VILLAGE DRUMMERS HAVE ALSO GOT THEIR WAY OF PLAYING. IF A VILLAGE DRUMMER COMES TO TOWN, HE HAS TO FORGET ABOUT HIS VILLAGE PLAYING AND FOLLOW THE TOWN PEOPLE’S PLAYING…BUT WHEN YOU SEE A VILLAGER COMING TO DANCE, AND HIS VILLAGE DRUMMER IS THERE, HIS VILLAGE DRUMMER WILL KNOW THE WAY HIS LEG WILL GO. AND THAT DRUMMER WILL LET YOU STOP, AND HE WILL CHANGE TO THE WAY HE HAS BEEN PLAYING FOR THAT FELLOW TO DANCE AT HOME. ”

To incontrovertibly establish Techno as a genre of Black music is to trace the journey backwards through the beat Disco-ntinuum. But there is a certain narrative in the mythologized odyssey to Techno, which obscures essential nodal ensembles of emergence that would explicate lineage. In the telling and retelling of the Belleville Three (the often cited God-fathers of Techno from Belleville, a suburb of Detroit; Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson), the compulsive impulse to affirm individuality and male genius trips the disco-ntinuum's track, creating divergent lines that misguide listeners to Europe, and disconnects them from Black origins. Repeated lore about Techno's roots in Kraftwerk, Krautrock, and Steve Reich persist in contemporary discourse around the genre. It seems like a yearning for a cool, rational, straight, white male account of origin precludes a more honest retelling of an origin that is Blacker, less organized and linear, and way more flamboyant.

the compulsive impulse to affirm individuality and male genius trips the disco-ntinuum's track, creating divergent lines that misguide listeners to Europe, and disconnects them from Black origins.

The patriarchal instinct is to conflate naming with inventing. The creation of techno is often pinpointed to Juan Atkins' account of naming techno in 1980. However, if we start the story with Juan Atkin's band Cybotron, and take only Juan Atkins' word for it, we don't get the full picture, and we cannot clearly hear the evolution of the sound. Individuals cannot invent an entire genre, especially genres of Black music, because the creation of genre is a co-emergent process born through collectivity. Techno's emergence necessitates the pre-existence of an ensemble of music makers, musicians and dancers, which account for many more than just three young men.

The demarcation that distinguishes Techno from House happens at the orientation to time; pitting the future versus the past. This dialectical interpretation of the genres creates a perception that they have always been co-existent, separate and at odds. In truth, it wasn't a point of departure, but the operational tension within the ensemble, the call and response, the on-beat and the off-beat; counter rhythms which generated patterns for the beat continuum; a vast weave of expressions, in conversation with each other and the whole. Music makers in the Disco and post-Disco (Eshun’s soul and post-soul) era experimented with the dialogue between time: the future and the past; and space: here and there, which led to House and then Techno. The future was wrestled away from House for Techno's singular occupation, leaving the past to House's domain.

Every drumming has got its name and every drumming has got its dance.

Techno is below House in the Disco branch of Maultsby's chart because the dancers who co-created the music along with the producers and djs. The Jack, the name given to the dancing component of House, is what ushered in the sound of Techno, which built upon Disco and House's 'four-to-the-floor' rhythm that birthed Jack. Cybotron's records sold more in Chicago than in Detroit, because of the House music ensemble there.9 The sound of Juan Atkins 1985 solo project Model 500 evolves from Cybotron's Electro Funk (or Maultsby’s 1992 Techno Funk) band sound in response to House's reception of 'Clear'. Derrick May frequently attended House music parties in the early and mid 80s. He speaks about seeing early House music pioneers Ken Collier of Detroit, Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles of Chicago,

" BEFORE I REALLY STARTED MAKING MUSIC I GOT BAPTISED BY RON HARDY. THE WAY HE PLAYED MUSIC AND THE WAY PEOPLE RESPONDED TO HIM, I WATCHED THOSE PEOPLE CLIMB POLES IN HIS CLUB, WATCHED THEM BECOME ANIMALS, LIKE FUCKING WILD ANIMALS...THAT CLUB WAS UNBELIEVABLE AND THAT SPIRIT STAYED WITH ME AND THAT SHIT WAS EMBEDDED IN ME, SCARED ME, IT OPENED UP A WHOLE OTHER INSIGHT TO WHERE I WAS COMING FROM ELECTRONICALLY AND ALL MY OTHER BACKGROUNDS. SO WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE, MAN, I FOLLOWED THAT VISION OF THOSE PEOPLE AND THAT CLUB AND OF THE THINGS I'VE SEEN IN OTHER CLUBS, KEN [COLLIER]'S CLUB, FRANKIE'S CLUB. "10

Frankie Knuckles even named his seminal track Strings of Life, which May personally gave to him as a demo to play at the Powerplant. On Kevin Saunderson's 2025 NTS radio show, he explicitly names his influences as Disco and House music, and describes his sonic lineage as a product of his Brooklyn nativity. This is why Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit includes a track entitled "Detroit is Jacking".

Juan Aktins has explicitly stated his sonic influences as Kraftwerk, progressive rock, and George Clinton. Despite his admission to being influenced by Giorgio Morodor (Donna Summer's producer), Disco's influence is quieted in common discourse about the origins to Techno. Funk had come into focus a few years prior to Disco in the late 60s. The term 'disco' begins to appear on records in the mid-70s, and was applied to any song that was danceable, and played in the clubs. This included many funk songs, along with Jazz, Salsa, and R&B. The sound of dance music in the 70s was labeled by record stores and marketing executives, and as with any genre, the sound wasn't identified specifically by name at the time of its emergence. Artists and record labels enlisted djs to mix songs into extended versions, longer plays that were more effective on dance floors to promote sales, 12” singles that were sometimes literally labeled ‘disco mix.’ By the end of the decade, any song that was danceable was considered "Disco". The sound coalesced into an identifiable genre centralizing a hi-tempo 4/4 kick drum. Funk coexisted along with Disco throughout the 70s, and there was considerable cross-influence. In a conversation with listeners and dancers of the whole 70's music making ensemble, funk bands had adopted disco rhythmic styles by the mid 70s, because they were catchy and kept funk relevant in the discos which provided commercial viability. In a way, both genres mimicked what disco djs were able to achieve with freestyle playing, spinning techniques, and reel to reel mixing. They both also evolved to contain predispositions towards the future and space.

The disco sound was a huge global force, and therefore influenced the sound of music globally. Kraftwerk had major success in the United States because of the disco djs. Trans Europe Express won a Disco award in 1977. It was when Kraftwerk came to New York that year to receive their award that they realized how popular their music was with Black dancing audiences. Subsequently, they hired (a Black) sound engineer Leanard "Colonel Disco," Jackson who was born in Chicago and previously worked for Motown, to help mix their following album Man-Machine sound more danceable (Black).

Black audiences were receptive to bands like Kraftwerk, and many European Composers sounded like Black musicians, because Black music is at the foundation for the industrialized, modern, and contemporary eras that lead up to our present. The paradigm was set with the economic ascent of Western European Countries and the United States of America. Due to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and Western European encounter with the Other, Blackness, and 'the East' laid the groundwork for the corporations, economies, and countries of today. This includes the cultural production industry and institutions of music. Kraftwerk, and attendant mythical European origins of Techno, were so influential to Black music because they contained resonant forms of Black music, preconceived within the syncopated logic of Black music that had proliferated around the world prior to Kraftwerk's formation. Black people were responding to a resonant call from ourselves through the time-space of the continuum. The emergence of Kraftwerk, Krautrock, et al took place in a global landscape where Black music had been sensationalized by industry and governments, for capital and influence, for at least 75 years by 1975.

Without the precursor of an international circuit of Black American music and influence, like Jazz, Funk, and Soul (genres that merged to form disco), it is difficult to imagine the rhythmic electronic music coming out of Europe ever existing. Kraftwerk was first popularized in Disco clubs, Techno producers wouldn’t have been exposed to Kraftwerk, had it not been for the band’s popularity amongst Disco dj’s in the 70s. There was a feedback loop of sound between the Disco scenes in the US and the scenes in Europe (UK, Italy, France, Germany) that generated the Disco and Electro music that dominated that late 70s and early 80s, The elevation of the band Kraftwerk in influence, even above other electronic musicians like G. Morodor (Donna Summer?) feels like a side step of Disco’s fundamental foundation for the musical form as well as the format for listening and circulating it: the club. Even if Kraftwerk were the sole parentage of Techno, the genre would not have gotten far. It's not just the sounds and the machines that generate a style. The format for the ways that sound is heard is just as crucial to a style's creation. The discotheques, the clubs, the garage raves, these formats of gathering and collectivity fomented the rise of the genre. The driving rhythmic legacy of Disco’s sound and its format for being heard carried through to House music, and eventually to Techno; and the format for Disco is the dance floor, the sound system, and nightlife.

Nightclubs and nighttime gatherings are always considered antagonistic to routine and oppressive paradigms. Discotheques in the 1970s were no exception. Their particular innovations to the nightclub subverted several different industries and mainstream social beliefs. They contained the life sustaining convergent points for social movements at the time, while also de-stigmatizing homosexuality, women's empowerment, and racial mixing. Many Disco clubs the subverted use of the 501c3’s non profit tax filing, forgoing liquor licensing in lieu of serving juice and fruit. Along with membership only format, these business practices untethered nightlife from the extractive and penalizing supervision of governmental and criminal organizations. The advent of the dj superseded bands and hired entertainment, centralized the dancefloor and the audience as the heart and soul of the club. This concretized the club as a democratic space, where attendees were autonomous to their own needs and desires, and could move about the space freely without paying reverence to an idol; they could become idols themselves. People began attending the club to be with and to be seen, rather than just to see or to hear. The lighting and lasers articulated the charged social static, and accompanied altered states of perception.

The innovation of the soundsystem may be the most celebrated contribution of the Disco era’s legacy to all succeeding dance music genres. The history of the Disco sound system winds through New York City, when huge sound systems were erected for block parties in the Bronx and in Queens. A tradition carried through the Jamaican diaspora, Black and Latino dancers were accustomed to hearing heart-shaking bass, what sonic scholar Julian Henriques terms a “vibrotactile experience.” The “affect has the immediacy of sensory experience, as with the loudness and visceral presence of the sonic dominance… soundscape becomes even more the auditory, or even haptic…”11 Richard Long who designed the systems at Paradise Garage in NYC, The Box and the Warehouse in Chicago, formed relationships with the djs at each venue (Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, and Frankie Knuckles), tweaking the system and creating new equipment based on feedback from the djs, and by proxy, the audiences of the clubs. Dancers at the Disco clubs speak about feeling the wind from the speakers, and hearing auditory effects that sounded like wind or trains, incorporated into the music by the djs. Long's relationship with Larry Levan at Paradise Garage developed an elaborate system with subwoofer stacks and tweeters hung high, accompanied with a 5-channel crossover tool. It was noted that Richard Long’s work at these clubs emitted a wholly encompassing sound with deeper and more resonant bass than other clubs, which could be credited to the preferences of the Black and Latino audiences. The sonic dominance of disco clubs’ sound systems, shook the buildings. The narrow space between the wooden baseboards of the dancefloor and the concrete foundation warmly resonated the bass and thousands of footsteps, enlisting the entire structure, along with the dancing people, into the corporeal affect of the sound, the sonic body.12

The sonic body is nurtured within the protective womb of sound and darkness. A place of containment, carried by the sound, where to go to be hidden, undiscovered, and encompassing landscapes for escape. Enshrouded by the dark, that elegant absorbent void, a hyper-potent density overwhelming light itself, shielding its contents from visibility and thereby surveillance. Enabling inhibition, the foundation for freedom. The nighttime and the dimmed dance floor have been utilized as vehicles for social engagement and collective trance for time immemorial. They are the conditions crucial to generate social evolution, as collective emotion and experience provide both the elements for envisioning unrealized forms and practices of social collectivity necessary for change. Nightclubs, the inviting space of the dance floor, and the secretive, electric density of crowds encoded in darkness, are inherently radical. They introduce erratic elements into society, unpredictable nodal points in the network of desire and behavior, that could be tripped at any time to throw the trajectory into an entirely new direction or speed.

" …I USED THE BRIGHT HOUSE LIGHTS AND THEN PLUNGED THE FLOOR INTO DARKNESS AFTER THE BREAKS IN SONGS, HE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHY I DID THAT AND HE DEMANDED THAT I STOP THAT EFFECT BUT I REFUSED TO CHANGE. "
Kenny Carpenter interviewed by Bill Brewster for djhistory.com, 1999

continued in PART IV*

1. Ethnomusicologist have been fascinated with the music and rhythms from Africa and have documented their observations going back over a century. Mostly white and male researchers made observations of music from around the world mostly with comparative analysis, using their own European understanding of music as a baseline to create a descriptive framework to define the music. The study of music from African primarily begins with Erich Von Hornbostel and Otto Abraham, while working at the Berlin Institute of Psychology. Their research was conducted along with linguistic scholars based on collected recordings from the Ewe people of Togo. These recordings were analyzed and entered into the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv. Eventually, ethnomusicologist began to take an immersive learning approach, and African scholars like Kwabene Nketia formally entered the field. It is difficult for me to find a way to frame this history. On the one hand I find the descriptive work as a fascinating documentation of encounter. The attempt by white Europeans to describe and categorize music created with logic beyond European conception spawned language that is materially useful to me to substantiate what I understand intuitively as a Black person that is descendent of West African people. Also, I consider these writings relevant to the history of Black music's persistent global popularity and appropriation, as they are records of encounter, "discovery", and fascination by white audiences. On the other hand, I feel reluctant to quote white ethnomusicologist for fear that 1) words that I have written before reading them or understandings of Black music that I have cultivated by listening and dancing to days worth of music would be credited to them, and 2) that their words, however incisive, would be taken as precedent over any other Black person mentioned in describing Black music, simply because they have documented their observations earlier in time. I have resolved to include their writings as footnotes instead of quotes. I came to this conclusion after teetering on the edge of an extensive rabbit hole leading me into the history of ethnomusicology while reading John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility (1979). I was reading with the intention to find quotes to flesh out the edit of this piece for Dweller's site. Most of the content for this piece was written prior to reading Chernoff. Also, I have read the first couple chapters of John Collins, African Musical Symbolism in Contemporary Perspective (2004) during the writing of the earliest drafts of this piece. Although Collins' and Chernoff's immersed perspectives of African music, culture and philosophy offer insightful observations, my embodied understanding of Black music, by being a participant as a dancer and progeny to African people should not be taken for granted.

2. "only the second phase is stressed acoustically, but the first inaudible one has the motor accent, as it were which consists in the straining of the muscles. This implies an essential contrast between our rhythmic conception and the African'; we proceed from hearing, they from motion; we separate the two phases by a bar-line, and commence the metrical unity, the bar, with the acoustically-stressed time unit; to them the beginning of the movement, the arsis” Hornbostel, E.M. von, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan., 1928)

3. Large EW, Roman I, Kim JC, Cannon J, Pazdera JK, Trainor LJ, Rinzel J, Bose A. Dynamic models for musical rhythm perception and coordination, Front Comput Neurosci. 2023 May 17;17:1151895. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2023.1151895. PMID: 37265781; PMCID: PMC10229831.

4. 
   

   1. Gábor P. Háden, Fleur L. Bouwer, Henkjan Honing and István Winkler: 'Beat processing in newborn infants cannot be explained by statistical learning based on transition probabilities', in: Cognition, Volume 243, 2024. Doi 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105670. István Winkler, Gábor P.

   2. Háden, Olivia Ladinig and Henkjan Honing: 'Newborn infants detect the beat in music', in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 17, 2009
      https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0809035106.

5. “All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.” Thelonious Monk interviewed by Pearl Gonzalez, ‘Monk Talk,’ DownBeat Magazine, October 16, 1958

6. 
   

   1. ​​"African music is often characterized as polymetric because, in contrast to most Western music, African music cannot be notated without assigning different meters to the different instruments of an ensemble...musicians do not find their entrances by counting from a main beat, but rather, they must find their entrances in relation to the other instruments." Chernoff, pg 36.

   2. “For instance the ability to stretch and generally swing musical time permitted the slaves to squeeze and transmute their 12/8 African Signature Tune pattern into one of the 4/4-clave rhythm found Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin music.” Collins, pg 48

7. Portia K. Maultsby interviewed by Gina Page for African Ancestry, ‘Music in Our DNA’, June 23, 2021

8. "Recent arrivals from the Kingdom of Kongo drew on drumming traditions, military organization, and Kongolese spirituality to communicate their message of freedom. The high point of the revolt was a ceremonial dance, the sangamento, which fused African precedents and enacted the rebels’ call of liberty. Costello will also trace the sangamento tradition in the U.S. and throughout the Americas, and discuss how the Kongolese message of liberty can inform present-day efforts to overcome the lingering effects of our colonial inheritance." Vermont Humanities description of Damian Costello lecture

9. Juan Atkins interviewed by Jonathan Flemming, The House Music Movement compilation CD, Doc Martin, Master Dance Tones, 1998

10. ‘The Secret of Techno’ Derrick May interview with Mixmag, 1997

11. Henriques, Julian, The Vibrations of Affect and their Propagation on a Night Out on Kingston’s Dancehall Scene, Body & Society Vol. 16 No. 1, April 9, 2010

12. Henriques, Julian, Sonic Body: ​​Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing, 2011.