Another little polyrhythm from my youth. Again from the Ewe. They have had a particular musical influence in the area (West Africa) because of their political history. When the British and the French carved out their territories, the Ewe found themselves split across four countries with kin and other ties, including cultural ones, being fragmented. Refinding their unity -- indeed, deciding whether it was worth keeping -- became a hot issue. The Ewe could never decide -- still have not really decided -- if their internal tribal links are/should be 'more important' than the more political state oriented links they (should?) have to the countries in which they reside. For example, there was an amusing situation for a while where Ghana had lots of (largely industrial) diamonds but no diamond marketing board; while the nearby countries of Togo, Dahomey and Nigeria had diamond marketing boards and no diamonds. The Ewe, of course, lived in the relevant mining areas and so provided a large proportion of the mining population; and they had close kin in the countries where the "stolen" diamonds were eventually marketed.

Another contentious issue, as it was/still is with almost all African tribes was the relationship between Christianity and the native religions. The Ashanti, for example, revered Yaa, the goddess of the soil and fertility. Thus many native farmers refused to farm on Thursdays this being regarded as her sacred day. They were, however, prepared to work on Sundays. The Christian missionaries were, of course, extremely concerned with the status of the souls of the local population and felt that the best place for farmers on Sunday was in church. Both those who continued to refuse to farm on Thursdays and those who did farm on Sundays and/or refused to go to church were condemned as heathens, fetish priests and the like. The issue of the right of native farmers to farm on Thursdays, which the local missionaries looked upon as 'wicked' in that it at least implicitly paid respect to a pagan god, was even mentioned and discussed in Parliament.

One important cult amongst the Ewe is the Yeve cult this being the cult of the god of thunder. It is traditionally a secret society. Admission into membership requires the learning of such things as a secret language, songs, dances, rituals and other customs. The process of becoming an initiate is quite long and involved.

The attached polyrhythmic patch, "Sovu", is one of the dances of the Yeve cult. It is traditionally performed whenever members of the cult meet. Since the resultant stretches across 8 beats, it can be thought of as being in 8/8 time. There are usually 10 different additive beats going, although, obviously, one person can perform two or three at once, meaning that even only three people can play the basic beat while they each take it in turns 'improvising' other rhythms over the top. The classic notations for rhythms of this kind was done by a scholar named A.M. Jones in a book he wrote back called "Studies in African Music". If I recall correctly it was published in 1959 by Oxford University Press. I am fairly sure about the publisher, but might be shaky about the date. Unfortunately, the book is not to hand.

As usual, the gankogui is largely responsible for picking out the accents that establish the timeline around which everybody is centred, although on this occasion 3 other instruments help it out: one of the handclaps (or footstomps), the astimevu and the kagan. The three instruments concerned all share the same event sequencer (lower row of EventSeq2).

The kagan is a small barrel-type drum. It gets its name, amongst the Ewe, from the nonsense syllables that are usually recited in order to 'tell' the rhythm it is supposed to keep, although on this occasion that rule does not apply for the nonsense syllables given to the kagan in this particular rhythm in fact bear no relation to its name:

(Yes ... the tsya's are occurring on the semiquavers (i.e. 16th notes) between beats 2 and 3 and 6 and 7. It is just a lot easier to write this rhythm out as an 8 beat pattern where it is easily scanned by the eyes and comprehended than as a 16 beat one. Sorry if it doesn't print out properly in this email.

Another drum called the kidi plays as follows:

The other rhythms are fairly obvious and can be gleaned from the event sequencers if you are really interested. I can't see that it would serve much purpose to write them all out and give all their nonsense syllables.

Apart from being careful when you hit what, the only other thing to watch is that one of the handclaps, Clap/Foot 5, is in fact in triple time. A cable goes from the 24 pulses per beat output of the clock generator to a clock divider which halves that speed thus giving the necessary 12 beats per cycle against the 8 beats shared by the others.

One general point that, judging from the private emails I got, some of you haven't quite got the hang of this polyrhythm stuff yet!

Please avoid thinking in terms of 'bars'. Musicologists argue endlessly about what is the best way to notate these rhythms and there is, as yet, no general agreement. But ... give up on bars and just think in terms of cycles. It is just like a wave motion ... when the same thing starts happening again, and the resultant is used as the guide, then the cycle is complete. What counts is the contribution that each part adds to one cycle of the resultant by means of the accent points it picks out as the cycle rolls along. This is why it is called 'additive rhythm'. Each adds its bit. If you insist on thinking of something being '3 bars of 4/4/ long' while something else is '2 bars of 4/4/ long', then you are imposing a completely arbitrary division on what is actually happening. What is happening, in this particular case, is that over a time period in which 12 pulses can be detected, one thing goes through its allotted patter 4 times while the other only goes 3. Just do something 4 times in one hand while the other hand does something 3 times and you will pretty much be there.

As another point, since there are often quite a few instruments and the like in each patch, one gets pretty close to patch load just by having in enough sequencers to pound out the ythm. Sovu has taken us to just over 88%. Furthermore, my concern is simply to present the simplest and most fundamental issues that I can so that people can all the more easily grasp what is going on. Seems to me that that is the quickest way in which those who are interested can start incorporating the principles in their own music. Therefore, these polyrythmic patches tend not to have any 'improvisations' or the like in; and nor do I usually attach any kind of a melody line. People are invariably singing and engaging in free expression ... but before that can happen one has to have a sense of what is going on.

One last thing about Sovu. I haven't yet worked out a way to work the switches and event sequencers so that one can play a proper introduction, go into looping around the main rhythm, and then finish off with a coda.

Sovu in fact begins with a 10-1/2 beat intro which is missing from the patch simply because I couldn't work out how to incorporate it. Very much doubt that this will make the slightest difference to any of you, but just wanted to mention it. If I solve this problem I will, of course, repost with the intro properly in place. It's kind of nice, actually.