African Rhythm Studies

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a guide to the scholarship on African rhythm produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It builds on the widely circulated view that rhythm is the single most distinctive quality of African music—a view reflected not only in the popular imagination but also in the musicological literature. Setting aside the question why there is such intense interest in African rhythm, the chapter addresses “who” and “what” questions: who has written technically about African rhythm in the last one hundred years or so, and what have they claimed in the way of explanatory theory? Brisk summaries of the writings of some two dozen authors are provided, and the chapter goes on to observe some of the routines of theory-making. Rhythm remains salient in scholarship because it appears to be more fully elaborated in African music than in other world musical idioms. Yet the assumptions made by scholars, the analytical tools deployed, and the institutional contexts in which theories are produced all differ widely. Then also, the body of scholarship is strangely non-cumulative insofar as subsequent writers do not always build on their predecessors’ findings. Reflecting on these and other features of the discourse sheds light on the archive as currently constituted.