Basic Conga Drum Rhythms in African-American Musical Styles

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This article will provide a brief introduction to some major rhythmic of African-American popular music. The are usually identified with particular places, and it is common for people to listen to a particular piece of music and say, That sounds Brazilian, or That sounds Caribbean. Few people can pinpoint what it is they are hearing that enables them to make such statements, but many people are familiar with these because now, perhaps more than ever, musicians around the world are influencing one another and combining rhythms from different styles. What we are calling styles could also be called idioms or genres because they have distinct names and characteristic modes of expression. Each style we are describing is a combination of technique, dynamics, sound tones, and texture, and each includes a range of rhythmic variations. We hope to assist nonspecialists who hear these different of music and wish to identify them on the basis of what we feel to be their essential rhythmic characters. Although many people who characterize musical refer to rhythm as only one element among others, such as, to name a few, harmonic and vocal patterns, song structure, instrumentation, and so on, our approach will be to illustrate a selection of major in their simplest rhythmic forms. We will illustrate them as one might hear them played on a single conga drum by a contemporary African-Ameri