[Musicians] Learning/sharing/remembering rhythms

Yaron Shragai via Musicians musicians at lists.sharedweight.net
Fri Feb 24 14:09:41 PST 2017


The 123-123-12 rhythm appears in Middle Eastern, Balkan, and African music;
I would more than suspect that its occurrence in contra dance music has
come mainly via the African route, both via the slave influence in
Appalachian music and via the hippy/funky influence in modern contra.

The klezmer/Romanian 123-123-12 has a different inflection to it - a
different articulation - the late great Balkan dance/int'l folk dance
teacher Dick Crum called it a "Get your Papers Here" rhythm - more of a
2;1,2;1,2 articulation than a 3;3;2 articulation.

...Unless the rhythm you're thinking of is the rock-n-roll
boom-chuckboom-boomchuck - in which case we're back to the African
influence...

- Yaron


On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 3:31 AM, Erik Hoffman via Musicians <
musicians at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> Hi Max & All,
>
> Interesting that you learned the 3-3-2 rhythm as Klezmer.
>
> - Klezmer rhythm (123-123-12)
>
>
> So many of the people I've studied from say the 3-3-2 came from Africa. It
> has invaded many other genres. When I first learned about it (other than
> the clave), it came at me three times in one year:
>    * A bunch of fiddle bowings used in Old-Time Appalachian tunes (highly
> slave influenced)
>    * A doumbek rhythm (an Arabic drum)
>    * In hamboning--body rhythm with African roots, from when slaves had
> their drums taken away.
> __
>
> Erik Hoffman
> Oakland, CA
>
>
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