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(a)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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>
Hi fellow musicians. :)
Up here in Ottawa, we just had a great workshop with David Kaynor and
George Wilson.... .... it was all about non-melody for melody players.
One of the ideas we talked about was playing rhythm - something very
familiar to me as a contra piano player.
The challenge we've had with our community band (10 people) is how to get
everyone on the same 1-2 rhythms/grooves. When we do non-melody, it's
everyone doing something different which sounds like a wall of sound.
Do any of you have tricks for sharing rhythms?
In particular, I liked the idea proposed by David in terms of having
sentences that remind you of certain rhythms. But what I'd love is a chart
showing names for different rhythms and related, where to emphasize beats
or drop beats.
Thoughts?? ??? ????
So much of what we do is intuitive but with a large group, there's only 2-3
of us working as a team right now.
With thanks,
Emily in Ottawa