Influencing contemporary composition through historical precedence – exploring the function of indigenous rhythm in the domain of modern popular music.
For Presentation at the ASM #40/NZSM conference, Auckland, 2017
Influencing contemporary composition through historical precedence – exploring the function of indigenous rhythm in the domain of modern popular music.
For Presentation at the ASM #40/NZSM conference, Auckland, 2017
This research investigates and discusses compositional techniques that employ rhythmic devices commonly found in traditional Nigerian music in particular, i.e of the Igbo and Yoruba people while applying them during my own compositional process. Examples of these traditional rhythms being used in modern popular music are contextualised and unpackaged, and the Ogene style is incorporated into an original work - the instruments primarily associated are also explored. I will talk about my own compositional style and the processes I utilise before explaining creative methods behind the work, which attempts to cohesively blend Ogene music and my own form of electronica without neutralizing aspects of the traditional forms which could ordinarily produce rhythmic disjunction in the same context.
In this way I am attempting to foreground and give emphasis to the cultural significance and musical nuances of Igbo percussion music while drawing attention to the source of the instruments and their place within the ensemble.I should stress that for me, this is a relatively new field of study and so while acknowledging that I still have a lot to learn, I’m greatly looking forward to both discovering more nuances of traditional Nigerian music and hopefully contributing to the wider pool of research on the subject in future.
The definition of ‘Popular Music’, has been widely theorised. Victoria Professor Roy Shuker argues the term defies definition, being that “it is difficult to define phenomena that are social practices as well as economic products and that are not static but are constantly evolving.” For the sake of this presentation, when referring to Popular music I’m meaning music which includes certain conventions in form and harmony while capturing a mainstream audience. While it can be hard to hear whether Igbo music has had as much of a direct influence on Western Popular music, there are still many non-western modern artists - Nigerian native and not- who use the traditional music from the Igbo or Yoruba culture in their own work, such as rnb singers Timaya and D’Banj to name a few.
Historically, Igbo music serves a utilitarian purpose rather than being a creative pursuit, in that it’s been used to commemorate or mark occasions such as weddings or funerals. The fact that solo performances are indeed rare is testament to the ensemble nature of the style - it’s almost as if the whole purpose of performed music becomes the interaction between players and the narrative or conversation being delivered by the multiple vocal parts. This is a challenging aspect when performing the rhythms solo, and so for this work some of the parts have been adapted for solo drumset while others have been sequenced using the program Ableton Live.
What makes the music attractive to me? The timbre and the complexity of the combined parts are both appealing, but moreso is the concerted fluid expressiveness communicated by the players. One could be forgiven for thinking they were all playing from the same brain, the parts are so well interlocked and the dynamics so well matched.
Ogene music is a style of the Igbo people, and is named so because it is characterised by the dual Ogene bell played by the group leader. The groups usually consist of 3-4 players, and the music is generally made up of a 6/8 clave rhythmic base. The lead Ogene Bell player performs call and response patterns with the ensemble which are intermittently interjected by short hocketing phrases on the bells.
Individual pieces of Ogene music can be very long - often lasting up to 20 minutes or so - while progressing through at-times starkly contrasting tempos being driven by the voice of the lead Ogene player. Nigerian musician and composer Emeka Ugwu writes “The message, amplified by the often husky voice of a male lead singer clutching an ogene, tells all kinds of mundane stories about life – from the personal to the sexual to the communal – by deploying a densely metaphoric and idiomatic language. Dictating both the tempo and rhythm of the sound, the lead calls - and backups respond in ways that engage an audience in conversation, so that if he decides to sing your praise, you are almost compelled to nod, dance or part with some cash.
Here is a short clip of an Ogene ensemble - note the seamless interplay between the two bell players and the tightness of the universal subdivision.
The hocketed patterns between the bell players are frequent but rarely repeated - suggesting that either the ensemble is extremely adept at improvising linear hocketing phrases, or (more likely) that they have a bank of 2-4 bar hocketed phrases that the singer cues with a short tag.
My own compositional style does not technically adhere to the definition I gave earlier of popular music, which I realise makes the title of this talk seem a little misleading. In my defence I will hark back to Roy Shuker’s explanation in that popular music defies definition, while pointing out that if one could quell their own musical tastes enough to devote themselves to writing strictly defined popular music, one would probably be out on their own private yacht on a day like today. (No that it could be that easy of course!)
Since I began to compose more regularly in recent years, my work has tended to directly incorporate facets of my experience as a performer. After completing my degree studies II began working and touring fulltime with the ensemble Strike Percussion, based in Wellington. I began focusing my practice on pitched percussion as well as on aspects of ensemble playing, such as polyrhythm and ‘hocketing’ (dividing linear rhythmic phrases between two or more parts), and as a result my interest in complex rhythmic structure and chordal harmony was piqued, leading—in part— to my interest in the likes of Igbo music. Much of the work commissioned by Strike Percussion was from New Zealand composers such as Gareth Farr, John Psathas and Ross Harris; a dominant feature of these composers is their tendency to use polyrhythm and pitched percussion as well as complex beat groupings, the playing of which all influenced my compositional aesthetic.
One of my biggest influences in the last five years is the American producer Steven Ellison, known by his stage name Flying Lotus. By incorporating meticulous blending of acoustic and synthesized sounds Ellison follows in the tradition of experimental artists such as Björk, Radiohead and Amon Tobin, and many of my own approaches to sound design and audio manipulation are derived from his work – predominantly Cosmogramma (2010) and Until the Quiet Comes (2012). Ellison constructs the body of these works from heavily treated audio samples (either recorded by him or lifted from any number of obscure albums) and synthesizers such as the Korg MicroKorg or the Minimoog Voyager. His approach to composition is eclectic; the thematic focus of his work can be anything from a series of altered slices of a piano motif (‘All the Secrets’, Until the Quiet Comes, 2012) to a two-minute improvised drum and saxophone duet (‘German Haircut’, Cosmogramma, 2010), and typically avoids the use of strophic structure. The main appeal of Ellison’s work for me is the use of multilayered sounds culminating in a highly dynamic sonic field which is rich in both complex rhythmic and harmonic movement, and this work was composed through employing similar methodologies.
My creative process is variable depending on my access to instruments and recording equipment, but it almost always begins with the construction of harmony. This is usually written with Ableton using a generic native synthesizer, i.e. Operator, after which I rearrange chords into a progression and then add bass and rhythm parts along with some melodic lines. My preference for using a computer came out of necessity, although it has become a ubiquitous tool for creating. Auslander discusses this, stating “synthesizers, once seen not as musical instruments but as machines that had no place in rock, have come to be seen as just another form of keyboard instrument. The computer keyboard has yet to be assimilated in quite the same way, though that process has begun” (Auslander, 2008: 72)
As the sectional structure of my work can be widely varied an important part of the aesthetic is the narrative, and it provides context both between each section and of the dynamic development occurring throughout the piece. The compositions tend to be through-composed as a means of supporting a developing narrative as opposed to a more repetitive strophic form. This general evasion of repetition is reflective of my own attention span, but I believe it can also help to keep listeners engaged. Though I am referring to the structure and musical sequence, this is not necessarily an implication of the presence of a categorical series of relating events, or plot. This compositional ideal is shared by the Finnish electroacoustic composer Andean, who writes “Rather, it [the narrative] is intended to draw attention to the identity constructed from the evolving stream of local images and identities over the duration of the piece” (Andean, 2010).
Recently my compositions have been more or less studies into the functionality of rhythm; that is, looking at historic precedence and current practice to develop a spectrum by which I can challenge rhythmic norms in contemporary popular music. This spectrum informs my composition, and in this instance I have blended various techniques with digital manipulation to create the rhythmic foundation for this work.
Another area of my research and practice is that of metric superimposition, or as it’s called sometimes ‘superimposed metric modulation’ a term coined by the great drummer Vinnie Colaiuta. This fairly common method involves transforming a subdivision of the original or ‘global’ meter into another, thus imposing a new feel, meter and/or tempo change. While this technique is not commonly heard in this style of indigenous music, it has become another area of interest to me as a means of expressiveness within consistent rhythm as opposed to expressiveness through improvisation. I’ve recently been experimenting with this method while using a melodic line as a reference; the meter changes under the motif while one of the limbs duplicates the motif rhythm for reference. Observing the result of using this method had lead to it being a feature in recent compositions of mine and thus it is incorporated into into the middle section of this work.
Earlier I mentioned two Nigerian Pop Artists who incorporate Igbo music into their own.
Here is a track by Timaya called ‘Telli Person’ in which traditional instrumentation can be heard as part of the supporting backing. Though the meter is 4/4, the percussion is obviously sampled from real performance and retains the slightly swung characteristics of the original 6/8 meter that rigid quantisation would have nullified.
Here is a D’Banj track called ‘It’s not a lie’ - note that while the vocals are affected with a heavy autotune, the structure, harmony and instrumentation are largely derivative of an authentic Ogene percussion ensemble and the sense of performance is unaltered as it would be by the previously adopted sampling process.
While the work I’m about to perform is lacking the effect of having multiple players, the ogene bell is performed rather than sampled in an attempt to provide a more fluid feeling characteristic of live performance. Rather than including the whole array of Ogene instrumentation, or other key voices such as the Oja flute, I have focused on experimenting with the Ogene Bell, and also the rhythmic foundation of the style - that is, a version of the 6/8 Bembe clavé.
I have explored marrying the traditional Igbo rhythm with digital processing by using a manually triggered beat-repeat effect on the 6/8 clavé, which is performed by a synth in the intro. Though I am triggering the amount of variance through a midi controller, this is still a randomising effect based on algorithms rather than each variation being a calculated artistic decision. This is an attempt to move away from the element of human performance to create disparity between my performed parts and the machine. This concept, while not new, ties in with something I’ve been exploring regarding the role of recorded drumset and/or percussion. Surprisingly (given that I’m a drumset player primarily) I have questioned the premise for having acoustic drums in a recording for some time now - particularly as there seems to be a never-ending barrage of impressive youtube videos demonstrating the substitution of drums with pens, cups, beatboxing etc. As long as production technology allows, the role of the drumset in popular music can be accomplished by just about any other sound. Does a live performed drumset even need justification? Probably not, but this topic has provided the impetus for other research of mine which discusses the issue - that is, the issue of if and when drums are necessary. The results would suggest, to my ear, that the result of having a broad improvisational vocabulary on the instrument, along with the idiosyncratic timbre afforded by having four limbs and playing both metal and drumskin, allows a drummer to communicate with listeners in a way which can’t be replicated on another instrument. This unique aspect can cement its importance in the realm of contemporary composition, making a cogent argument for the drumset’s survival in the next era of recorded music.
The Oghene dual bell has origins in the eastern regions of Nigeria, and, as I mentioned earlier, is a standout feature of the music from this region. It is the most important of an array of Ogene musical instruments including the ekwe, igba, oja, udu and ichaka. Similar to the Yoruba Agogo bells, the approach usually taken with this instrument is that of an ensemble leader and can be likened to the role of the repinique player in a Batucada group, in that he establishes call/response cycles with the rest of the group. The bell instrument is particularly dynamic, and often the duelling bell players will rise and fall dynamically with each other. Being most comfortable on the drumset, I’ve opted to use just that which can be struck with sticks instead of incorporating hand percussion – though I intend to use percussion such as the Udu or the shekere in conjunction with the drumset in future research-informed compositions. The Ogene bell is usually hand-held and struck with a stick which is shorter and fatter than a normal drumstick - however in this case drumsticks are used as the bell part is incorporated into the broader drumset part. For this work the ogene bell is the centrepiece – it performs an 8-bar phrase under which a 3/8 pattern (usually played by a shekere and jug??) is performed using the floor-tom and its rim. As previously mentioned, there are several elements synonymous with the Ogene bells I have tried to preserve throughout this work; the first is the interplay between the bell players. In this work a looped 8-bar phrase is performed on the bells using a series of rhythmic motifs transcribed from an Ogene bell duet.
The second element I have incorporated is the level of dynamics which are explored by the players. One can usually observe two bell players crescendo and decrescendo together while each occasionally plays exaggerated staccato notes, or ‘bombs’ as they can be referred to. In order to accommodate this technique there is an improvised call/response section during which the dynamics of the instrument are more thoroughly explored.
Conclusion
I feel that the inclusion of the percussion characteristics bolstered what was an already prominent feature of my compositional style, however over the duration of this study the traditional vocal elements gradually presented themselves as being almost the primary listening focus, not only as the element which signals musical development, but also to convey the narrative, and as a result this work felt too capricious and a little tangential. The music I write tends to be rhythmically dense; perhaps the fact that the rhythmic foundation of this work is for the most part not performed on percussion adds to the ‘business’ to the point of almost being too full. In the future I’d like to refine certain elements, but I will certainly be using the Ogene bells in future original works.