The document discusses the origins and development of clave rhythm in Caribbean music. It originated from the fusion of African and European musical traditions when slaves were brought to the Americas. While some specific African musical elements were lost, general principles like call-and-response and polyrhythm remained influential. Caribbean music is characterized by the simultaneous blending of old African and new European styles. An important element is the clave rhythm, which provides a structural framework and establishes a shared musical syntax within communities. The clave, though sometimes implicit, helps define expectations for the musical style and reinforces its syntactic tendencies.

1. Clave and the Caribbean
Rhythms
Notes on Clave Rhythm in Caribbean
Music

2. Origins
• When Africans and Europeans encountered one
another in the Americas, the first as slaves and the
second either as masters or as despised underdogs, in
many cases scarcely better off than the slaves, these
musical practices underwent profound modification on
both sides to give us that kind of music we call AfroAmerican. Small (Small 46)
• Perhaps the most conspicuous sorts of Africanism
evident in Caribbean music consists more of general
principles than specific elements. (Bilby et al. 7)

3. Transitions
• In the survey of the Caribbean as a ‘musical
region’, Kenneth Bilby (1985) has argued that its
musics are characterized by ‘simultaneous
newness and oldness’ and area complex
syncretic’ or ‘creolized’ mixture of African and
European (folk and art) elements. The forms of
music found in the region have their ‘feet planted
in both musical worlds yet belong to neither’
(Bilby, 1985: 194) (Negus 116)
• Bilby …varying degree of synthesis … ‘purely
European derived’ to ‘neo-African’. (Negus 117 )

4. Deep Structure
• A related characteristic is the technique of building a piece on repetition,
especially of a short musical cell, or ostinato. (Biilbey, Largey and Manuel
9)
• Pressing....African and Afro-Latin percussionists generally recognize that
some patterns from 12/8/ and 4/4 meters may be used in either rhythmic
framework (e.g. C.K. Ladzekpo, Pertout). Furthermore, a number of most
clearly African-derived Latin percussion patterns exist in alternate 6/8 or
2/4 versions, or have such versions of the same pattern sounding
simultaneously [italics mine]. This is found, for example in the Cuban
guaguanco and bata drumming styles, in Brazilian candomble, and in the
rhumba columbia [sic] (Pertout). (ibid.: 43) (Lehman 21)
• Revealing a synthesis of different musical ideas about the organization of
time, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-North and South American polyrhythm is
not held together by the African timeline; rather, its rhythmic group work
within the context of meter. (Wade 76)

5. Clave
• In other words, a single note may, even in absence of any actually
played clave, nonetheless be perceived as implying not only such
pattern in general, but also suggesting a particular dynamic
orientation within this framework. (Lehman 23)
• In these cases, the decision whether a particular note or short
phrase is “out-of-clave”, or cruzado (crossed), may at times hinge on
the position of just one attack in relation to the established clave
direction. For instance, an accent played on “3” of a given bar
usually suggests that this bar correlates with the‘2-side’ of a clave
cycle. (Lehman 24)
• Certainly, musical conventions and cliches central to this genre also
help establish these expectations and often build on or reinforce
general syntactic tendencies. (Lehman 24)

6. Clave Audiences
• Important for our discussion will also be the idea that a particular musical
syntax is congruent with a particular community of listeners, constituting a
shared music contract as it has been called above. The perception of a
‘clave’ as a paradigmatic syntactical feature of much African music and in
the diaspora is thus like “every syntactic field . . . a construct with an
ideological determined basis . . . there is no such thing as a passive or even
neutral ground. The fields associated with all signifying processes are the
products of culture and reflect ideologically determined value systems
enforced by explicit or implicit rules (1.3.12-13).” (Lehman 34)
• And if we may recall Swain’s (1995: 303) statement that a “shared syntax .
. .resides not just in the musical productions . . . but is in the nature of an
agreement between all members, producing or non-producing, of the
musical community,”it becomes apparent that the proposition of a “syntax
of clave” may be seen as a culturally unifying set of cognitive schemata,
which define the boundaries of such a community. (Lehman 61)

7. Groove
• CK: Amiri Barak’s “changing same. (Keil and
Feld 23)
• Underneath the often heavily orchestrated
piece marked by complex melodic, harmonic,
and rhythmic gestures lies an enlivening
continuum or, in the African American
vernacular, "groove." (Breckenridge 35)

8. References
• Breckenridge, S. L. "Grooving Body Movements Through Bass Lines:
A Tradition of African American Music." The Western Journal of
Black Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3, Fall 2000, pp. 175-82, 2002.
• Lehmann, B. and M. "The syntax of 'clave'--perception and analysis
of meter in Cuban and African music." Diss. Tufts University, 2002.
• Keil, C. and S. Feld. Music grooves : essays and dialogues. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1994.
• Manuel, P., K. M. Bilby, et al. Caribbean currents : Caribbean music
from rumba to reggae. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1995.
• Sethares, W. A. Rhythm and transforms. Berlin; London, Springer,
2007.
• Small, C. Music of the common tongue : survival and celebration in
Afro-American music. London; New York, J. Calder ; Riverrun Press,
1987