Re: OT West African/African Diaspora rhythms: 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 12/8

["Mark Showalter" <folkstone57@operamail.com>]

>   Hi Andy,
> Nice points that you make.
> 
> My feeling however is that the Western perspective which assigns 
> lesser value to rhythm than
> melody, harmony or lyric (note:  if you invent an entire genre of 
> music based on a single rhythm
> like Tony Allen did when he invented the groove for 'AfroBeat' for 
> Fela Kuti you can't even
> get royalties from the music...........witness the Amen Break that 
> so revolutionized a lot of sample based hip
> hop)  has a very serious flaw when it comes to notation , and that 
> is that it doesn't have the
> concept of the 'sub-pulse'
> 
Hello,

I'd just like to point out here that the idea of getting royalties for 
coming up with a "groove" or "feel" or such like is a very unreal concept. 
To say the least, it would put the courts into a position that is far 
worse than what is the norm today. Take Harrison being sued for "My Sweet 
Lord", which was ridiculous & almost certainly would not have gone into 
the courts today. Besides, keep in mind that courts are not "esthetically" 
trained to really be in a position to make decisions about the arts. Plus, 
there would come a time when one "groove" would start to sound like 
another & the more the lines blurred, the worse the situation would get. 
And to say the least, try to explain to a court what a "sub-pulse" 
is........
Good luck on that one because as a composer/arranger with 8 years as a 
theory/composition in 2 colleges, I'm still not clear on what the hell a 
sub-pulse is even though several drummers/percussionists that I have 
worked with in the past have explained it to me over the years. I feel 
somewhat like one bemused fellow who said after taking a boat trip with 
Albert Einstein:

"After several long explanations from the professor, I am finally able to 
say that when it comes to Relativity Theory, he understands it well. "

BTW, please do NOT try to explain what a sub-pulse is as I have the 
feeling it would start a cascade of email arguments that would shut down 
the world wide internet!

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