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African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms
"We have in this book a Rosetta stone for mediating, or translating, African musical behavior and aesthetics."—Andrew Tracey, African Music
"John Miller Chernoff, who spent 10 years studying African drumming, has a flair for descriptive writing, and his first-person narratives should be easily understood by any reader, while ringing unmistakably true for the reader who has also been to West Africa."—Roderick Knight, Washington Post Book World
"Ethnomusicologists must be proud that their discipline has produced a book that will, beyond doubt, rank as a classic of African studies."—Peter Fryer, Research in Literatures
"A marvelous book. . . . Not many scholars will ever be able to achieve the kind of synthesis of 'doing' and 'writing about' their subject matter that Chernoff has achieved, but he has given us an excellent illustration of what is possible."—Chet Creider, Culture
"Chernoff develops a brilliant and penetrating musicological essay that is, at the same time, an intensely personal and even touching account of musical and cultural discovery that anyone with an interest in Africa can and should read. . . . No other writing comes close to approaching Chernoff's ability to convey a feeling of how African music 'works'"—James Koetting, Africana Journal
"Four stars. One of the few books I know of that talks of the political, social, and spiritual meanings of music. I was moved. It was so nice I read it twice."—David Byrne of "Talking Heads"
The companion cassette tape has 44 examples of the music discussed in the book. It consists of field recordings illustrating cross-rhythms, multiple meters, call and response forms, etc.
"John Miller Chernoff, who spent 10 years studying African drumming, has a flair for descriptive writing, and his first-person narratives should be easily understood by any reader, while ringing unmistakably true for the reader who has also been to West Africa."—Roderick Knight, Washington Post Book World
"Ethnomusicologists must be proud that their discipline has produced a book that will, beyond doubt, rank as a classic of African studies."—Peter Fryer, Research in Literatures
"A marvelous book. . . . Not many scholars will ever be able to achieve the kind of synthesis of 'doing' and 'writing about' their subject matter that Chernoff has achieved, but he has given us an excellent illustration of what is possible."—Chet Creider, Culture
"Chernoff develops a brilliant and penetrating musicological essay that is, at the same time, an intensely personal and even touching account of musical and cultural discovery that anyone with an interest in Africa can and should read. . . . No other writing comes close to approaching Chernoff's ability to convey a feeling of how African music 'works'"—James Koetting, Africana Journal
"Four stars. One of the few books I know of that talks of the political, social, and spiritual meanings of music. I was moved. It was so nice I read it twice."—David Byrne of "Talking Heads"
The companion cassette tape has 44 examples of the music discussed in the book. It consists of field recordings illustrating cross-rhythms, multiple meters, call and response forms, etc.
280 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 30, 2010
Author rolls through 1970s Ghana, gets initiated into two indigenous drumming groups, produces 172 pages of must-know business about West African culture and its music. Book stands tall as an investigation of music-as-cultural-lens, as author has lucked out and found himself (white, musically-inclined academic) in a place (Tamale, Ghana) and with people (the Dagomba) who express their cultural system almost literally through their aesthetic system. Author gets busy clearing up misconceptions about African music and its role in African life. Think African culture is musical? Go further, author encourages, and proceeds to show how inseparable the African character and African morality are from music, which its performers use as an "explicitly moral" social tool to bring its communities together and acknowledge their mutual humanity. Heady stuff, and author well-prepares you with the precise prose of an academic and the vigor of an initiate before you get there.
The drumming system author spends the most time on is the Takai, a suite of dances built around contrasting rhythms that intersect with each other at key points in the music. Within these rhythms, there are common beats, but there are also gaps, as though each player is listening to a rhythm that no instrumentalist states. A master drummer improvises over these rhythms, exploiting the syncopated beats and gaps, but in such a way that he/she ties together the supporting rhythms and leaves spaces for dancers, who are free to dance to the unmarked beats the orchestra knows are there but has left for them to play. A master drummer cannot play without supporting drummers, or, in many cases, without the dancers; and so a community creates an event in which everyone participates and everyone is necessary, the success of the performance being judged by the success of the event. Because the musical event is actually a social one, with real dialogues between dancer and drummer (and these drums literally talk, like call folks' names, say words, impart instructions, and what have you), the aesthetic choices of its participants takes on a moral color, as conversation at a party might. What a drummer plays matters. Dancers should move with respect for the drums, not be overly showy or pretentious. In this way, a musical performance reflects not just a musician's skill, but their character (Banning Eyre reached the same conclusion in his In Griot Time) and validates their role in their community, even as it validates the community's role in everything else. Author posits it's important to see this is an attitude toward music that "Western" cultures could learn, not so important to think of it as something they've left.
Know why author posits such? Cause he's a fucking optimist. And count the books on one hand that look deep into the African state of things and don't try and build hope on a pile of misery. There ain't none of this, "Things are gonna get better, if we can just educate/send aid to/end corruption in/distribute condoms for/completely restructure Africa." The end message there is that Africa would be terrific if it wasn't Africa. Without buying into b.s. notions about how simple and uncluttered a non-Western "ethnic life" (author's words) should be, he has nevertheless acknowledges that in Tamale he found a useful approach to living that he didn't find stateside. Then he put all that down in a book, and not a page of it is dispensable. Goodreads you don't have enough stars.
The drumming system author spends the most time on is the Takai, a suite of dances built around contrasting rhythms that intersect with each other at key points in the music. Within these rhythms, there are common beats, but there are also gaps, as though each player is listening to a rhythm that no instrumentalist states. A master drummer improvises over these rhythms, exploiting the syncopated beats and gaps, but in such a way that he/she ties together the supporting rhythms and leaves spaces for dancers, who are free to dance to the unmarked beats the orchestra knows are there but has left for them to play. A master drummer cannot play without supporting drummers, or, in many cases, without the dancers; and so a community creates an event in which everyone participates and everyone is necessary, the success of the performance being judged by the success of the event. Because the musical event is actually a social one, with real dialogues between dancer and drummer (and these drums literally talk, like call folks' names, say words, impart instructions, and what have you), the aesthetic choices of its participants takes on a moral color, as conversation at a party might. What a drummer plays matters. Dancers should move with respect for the drums, not be overly showy or pretentious. In this way, a musical performance reflects not just a musician's skill, but their character (Banning Eyre reached the same conclusion in his In Griot Time) and validates their role in their community, even as it validates the community's role in everything else. Author posits it's important to see this is an attitude toward music that "Western" cultures could learn, not so important to think of it as something they've left.
Know why author posits such? Cause he's a fucking optimist. And count the books on one hand that look deep into the African state of things and don't try and build hope on a pile of misery. There ain't none of this, "Things are gonna get better, if we can just educate/send aid to/end corruption in/distribute condoms for/completely restructure Africa." The end message there is that Africa would be terrific if it wasn't Africa. Without buying into b.s. notions about how simple and uncluttered a non-Western "ethnic life" (author's words) should be, he has nevertheless acknowledges that in Tamale he found a useful approach to living that he didn't find stateside. Then he put all that down in a book, and not a page of it is dispensable. Goodreads you don't have enough stars.
April 29, 2015
An awesome read that really captures not just the musical aspect of playing, but spiritual aspect as well. I read this for a class I'm taking in ghana this summer and would recommend it to anyone who wants to study african drumming and dance as a whole.
July 8, 2016
This book has the largest number of bookmarked pages of any book I own.
June 6, 2020
One of the most important books in my life...both for the insights it offers into African music and thinking, and for the beauty and elegance of its prose. I have read it once or twice a year for decades.
October 18, 2008
This is one for the library, I will get it someday. This was one of the foundational texts for my Senior Thesis in college.
September 23, 2018
This is a very personal work of ethnomusicology and anthropology. It's as much about what it was like to be John in Africa as it is about Africa, and I really liked that. John seems to be a very humble guy who finds himself collecting a lot of wisdom in Ghana along with his drum lessons. This is where all the "Sensibility" and "Social Action" from the title come in. But there is also plenty in here about music and I found the bits about James Brown and Fela Kuti fascinating. There were also ten pages of photographs and a wonderful appendix of Nigerians saying who their favorite musicians are and why. I found myself listening with new ears to some older highlife stuff I have. This book is fun and positive, optimistic about humanity and Africa's future... just what I needed.
August 29, 2017
Fascinating exploration, Includes perspectives from the people. The technical pieces were over my head, I don’t read music(yet). Detailed observations, well articulated. Excellent scholarship, informative.
March 7, 2018
too scholarly for me
January 10, 2020
polyrhythms forever
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 24, 2012
excellent. intro to African Music altough the more music theory one knew, the better the read!
February 21, 2009
swooning still
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews