Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives

Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm seeks to explore representations and implicit as well as explicit theorizing of rhythm in relation to aspects of performance that resist objectification and/or are elastic. Authored by ethnomusicologists and music theorists, the chapters provide detailed case studies of art and vernacular musical traditions, historical and contemporary, in South, West, East, and Southeast Asia; West and North Africa; Europe; and North America. Together these case studies highlight the multiple dimensions of musical rhythm. Considering rhythm as a topic involves a set of terminologies, methods, assumptions, and efforts at generalizing and abstracting that together point to a larger dynamic in scholarly discourse between universalizing and local approaches to rhythm and music more generally. However, from a theoretical standpoint, the volume rejects the kind of abstraction that removes “rhythm” from musical process and experience.