When artists bypass rules and structures, their work can sound chaotic to anyone expecting the traditional patterns of rhyme, harmony, rhythm, tone, pitch, scale, mode, (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Calling the moves
01/26/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSquare dancing is directed by a “caller,” a person who calls out the next move: do-si-do, swing your partner, etc. I thought of that when (Continue Reading)
Thought Experiment
12/27/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAfter four centuries, most Americans can identify a piece of music as African-American. Not necessarily performed by African-Americans but in the African-American tradition. Why is (Continue Reading)
Where are the Mozarts?
11/21/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentLooking at the history of Western music, certain individuals stand out as musical geniuses: Mozart, Bach. We recognize this phenomenon and marvel at it. These (Continue Reading)
The Truth of Cultural Exposure
08/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn my household right now we have 4 levels of cultural exposure. My wife was raised in a Black Pentecostal church, came from a small (Continue Reading)
How a Colonial Perspective Works
05/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMusicology in the West has relegated popular music to the non-serious realm. Therefore, African scholars, branded and sanctioned by metropolitan universities and departments of musicology, (Continue Reading)
cowbell as cultural memory
03/28/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Sam Floyd, my suspicions rise over terms like “cultural memory.” I recall a disturbing conversation with a Prof. Woods, chairperson of the art department (Continue Reading)
Compare Calabar recitation to Havana homenaje
07/28/2019 Pat Barrett Add Comment
In Praise of Afro-Pop
07/06/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI sent this in when the program requested testimonials for a grant. The music of Africa has formed the base of a good deal of (Continue Reading)
The Pulse
06/26/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe first 3 have the pulse I am talking about. I have used examples without vocals and the last two are nothing but drumming. The (Continue Reading)
If you cannot show it, is it real?
06/26/2019 Pat Barrett 2 Comments“Show” is not the best word. Thinking about African Diasporic music and the issue of the pulse, I was reminded of the issue of acquisition (Continue Reading)
When it gets good
04/18/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentYou might notice how in many forms of African-derived music, a melody- and harmony-driven music will over the course of the piece devolve into domination (Continue Reading)
Compare this to any Niger/Chad/Congo horn section
04/13/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt about 7:05 on this you will hear the horns take over and then play any recording of the music deeply written about by Simha (Continue Reading)
Together – Apart: a view of Western music
04/06/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWestern Europe and West Africa have a lot in common in their musics and musical traditions but are also clearly distinct. Both regions and traditions (Continue Reading)
The beat of the washing machine
01/09/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentOne of the hallmarks – no, the sine qua nons – of the music of West Africa and the African Diaspora is what is popularly (Continue Reading)
The centrality of music to the Black religious experience
12/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m sure I’ve written up this incident here before but cannot find it. It points to the centrality of music and esp of rhythmic music (Continue Reading)
Whither jazz without the church?
10/08/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentNPR played a nice piece on currents in jazz, the dropping of the boundary between different approaches to jazz. They played a piece by an (Continue Reading)
Across time: a favored distortion
09/13/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentMany decades ago I read and heard about the practice in West Africa of drilling a small hole in the shell of a drum and (Continue Reading)
The Musical and the Spiritual
06/09/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIt has long been my vision of African-American music that the connection between the musical and the spiritual is so tight that this connection extends (Continue Reading)
Then it comes crashing in
11/27/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentA magical moment for me is when musicians are playing a piece of music straight and then, either insinuatingly or with a mighty shift, they (Continue Reading)
Oops! Assumptions about African music
07/31/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I offered a friend several YouTube videos depicting Cuban street congas in response to our discussion about The Miami Sound Machine’s La Conga. Then (Continue Reading)
“a sort of symphony emerged”
05/23/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentSometimes you come across something that smacks you right in the forehead, something at the back of your mind but never entirely brought out into (Continue Reading)
quick note on clave
05/20/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentWatch the topless man playing clave at and notice how he shakes the claves just a bit to maintain his place in the rhythm. This (Continue Reading)