Music is a part of everyday African life. Most communal activities are accompanied by singing, dancing, and drumming. Along with a strong oral tradition, African music has a wide range of musical instruments and complex rhythmic patterns. As with Indian music, religious mysticism is connected with African music. Music defines African existence.
This chapter focuses on the Ewe drum ensemble. The Ewe tribe inhabits southeast Ghana. They assemble large drum ensembles for ceremonial occasions, which may extend over several days. The traditional ensemble consists of several sections: the drum section, led by a master drummer; a percussion section; singers; dancers; and a “master of ceremonies.” Each group has certain responsibilities and employs certain types of instruments, dances, and so forth.
Steve Reich , a New York native, studied philosophy at Cornell University and then went to Juilliard to study composition. He received a master’s degree from Mills College in California, where he studied with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio. Although he played the piano, Reich’s primary interest was percussion. He became interested in world music during his studies at Mills College. Later, he won a grant that allowed him to study Ewe drumming at the University of Ghana. After returning to California, he studied Balinese gamelan music at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Berkeley.
Reich has worked in a variety of styles for a variety of venues. He has composed works for the theater. Different Trains, originally composed for the Kronos Quartet, won him a Grammy Award in 1990. Reich also used musique concrète in his 1995 composition City Life. Included among the street sounds he used--car horns, city traffic, voices, and so forth--were the police and fire sirens recorded on February 25, 1993, after a bomb exploded in the underground garage at the World Trade Center.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Reich focuses most of his attention on rhythm and phases. Phase shifting, one of his common techniques, is the creation of two identical sounds or tape loops whose relationship continually changes. For example, in an early work, Pendulum Music, two microphones are suspended over two speakers, each microphone having a different-length cord. They are then set in motion. As they pass over the speakers, feedback occurs. Because of the different length microphone chords, their swing rates are different and they continually change relationship—going in and out of phase. You can also hear this in It’s Gonna Rain. The street corner preacher is recorded on separate channels that go in and out of phase.
2. The techniques that Reich and his contemporaries use challenge many of our assumptions about music, especially about tonality. Points of arrival and structural hierarchies that we have been trained to hear and expect are absent from much of this music--or at least are treated differently.
FURTHER TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Is there any relationship between the Ewe drum ensemble and the Balinese gamelan?
2. What elements of these two cultures are present in Reich’s music?