The Human Condition: Black history

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on February 16, 2022.

Though the protests around Canada continuously demand our attention, it is good to remember that we are also in Black History Month: a time to celebrate the great achievements of black people around the world. One of those great achievements is the American art form of jazz music, which paved the way for most modern forms of popular music.

Time indeed is an interesting word to consider when celebrating black history. The art of playing jazz music, creating jazz time, is one of great beauty and feeling when done properly. Being within a jazz performance – on the drum set especially – feels like being infused with the cosmic essence of time itself. The simultaneous tension and release on multiple levels has a quality of consciousness you cannot experience anywhere else, and thus, dedicated jazz drummers tend to be intensely engaged in practising and performance.

Both the foundational and innovating drummers who helped build jazz to its heights were black. It would be wrong to describe jazz as having been created exclusively by any one ethnicity, but black musicians certainly added all the things that give jazz its most potent qualities. This is especially true on the drums, due to the rhythmic traditions brought to the Americas by black slaves.

The deepest roots of human rhythm grew in African soil first. Even the most basic study of music history eventually leads to African traditions that echo in all the world’s songs today.

One reason for this is due to how African rhythmic traditions dealt with asymmetry; how seemingly dissimilar patterns could work in deeper harmony with each other even if they seemed at odds on the surface. This is because African rhythmic traditions work a little bit like a Russian matryoshka: a wooden doll with smaller dolls placed one inside of the other.

An African rhythm carries within itself the feeling of other rhythms, which carry their own inner rhythms as well.

Having such traditions as a base, one can then understand how black rhythmic cultures of all sorts came to innovate in such unique and wonderful ways. The playing of Jamaican drummer Carlton Barrett, for example, is still the very definition of the reggae sound; his “One Drop” beat becoming the genre standard.

Nigeria-born percussionist Babatunde Olatunji was an American educator and civil rights activist who had a major influence on American musicians in the 1960s, including iconic saxophonist John Coltrane. Even before that, bebop master Kenny Clarke had opened the way for all drummers afterward, with his innovations in how the snare and bass drum engaged with the flow of improvised music.

Even black artists who were not drummers still had a major influence on jazz drumming. My teacher – Pulitzer Prize winning saxophonist Ornette Coleman – created music that allowed drummers to abandon time-keeping completely, in order to focus on pure expression. One could move in and out of time with total freedom, creating singular moments of improvisation without limit.

The great moments from funk, fusion, rock and hip hop music also carry the wonderful echoes of decidedly African rhythm; something black artists should be extremely proud of. And considering the events of our current era it is indeed about time we have something to celebrate.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is a cultural anthropologist and jazz drummer.

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