Abstract

Polyrhythmic dance compositions from West Africa typically feature an ostinato bell pattern known as a time line. Timbrally distinct, asymmetrical in structure, and aurally prominent, time lines have drawn comment from scholars as keys to understanding African rhythm. This article focuses on the best known and most widely distributed of these, the so-called standard pattern, a seven-stroke figure spanning twelve eighth notes and disposed durationally as <2212221>. Observations about structure (including its internal dynamic, metrical potential, and rotational properties) are juxtaposed with a putative African-cultural understanding (inferred from the firm place of dance in the culture, patterns of verbal discourse, and a broad set of social values) in order to further illuminate the nature of African rhythm, foster dialogue between structural and cultural perspectives, and thereby contribute implicitly to the methodology of cross-cultural analysis.

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Throughout West and Central Africa, as well as parts of the African diaspora, the rhythmic pattern shown in Example 1 is pervasive. Known among specialists as the "standard pattern," it is one of a class of similarly functioning patterns referred to as "time lines." A time line--also called bell pattern, bell rhythm, guideline, time keeper, topos, and phrasing referent--is a distinctly shaped and often memorable rhythmic figure of modest duration that is played as an ostinato throughout a given dance composition. In what is perhaps its best-known manifestation in Southern Ewe dances, the pattern is beaten on a double-pronged bell as one layer in a polyrhythmic texture comprising handclaps, rattles, support drums, lead drum(s), and voices. Example 2 reproduces the first four bars of Kongo Zabana's transcription of Slow Agbekor to show a typical polyrhythmic texture headed (top staff) by a bell (Gakogui) playing the standard pattern. (1)

Practically every scholar writing about West African rhythm during the last half century has taken note of time lines. About the stylized war dance, Agbekor, for example, David Locke says that "every act of drumming, singing, and dancing is timed in accordance with the recurring musical phrase played on an iron bell." John Chernoff introduces the instruments of a typical drum ensemble by observing that "the bell is like the heartbeat which keeps things steady." Kwabena Nketia, who first used the term "time line" in 1963, describes it as "a constant point of reference by which the phrase structure of a song as well as the linear metrical organization of phrases are guided." And according to Gerhard Kubik, time-line patterns are "a regulative element in many kinds of African music," numbering among the basic "principles of timing." There is, in short, general consensus that time lines are materially real, widely used, and crucial markers of temporal reference in African ensemble music. (2)

Inevitably, perhaps, the extant literature does not propagate a single, definitive perspective on time lines. Disagreements abound, some of them quite fundamental, regarding their nature, musical function, and ultimate significance. While Kubik, for example, claims that a time-line pattern "represents the structural core of a musical piece, something like a condensed and extremely concentrated...