The Rhythm that Conquered the World : What Makes a “ Good ” Rhythm Good ?

THE BO DIDDLEY BEAT Much of the world’s traditional and contemporary music makes use of characteristic rhythms called timelines. A timeline is a distinguished rhythmic ostinato, a rhythm that repeats throughout a piece of music with no variation, that gives the particular flavor of movement of the piece that incorporates it, and that acts as a timekeeper and structuring device for the musicians. Timelines may be played with any musical instrument, although a percussion instrument is usually preferred. Timelines may be clapped with the hands, as in the flamenco music of Southern Spain, they may be slapped on the thighs as was done by Buddy Holly’s drummer Jerry Allison in the hit song “Everyday”, or they may just be felt rather than sounded. In Sub-Saharan African music, timelines are usually played using an iron bell such as the gankogui or with two metal blades. Perhaps the most quintessential timeline is what most people familiar with rockabilly music dub the Bo Diddley Beat, and salsa dancers call the clave son, which they attribute to much other Cuban and Latin American music. This rhythm is illustrated in box notation in Figure 1. Each box represents a pulse, and the duration between any two adjacent pulses is one unit of time. There are a total of sixteen pulses, the first pulse occurs at time zero and the sixteenth at time 15. An empty box denotes a silent pulse or rest, and a box filled with a mark indicates a sounded (or felt) pulse. Thus the sounded pulses, also called onsets, for the clave son are those numbered 0, 3, 6, 10, and 12. This rhythm may also be represented by its sequence of adjacent inter-onset intervals (IOI’s), that is [3-3-4-2-4].