Ron Alexander Memorial Lectures in Musicology: Kofi Agawu, City University of New York

Topic: Finding the beat in African music: Further notes and caveats
Abstract: A central issue for (mainly non-African) analysts of African music is the question of a regulative beat: does it exist, is it made manifest or merely assumed, and is there a single beat in ensemble performance, or are there multiple beats? Proceeding from the belief that what is now needed is not another grand, overarching theory of African rhythm but detailed studies of individual performances, this paper describes some of the factors that shape beat awareness in a handful of West and Central African repertories. I note the absence of a word for beat in many indigenous languages, along with the normative embodiment of meter by dancers. My main caveat is that beats are not intrinsic to the sonic material and so cannot be discovered by internal means; rather, beats are mental constructs of conventional origins brought to the music by acculturated listeners, drummers and dancers.
Kofi Agawu was born in Ghana, where he received his initial education before studying composition and analysis in the UK and musicology at Stanford University in the US. He is currently Distinguished Professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. His books include Playing with Signs (1991), African Rhythm (1996), Music as Discourse (2008), The African Imagination in Music (2016), and On African Music (2023). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1991), the Dent Medal (1992), the Harrison Medal (2009), and the IMS Guido Adler Prize (2023). A Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is also Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and Honorary Member of the Royal Musical Association.
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