Here’s a long article about Ms. Newsom and Ys. With lots of detail about everything. Especially interesting is a section about rhythm.
‘What Stork taught Newsom was rhythm. In particular, she taught her some interlocking figures based on the kora, a stringed lute-like harp-thing made of calabash and cowhide that’s used by the wandering West African bards known as griots. Like nearly all West African music—and like essentially no classical Western music—kora music is largely polymetric, which means that each hand is following a different meter, or rhythmic pattern. The basic pattern that Stork taught Newsom is two (or four) beats against three.
January 9th, 2007
by Nannie
wow. that’s wordy guy. I loved that section on rhythm! Music students love to pat the
two against three. It certainly DOES push you off course as a listener and a player.
And that is not necessarily a bad thing! We already do that as an ensemble on stage. I liked what she said about music school and their clueless drive towards the experimental and conceptual. Just as she said about her good experience with that tutor who led her right to improv and not bind her up in reading! I was not so fortunate, but
I new I didn’t want to “lock-step” with the other music majors. My advisor at UGA
used to use that experession all the time about their curriculum.
January 10th, 2007
by A. Che Why
And this is an interesting idea:
Newsom points out that these shifting rhythms can disorient the mundane metronome in our minds, defamiliarizing our sense of where we are in a song. “That disorientation is really effective for creating something that you actually have to listen to,” says the songwriter, who has no interest in Ys becoming background music. “When any element in the musical environment is tweaked in such a way that you don’t feel like you know what’s coming next, it can cause less of a passive listening experience across the board…”