Rhythm in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest"[1] that exhibits common characteristics in all regions of this vast territory, so that Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) has described the many local approaches as constituting one main system.

Rhythms represent the very fabric of life and embody the people's interdependence in human relationships[citation needed].

Throughout Western and Central Africa child's play includes games that develop a feeling for multiple rhythms.

[5] Among the characteristics of the Sub-Saharan African approach to rhythm are syncopation and cross-beats which may be understood as sustained and systematic polyrhythms, an ostinato of two or more distinct rhythmic figures, patterns or phrases at once.

[8] Drums are classed as membranophones and consist of a skin or "drumhead" stretched over the open end of a frame or "shell".

[12] It is the interplay of several elements, inseparable and equally essential, that produces the "varying rhythmic densities or motions" of cross-rhythmic texture.

[17] Musics organized around key patterns convey a two-celled (binary) structure, a complex level of African cross-rhythm.

The basic figure is also found within a wide geographic belt stretching from Morocco in North Africa to Indonesia in South Asia.