ASU Popular Music: 'Clave-Family Rhythms in Popular Music'

A popular-music focused talk on rhythm in popular music, "Clave-Family Rhythms in Popular Music"

Guest Speaker: Nicole Biamonte, Ph.D.; Associate Professor at McGill University Schulich School of Music

Rhythm is one of the most salient parameters in popular music, because of the explicit beat often provided by the drums and the pervasive use of rhythmic dissonance. This paper investigates clave-based rhythmic dissonances, which are more pervasive in popular music than is generally recognized. The introduction discusses some historical factors that influenced the clave rhythm’s global distribution. The next section of the paper discusses some mathematical properties of this family of rhythms that may contribute to their prevalence, among them maximal evenness, maximal individuation, prime generation, grouping dissonance, and cyclic realignment. Tresillo rhythms (332, the first part of the clave) in particular are overdetermined: they are optimized for perception, cyclicity, and entrainment. I conclude by cataloging clave-family rhythms common in Anglophone popular music, analyzing some illustrative examples, and categorizing their functions within the musical texture.