Show off your theory chops with my weekly challenge! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.
This week’s challenge:
Here’s a section of Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Blues, published in 1925. The left hand has a rhythm that’s found its way into jazz and an enormous amount of pop music. What is this rhythm called, and where did it originate?
Reply to post your answer, and check back on Friday, September 3rd to see if you’re right!
ANSWER for 8/30/21
The left hand of New Orleans Blues is half of the Son Clave rhythm. It’s also known as the tresillo, meaning triplet in Spanish: the first three cross-beats in the 3-against-4 polyrhythm. Morton himself called it the “Spanish Tinge,” but it’s really Afro-Cuban in origin. The versatility of this rhythm, either in its complete form or just the first measure, has ensured its appearance in an impressive variety of musical genres. It influenced the Cuban Habanera, early jazz, Latin-jazz fusion (Professor Longhair’s Blues Rhumba), early rock (Willie and the Hand Jive), Beatles riffs, and beyond. Here’s the complete rhythm:
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Syncopation. When composing with this rhythmic figure, I would put it into 8/8 time, rather than 4/4, which has 3 beats per measure: long-long-short, in this case.
Hi Thomas! It definitely has syncopation, and putting it in 8/8 (or 3+3+2/8) would be more accurate. But in jazz this rhythm would just be notated in 4/4 with swung eighths. There’s a name for this particular pattern…a hint: it’s not really European in origin. 🙂
I know this rhythm as the Charleston, and it has its roots in the music of Africa and the Caribbean. Jelly Roll Morton was famous for bringing these exotic elements into jazz.
Right-oh! There’s yet another name for the rhythm that this is part of. Hint: Havana!
It’s not a Habanera. It would be if not for the tie before beat 3.
Exactly, the Habanera is an outgrowth of this rhythm, with the third beat added as a second eighth note.
The Spanish “tinge”! Love this rhythm!
Maggie
Hi Maggie! That’s exactly what Jelly Roll Morton called it! But it has another name too!
Tresillo 🙂 Was working on Morton’s “The Crave” yesterday
Hey Tegan, nicely done! It’s the spanish word for triplet. But there’s still one more name it’s known by 🙂
Habanera rhythm?
Hi Dianne! Oooo, so very close! In fact, if you add the third beat as another eighth note to this rhythm, it does indeed become the Habanera. You’ve got the right country…I’m just thinking of a different name for the rhythm 🙂
😊
Beguine
Hi Sarah! You’ve got the right part of the world (French and Latin dance colliding in the Caribbean), but it’s not the Beguine rhythm! 🙂
Afro-Cuban rhythm.
Absolutely! It’s an unpleasant reality that much of the fusion of European dance and West-African rhythm was probably facilitated by the Atlantic slave trade.