Tag Archives: rhythm
get on the good foot
In this text I will analyse James Brown's introduction of 'The One' (or downbeat) into popular music as a revolution. Etymologically, ‘revolution’ not only designates a radical change but also a return. Neither one of these movements, however, is more important to the other. The return does not reduce the change to a mere surface effect, nor does the radical nature of the change relativizes the return. In a revolution, both movements are of equal importance. However, the stress alternates; sometimes the change is accentuated, sometimes the return. Together, these two movements do not constitute a full cycle, but a rhythm. Revolutions are neither visual nor acoustic, they are rhythmical.
out of time
Invisible Man, the title of Ralph Ellison’s seminal 1952 novel refers to the lack of opacity of its main protagonist. Rather than reading this book as the exemplary story of a concrete, situated individual – an African-American intellectual before and during the so-called Harlem Renaissance – this article-in-progress will concentrate on the figure of thought that this central character expresses.
about pluralizing rhythm
The volume Pluralizing Rhythm aims to rid rhythm of its harmless, nearly esoteric, reputation as a cosmic unifier by understanding it in the light of the contemporary medial turn. It consists of contributions that combine the political, aesthetic, musical and theoretical dimension of rhythm, by performing a close analysis of text and objects from contemporary arts, music and politics. In short, Pluralizing Rhythm complicates, disturbs and pluralizes the notion of rhythm.
(don’t) listen to the one