Don't Got That Rhythm (Ask For Something More)

In reference to the article in the Boston Globe, 'Can't get it out of my head - A father's yearlong quest to grasp the infant musical mind'

I've always wondered why people gravitate to or repel from certain types of music, and it is interesting that researchers have found that it is in the complexity of the rhythms. By feeding cloyingly simple music to babies we wire them for simple 4/4. African music is by definition rhythm-by-addition and polyrhythmic, very often based on duple-triple meters like 6/8 or 12/8. Bulgarian wedding music is in fast odd meters like 7/8 and 11/8. Plain vanilla 4/4 is not a bad thing necessarily, but make your child more rhythmically omnivorous by mixing up the menu to include Ivo Poposov, West African music and music of Madagascar. Conversely, in these other countries, they should include hip-hop beats, but you can be sure that's already installed.

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"...I learned of a study conducted by Erin Hannon and Sandra Trehub. They compared infants' and adults' abilities to pick up on changes in both simple and complex rhythms in Bulgarian and Serbian folk music. North American adults, with little prior exposure to this music, grasped only the changes in the simple material and faired poorly with the complex folk rhythms. As for the diapered set, the babies aced both the simple rhythms and the complex rhythms....infants start life with the ability to perceive complex rhythms but that they lose this skill unless it is called upon in their environment. Hannon was hesitant to make sweeping generalizations based on her research, so I'll do it instead. Clearly, if we want babies to retain the ability to perceive rhythmic complexity, they should be exposed to rhythmically complex music from a very early age."