Music In Language (Cont.)
This video has become viral amongst musicians on social media. What struck me when I first saw it was its associative connection with language as well as the body (via drumming with sticks and on the body itself).
What BC is doing is a combination of scat, raga, and rap, using his native “tongue” to locute the triplet groups as played by the drummer, and his hands to mark beat sub-groups in each bar.
If a Spanish-speaking person were to have speech rhythms translated into MIDI events it would look something like this, with rolled r’s as bracketed triplet groups.
Compare this to the speech stammering of Donald Trump, whose speech patterns are also a word-salad (parataxis) as described by linguist John McWhorter.
The point is that no one speaks strictly musical, even though it often can sometimes map into music notation in interesting ways. When it does map in a more structured pattern, it becomes singing or rapping or sprechgesang.
What BC is doing is a combination of scat, raga, and rap, using his native “tongue” to locute the triplet groups as played by the drummer, and his hands to mark beat sub-groups in each bar.
If a Spanish-speaking person were to have speech rhythms translated into MIDI events it would look something like this, with rolled r’s as bracketed triplet groups.
Compare this to the speech stammering of Donald Trump, whose speech patterns are also a word-salad (parataxis) as described by linguist John McWhorter.
The point is that no one speaks strictly musical, even though it often can sometimes map into music notation in interesting ways. When it does map in a more structured pattern, it becomes singing or rapping or sprechgesang.
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