{"id":350,"date":"2014-08-02T14:55:25","date_gmt":"2014-08-02T18:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=350"},"modified":"2025-04-02T13:09:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T17:09:24","slug":"viral-rhythm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2014\/08\/02\/viral-rhythm\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral Rhythm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word \u2018virus\u2019 is most often associated with negative and harmful microbes, from actual diseases like pneumonia and H1N1 to the fictional virus that kills off most of the Earth\u2019s population in the recent Planet of the Apes movies.\u00a0 The study of \u2018good viruses\u2019, however, is also a growing trend in health research, and has moved from identifying individual microbes with positive effects <\/a>to building a concept of the \u2018microbiome\u2019 within each human being<\/a>, a combination of bacteria in our gut that keeps us healthy.\u00a0 Those who study how \u2018good bacteria\u2018 help to preserve the body might\u00a0find a metaphor to support their theories by looking at how the vitality of musical traditions and musical communities is often preserved by \u2018viral\u2018 melodic and rhythmic ideas that find their way into multiple songs produced in the same time period.\u00a0 What follow are a few examples of how a particular \u2018viral rhythm\u2019, a mutated version of a fundamental rhythm from south of the equator, has had a presence\u00a0in three different eras of American music.<\/p>\n

The tune \u2018Hello My Baby\u2019 is probably better known today than any other song published in 1899.\u00a0 Whether it is being belted out by a frog in a Warner Brothers cartoon<\/a> or Phish<\/a>, it is immediately recognizable from the repeated syncopation that opens the refrain.<\/p>\n

\"hello<\/span><\/p>\n

The song originally began not with this catchy syncopation but with a long\u00a0intro verse that can be seen in the original sheet music<\/a>.\u00a0 A few telltale lyrics in the intro verse (\u2018some other coon will win her and my game is lost\u2019) show that \u2018Hello My Baby\u2019 belonged to a genre of songs the late 19th and early 20th century which combined syncopated music with lyrics featuring racist stereotypes of African-Americans. \u00a0Judging from most versions of the tune currently in circulation, the intro verse and the dialect version of the title (‘Hello! Ma Baby’) – what one might call the harmful part of the virus – have long since been abandoned. \u00a0I would argue that while the intention to remove prejudicial overtones is certainly one of the motivations for these alterations, there is also a solid musical reason: the intro verse has almost none of the syncopation that makes the refrain so memorable.<\/p>\n

That same memorable syncopation also shows up in the lesser-known piano rag \u2018Smoky Mokes\u2018 <\/a>by Abe Holzman, published the same year.\u00a0 In an early example of how the \u2018good bacteria\u2019 in the \u2018Hello My Baby\u2019 virus was communicated, Holzman in the opening strain of \u2018Smoky Mokes\u2019 appears to cleverly graft the entire melodic rhythm from the refrain of \u2018Hello My Baby\u2018 into his tune while substituting a different sequence of notes:\"smoky<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Both tunes can be seen in Denes Agay\u2019s great collection The Joy Of Ragtime<\/a>, which also features many of the best-known pieces by Scott Joplin (\u2018Maple Leaf Rag\u2019, \u2018The Sycamore\u2019, and of course \u2018The Entertainer\u2019, a musical virus if there ever was one: since Marvin Hamlisch\u2019s version on \u2018The Sting\u2018 soundtrack<\/a>, it has been covered by performers ranging from Milton Berle and the Muppets<\/a> to Marcus Roberts, who turns in a seriously funky and innovative version on his album ‘The Joy of Joplin’, which is highly recommended for purchase.\u00a0 A fine cover of Roberts’ arrangement by Matt Tabor<\/a> can be heard on YouTube.) \u00a0 Agay\u2019s collection also includes \u2018Pleasant Moments\u2019<\/a>, one of Joplin\u2019s rare waltzes.\u00a0 To a listener who has\u00a0\u2018Hello My Baby\u2019 deep in their musical subconscious, \u00a0measures 9 and 10 in \u2018Pleasant Moments\u2019 can look and sound like a truncated, three-beat version of the rhythmic figure from that tune\u00a0and \u2018Smoky Mokes\u2019 (and which I will call the \u2018truncated habanera\u2019):\"pleasant<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/a><\/span> \u00a0Some inspection of the South American tango tradition as represented in piano music, however, shows that both Joplin and \u2018Hello My Baby\u2018 were borrowing this rhythm from a much older source.<\/p>\n

The rhythm introduced in the first measure of the refrain in \u2018Hello My Baby\u2019, used relentlessly and obsessively throughout the song, and employed more subtly in a truncated version by Joplin, is in fact the habanera rhythm, a typical accompaniment figure in Argentinian tango music with roots in Cuban folk music going back to the 18th century.\u00a0 As the habanera is more of an accompaniment rhythm than a melodic rhythm in tango, it can be seen in its basic form in the left hand of Ernesto Nazareth\u2019s lovely slow \u2018Tango Brasiliero\u2019 called \u2018Nove de Julho\u2019 (an excerpt follows, but here are links to a complete recording<\/a> and score<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"nove<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span>\u00a0 Nazareth uses a common elaboration of the pattern in his faster-paced tango \u2018Garoto\u2019 (recording<\/a>, score<\/a>):.\"Garoto\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Nazareth, a Brazilian composer, wrote in a number of dance styles\u00a0<\/span>typical in his era; the \u2018Tango Brasiliero\u2018 marking in \u2018Nove de Julho\u2018 seems to refer to the slower, gentler pace of this piece, which contrasts with the faster pace of \u2018Garoto\u2019, a piece that features an elaboration of the habanera pattern typical in Argentinian tango.\u00a0 After listening to and\/or reading through \u2018Garoto\u2019, it is interesting to examine another Joplin waltz dated 1905, \u2018Bethena\u2019<\/a> (heard on the score to the film \u2018The Curious Case of Benjamin Button\u2019), in which the truncated habanera hinted at in \u2018Pleasant Moments\u2019 can be heard even more clearly and repeatedly:\"bethena\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The mark of Joplin\u2019s greatness as a composer can be seen in his juxtaposition of repeated rhythmic and melodic figures with a constantly evolving harmonic progression; where the repetition in \u2018Hello My Baby\u2018 seems obsessive even within the confines of its sixteen-measure form, Joplin uses repetition of the same idea in \u2018Bethena\u2018 to build undulating waves of tension and release that evolve consistently over a form more than twice as long.\u00a0 (Sheet music for Bethena can be purchased here<\/a>; Marcus Roberts’ recording of this tune on ‘The Joy of Joplin’ is also highly recommended.)<\/p>\n

According to Scott Joplin biographer E.A. Berlin<\/a>, Joplin claimed that composer Irving Berlin plagiarized the opening strain of his first hit song, ‘Alexander\u2019s Ragtime Band’, from one of Joplin\u2019s pieces, \u2018A Real Slow Drag\u2019 from his opera \u2018Treemonisha\u2019:\"a<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Joplin made the claim after Berlin, who worked for a publisher at the time, reviewed Joplin\u2019s score in 1910, decided against publishing it, but proceeded to publish his own song with its tell-tale phrase the next year:\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

To me, the similarity of Berlin\u2019s phrase to Joplin\u2019s phrase shows that Berlin, far from being a simple plagiarist, was highly skilled at assimilating other composers\u2019 ideas, and was operating with the same level of sophistication as Joplin when he incorporated the habanera pattern into his waltzes.\u00a0 Once again, however, as with \u2018Hello My Baby\u2019, the harmful part of the \u2018virus\u2019 – in this case the disputed intro verse – was wisely removed by great communicators such as Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong in their versions of \u2018Alexander\u2019.\u00a0 Fitzgerald and Armstrong may not have been aware of Joplin\u2019s dispute with the intro, but they and their arrangers certainly recognized that the intro verse is less musically strong than the refrain with which the composer followed it.\u00a0 (From a compositional standpoint it is interesting to note that although both Howard and Berlin\u2019s creative impetus seems to have come from the instinct to imitate – Howard imitates the \u2018coon song\u2019 genre, Berlin imitates Joplin\u2019s score – it was not the most culturally or musically imitative section that produced the strongest music. \u00a0The most memorable sections of both tunes came\u00a0after <\/i>a section mimicking a current trend, and the versions of these songs that have endured are those shorn of their original mimickry.\u00a0 Joplin\u2019s genius in ‘Bethena’ and ‘Pleasant Moments’, on the other hand, was to incorporate a germ of an idea from an external source and make it part of an utterly original, memorable and musically enduring whole.)<\/p>\n

I believe Berlin\u2019s skill at assimilation can also be heard in \u2018Puttin\u2019 On The Ritz\u2019, a tune copyrighted in 1928 that uses the truncated habanera rhythm twice in its first four measures:\"puttin<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

As the \u2018Alexander\u2019s\u2019 story establishes that Berlin was a student of Joplin\u2019s innovations, it seems at least possible that, even though the habanera was everywhere at the time, Berlin\u2019s knowledge of this rhythm may have come from Joplin\u2019s waltz.\u00a0 More evidence that the truncated habanera rhythm was ‘going viral’ in the world of popular song around this time is in\u00a0Duke Ellington\u2019s 1932 tune \u2018It Don\u2019t Mean A Thing (If It Ain\u2019t Got That Swing)\u2019<\/a> ,\u00a0which uses the rhythm four times in a row in the second phrase of (as well as many more times in the coda of the tune\u2019s first recorded version):\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Cole Porter used the truncated habanera three times in a row in the first phrase of the tune \u2018Anything Goes\u2019 (from the 1934 musical of the same name), (as well as five times in its bridge):\"anything<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

(Although I have arranged these examples and the ones that follow in chronological order, my point is not to prove conclusively that any one song directly influenced the other, but rather to illustrate how each tune takes the truncated habanera and uses it in a different way.\u00a0 A number of these tunes are standard literature in the jazz tradition, and their uses of the truncated habanera are among the more sophisticated and technically challenging elements of the melodies for performers.\u00a0 If one can grasp the commonality between these tunes, it can be an aid to mastering one of their complexities.)<\/p>\n

It sounds to me like the truncated habanera also went viral in the bebop era of jazz, as it shows up in an ornamented form the melody of one of Charlie Parker\u2019s best-known compositions, \u2018Billie\u2019s Bounce\u2019<\/a> (first recorded in 1945).\u00a0 Parker, like Berlin in \u2018Puttin\u2019 On The Ritz\u2019, begins the truncated habanera on the fourth beat of his tune\u2019s first measure, but unlike Berlin he repeats the pattern three times, although he replaces the pattern\u2019s first note with a rest on the second and third repetitions. \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The same subtractive use of the pattern was also made by Sonny Rollins in his tune \u2018Oleo\u2019 (first recorded in 1954 for the Miles Davis album \u2018Bags\u2019 Groove\u2019). \u00a0In the way the tune is most often notated and played, Rollins’ use of the truncated habanera is most noticeable\u00a0<\/span>in m. 1, 3, 4 and 6:\u00a0\"Oleo<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On Bill Evans\u2019 version of Oleo (from \u2018Everybody Digs Bill Evans\u2019, recorded in 1958) <\/a>Philly Joe Jones\u2019 three-against-four hi-hat pattern in the second A makes the tune’s first two measures sound like\u00a0two repetitions in a row of the truncated habanera,\u00a0filling in\u00a0the missing first note of the pattern\u00a0for its first two repetitions, and making the listener\u00a0hear two three-beat phrases:.\"Oleo<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Thelonious Monk, in his tune \u2018Rhythm-A-Ning\u2019 <\/a>(first recorded in 1957), begins with what has often been identified as a four-measure quote from the Mary Lou Williams composition \u2018Walkin\u2019 and Swingin\u2019<\/a> (see 1:22 of the linked recording by the Vermont All State Jazz Ensemble for the phrase in question.)\u00a0 Monk follows this phrase with a melodic phrase that uses the full four-beat habanera pattern (with an added pickup) in measure 5.\u00a0 This is the pattern we heard in the melody ‘Hello My Baby’ and the left hand of ‘Garoto’.\u00a0 In typical Monk fashion, this second semi-quoted element is then transformed by being stated on a different beat of the measure in bar 6.\"Rhythm<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span>(Monk investigates this process further in \u2018Straight, No Chaser\u2019<\/a>, where a rhythmic figure introduced initially on the pickup to beat 1 in measure 1 is then begun on beats 2, 3 and 4 of various measures over course of the first eight measure phrase.)<\/p>\n

I have discovered\u00a0the connections I’m discussing here over years of playing jazz gigs, teaching piano lessons and improvisation classes, and directing pit orchestras, but my awareness of them was reawakened during\u00a0a great performance I saw earlier this year by Arturo O\u2019Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra at the Flynn Center.\u00a0 One of the concert\u2019s standout pieces was O\u2019Farrill\u2019s composition \u2018On The Corner of Malecon and Bourbon\u2019 from their recent album \u2018The Offense of The Drum\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 In the YouTube video of this piece<\/a>, after solos by O\u2019Farrill on piano, Bobby Porcelli on alto sax (who references Cannonball Adderly\u2019s \u2018So What\u2019 solo), Jim Seeley on trumpet (who references \u2018West End Blues\u2019 and \u2018Struttin\u2019 With Some Barbeque\u2019 among other tunes),\u00a0 Jason Marshall on baritone sax (who picks up and develops the \u2018Struttin\u2019 lick) and Gregg August on bass, the band settles into a section in which the accompaniment and melody are both strongly reminiscent of the opening strain of Scott Joplin\u2019s \u2018Maple Leaf Rag\u2019. In both the YouTube video and the Burlington performance, O\u2019Farrill mentioned in his spoken intro that the piece is about the common roots of jazz and Latin music, but in Burlington he also added a highly instructive piece of stagecraft.\u00a0 In a tone of voice that conveyed believable honesty, O\u2019Farrill claimed that he wasn\u2019t too sure about the ending – a statement which, if he really meant it, would be shocking for someone of O\u2019Farrill\u2019s stature and virtuosity. \u00a0 Although this seemed at first to be a sincere confession, it was actually a shrewd piece of acting that set the audience up for a bit that O\u2019Farrill engages in during an unaccompanied piano solo in the middle of the piece.\u00a0 The band drops out for what seems like a piano cadenza, and O\u2019Farrill first plays in a ragtime piano style with a left hand stride pattern and syncopated melody, but he then slows down as though his mind is stuck on some detail of the music.\u00a0 After an awkward pause, he turns the chart on his music rack upside down and plays an inverted version of the syncopated melody.\u00a0 Here again he slows down and repeats a bar as though analyzing the syncopation, after which he turns the music right side up again and transforms the syncopated melody into one of its close musical relatives: the rhythmic pattern called montuno <\/i>or guajeo<\/i> which the piano plays son clave accompaniment style derived from Cuban folk music and common through mambo, salsa and Latin jazz contexts.\u00a0 O\u2019Farrill\u2019s band responds by accompanying the montuno pattern with its typical rhythmic counterpoints in the percussion and bass parts, and the piece concludes in a smoking 2-3 son clave feel.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrill\u2019s piece brilliantly illustrates that, although videos that \u2018go viral\u2018 on the internet are a fairly recent phenomenon (such as the Pharell Williams tune \u2018Happy\u2019, where the original version was quickly followed with remakes by groups from the Miss USA contestants to a grade school class), in the intertwined evolution of tango, ragtime, jazz and popular song, rhythms ‘went\u00a0viral\u2019 for many decades before the internet with only the ears, eyes and memories of composers to communicate them.\u00a0 Having recently fought off pnuemonia myself, I certainly wouldn\u2019t wish a medical virus on anyone.\u00a0 However, as the word \u2018viral\u2019 has taken on a positive meaning in the world of the internet, perhaps someday as studies of medicine and music continue to intertwine, \u2018viral\u2019 can take on a positive meaning in the study of music, as a way of explaining the sometimes peculiar and always fascinating ways that musical ideas are leaked and communicated between cultures and eras.<\/p>\n

Ian Crane, one of my piano students who is also a student at UVM College of Medicine<\/a>, wrote an email \u00a0response to an earlier version of this blog which confirms my sense that the ‘good virus’ metaphor works to illustrate\u00a0how indirect influence in music can be just as powerful as direct influence. \u00a0Ian explains it better than I could, so I’ll give him the last word: “I think one way in which viruses work\u00a0 similar to musical ideas is the ‘lysogenic life cycle’. Certain viruses actually travel in between cells and incorporate their genetic code (which is all a virus really is:\u00a0a traveling piece of DNA or RNA) into the genetic code of a cell. There they lie dormant and are replicated with that cell’s DNA, from that point on effectively changing the genetic code of that cell and all of its progeny…<\/span>I think music is really similar to this aspect of the viral life cycle in the sense that it can permanently change our musical code, or our set of musical ideas, becoming a part of us.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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The word \u2018virus\u2019 is most often associated with negative and harmful microbes, from actual diseases like pneumonia and H1N1 to the fictional virus that kills off most of the Earth\u2019s population in the recent Planet of the Apes movies.\u00a0 The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2564,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}