http://www.jstor.org/stable/852198 .

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Illinois Press and Society for Ethnomusicology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Ethnomusicology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Vol.. 39, No. 1 ETHNOMNlSICOLOGY WINTER1995

The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies:

a Progress Report

CHARLES KEIL STATE UNIVERSITY OF

NEW YORK AT BUFFALO

s background and introductionto this trio of papers let me summarize

briefly the main arguments and affirmationsI put forward in "Motion
and Feeling through Music"(1966) and "ParticipatoryDiscrepancies and the
Power of Music"(1987b), both now available in juxtaposition with Steve
Feld's articles in Music Grooves(1994).
Thirtyyears ago in a seminar at the Universityof Chicago with Leonard
MeyerI became angry and increasinglyfrustratedas I realized that Professor
Meyer'sarguments in favor of syntax, emotion and meaning in music, the
deferred gratificationsof melodic/harmonic tensions, though certainly an
excellent summation of the Western music esthetic, could not account for
the value and greatness I felt in the John ColtraneQuartet, in jazz generally
and in all the groovy, sensual musics of the world. So I set out to overturn
Meyer'sparadigm completely, put syntax at the bottom and "vitaldrive"or
groove on top. I think I was deconstructing the Western civilization esthetic
and music-as-textway ahead of the Frenchdeconstructionistschool and the
core of the argument is certainly pre-post-structuralistas well: music is not
primarilyabout structureat all. Music is about process, not product; it's not
seriousness and practice in deferring gratification but play and pleasure
(French 1985) that we humans need from it; "groove"or "vitaldrive"is not
some essence of all music that we can simply take for granted, but must be
figured out each time between players; music is not so much about abstract
emotions and meanings, reason, cause and effect, logic, but rather about
motions, dance, global and contradictoryfeelings; it's not about composers
bringing forms from on high for mere mortals to realize or approximate, it's
about getting down and into the groove, everyone creatingsocially from the
bottom up.

? 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
2 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

Well, the article didn't trigger an intellectual revolution or shift the

paradigm in musicology. Twenty years later syntax was still on top of the
hierarchicalheap, so I went to talk to Bo Diddley about his beat. By this time,
however, I understood that participationtheory and funism were the nec-
essary complement to Marxismand feminism, and I'd figured out that not
only was process or groove more important than syntax, but texture, the
timbraldiscrepancies, and the sound were also more importantthan syntax,
and that groove and sound together made syntax a very small, residual
category indeed. Since Bo's old Diddley beat was a perfect, messy example
of process as texture, sound as groove, vibrato as rhythm,he would be the
man to ask. We couldn't agree on anything. The funny transcriptof that
interview concludes "ParticipatoryDiscrepancies and the Power of Music."
I courageously triedto set up a few notes and queries for furtherethnograph-
ic inquiries in that articlebut the main lessons learned from talking with Bo
and other groove experts in jazz, polka (Keil, Keil and Blau 1992:63-64), and
blues, is that they often disagree about the most basic axioms and percep-
tions; after much exploitation and commodification of a personal sound or
groove, experts may be understandablyprotective of a "feel"or their "feel-
ings" about it, even more protective of the craft and techniques used in
producing it. And since it seems that much of whatever groove or sound in
question is subliminal, variablyin and out of awareness, we have to further
develop theory and methods beyond straightforwardethnography if the
participatorydiscrepancy (PD) paradigm is to carry the day.
The rest of this essay is intended as a happy meditation on the accom-
panying proof offered by J. A. Progler and Olavo Alen Rodriguez that PDs
exist. Theirdiscoveries of the many ways in which PDs are patternedmakes
me even happier.And may we all be happiest exploring what this may mean
for the ways we choose to live our lives; that is, each of us incorporatingthe
wrights (the craftsor skills of grooving) that shape and are shaped by rites
(the participatoryhealings of those alienations from body, labor, society and
naturethatpermeate late capitalism)to recreateour selves, our communities
and our cosmologies.
PDs exist. Between players. Between the beginnings of their notes. In
the moment when each of us chooses to snap fingers, or nod a head, or in
the instantwhen many decide to get up and dance because the music is so
contagious. Between primaryreality and cultural reality (see below). And
now we can force them to exist visually between the marks on arbitrary
measuring sticks. Where does the groove come from?If we believe a Mac
Digitizer in Buffalo and a Winkel machine in Berlin can pick up the begin-
nings of sounds and translatethem into static visual informationaccurately,
if we trustJo Proglerto read the squiggles on a computer screen accurately,
if we trust Olavo Alen to read the Winkel wiggles on a spinning drum of

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theoryof ParticipatoryDiscrepancies 3

paper accurately,if their measurementsof the spaces between squiggles and

wiggles have been accurately converted into time measurements, ratios,
percentages, then we have two calibrations,two mechanical and replicable
segmentations of the continuum, two "blackboxes" with audio information
going in and visual informationcoming out, two gentlemanly scholars with
good minds handling the boxes and checking the inputs and outputs, and
with two heads and two very different measuring sticks being much, much
better than one, I think we have the bare beginnings of a scientific answer
to this question-scientific in the sense that we can now say how far off the
metronome a "walking bass line" is in terms of two different measuring
standards,and justhow approximateanyone's impressionistictranscriptions
are too; we can make some predictions about how specific jazz bass players
and drummerswill interactwith each other under specified circumstances,
or how the members of a tumba francesa ensemble will place their rhythms
in relation to each other, etc.; and, most important, other scientists can
replicate these experiments, expand upon them, and challenge them.
The essentialist position on all this goes "swing is swing, groove is
groovy, musicians in every idiom are 'phrasing' and trying to play with
feeling, what else is new?" By deconstructing grooves with a digitizer or
Winkelizer into constituent elements we show that every groove has a
material dimension-sticks tap metal, fingers pluck strings-and has to be
constructed between players: dialectical materialismin action. There is no
essential groove, no abstracttime, no "metronomesense" in the strictsense
of metronome, no feeling qua feeling, just constant relativity,constant relat-
ing, constant negotiation of a groove between players in a particulartime and
place with a complex variety of variables intersecting millisecond by milli-
second. Abstracttime is a nice Platonic idea, a perfect essence, but real time,
natural time, human time, is always variable.
Let'sput the PDs in perspective with a few definitions for primaryreality,
cultural reality and civilized reality. Following primitive and neo-primitive
thinkers everywhere in what I take to be the feminist trend toward appre-
hending the sensual reunificationof knowledge, I assume a vibrating,rhyth-
mic, dancing universe (Sahtouris 1989) or nature, and that we are part of it,
participantsin it. What is beyond our skin is primaryreality from the mini-
vibes of atomic quarks and mesons up through the molecular vibes of
Brownianmotion through the color vibes and life vibes into theJames Brown
vibes and on out to the galactic rumba) but it is also inside us, in our body-
minds, and that'swhy we can participatein it. That'swhat culturalreality is
for. Healthy cultures, genuine cultures (Sapir 1949), give their infants access
to primary reality because without cultural imprinting on our biological
givens we can't enter into language, myth, music, dance, poetry, wrights/
rites, totemism, dreams, and other ego-dissolving primary-reality-engaging

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
4 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

processes in the moment. Civilized reality (Keil 1988:125-32;Keil and Feld

1994) tries to fix the flux of both nature and culture for all time as scientists
and artistspile up the models and masterpieces, the plans and products, the
monuments and machinery, the property and profits-you know the his-
story. "Snivelization"(Herman Melvillevia Mumford1970:16),by codifying,
standardizing,controlling, powertripping, monoculturing, ego-rigidifying,
routinizing,over-rationalizingand alienating our lives, keeps up a relentless
attackon our diversityof culturalpossibilities for fusing with primaryreality.
The theory of participatorydiscrepancies is a liberatingtheory of rela-
tivity for audio-tactile processes and textures which asserts that "Music,to
be personally involving and socially valuable, must be 'out of time' and 'out
of tune"'(Keil 1987b:275)-'out of time' and 'out of tune' only in relation to
music department standardizationand the civilized worldview, of course.
Living, co-evolving, genuine cultures-as opposed to civilizations (Sapir
1949)-are built upon participatoryconsciousness (Barfield 1965), deep
identification(Naess 1989), and continual reenchantmentof the world (Ber-
man 1984), and are filled with participatorydiscrepancies that appear "irreg-
ular,""farout,"and "wildand crazy"only to the power-tripping,control-over
people still trapped inside civilization.In fact, PDs are the basis of all musical
creation, analogous in some ways to the constant generation of "speaker's
meanings" (Barfield 1967) by each and every one of us in co-evolving
languages and cultures. PDs may also be analogous to the unrelenting
operation of the uncertaintyprinciple in physics, and the concept of an open
universe (sounds good, and I hope that it's true). Conversely, it is the pre-
relativity physics "laws,"the dictionary definitions of words, and written
control over music that are the Platonic ideas or illusions or essences, and
they are dangerous to deadly ones because they buttress the big, civilized,
pseudo-scientific and pseudo-artisticillusions of our time that pit us against
nature (the primaryrealityof Gaia and species co-evolution) and ourselves
(the possibility of a culturallyrediversifiedplanet with all cultures adapting
well to their neighbors and to theirecological niches if the power-over tribes
can be contained and retrained [Schmookler 1984]).
Tolstoy invoked the "wee bits"of Bryulov (see the Quotron below) in
a systematic effort to debunk the massive amounts of pseudo-art and pseu-
do-science emerging in the late nineteenth century. Tolstoy's examples
connect the PDs of music to the other arts and to the difficultyof teaching
individual feeling. Blake invoked the "MinuteParticulars"for very similar
reasons a century earlier (see below), and while he never links them to
micro-timing,the industrious "Moment"or "apulsation of the artery,"there
are so many great Blake lines and whole poems which celebrate the instant
of creationand the instantof perception thatI hesitate for just25 milliseconds
before equating Minute Particularswith PDs. In more recent times there is

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theoryof Participatory Discrepancies 5

a whole shelf of "new age" books linking the mysteries of nature and our
awareness that the "end of nature"is upon us to an enhanced capacity for
deep identification with the naturalworld. I have borrowed for the closing
quotations only from those books I've read that seem to be in comfortable
harmony with the best scientific understanding of our situation.
I have a hunch that many of the founding fathers of ethnomusicology
could be quoted as trying hard to cope theoretically with the PDs, the
perceived irregularities,but finally the discipline falls back over and over
again into standardization,accuracies, approximationsof the Platonic forms
or essences, the civilized paradigm in control of our minds. We can't agree
on a single theory and method of transcriptionbut we keep tryingand keep
teaching transcriptioncourses as if the Platonic model will descend upon us
one day if we just keep the syntactic faith. Percy Grainger(quoted in Feld
1988) can revel in "kaleidoscopic density," "everchanging euphoniously
discordant polyphonic harmony," "imperfect unison" and "the charm of
'wrong notes that sound right"'but still produce "CountryGardens."Richard
Waterman'sgreat article (1952) defining "metronome sense," kept the PD
flame alive in dark times and is still the cornerstone looking for a building.
Alan Lomax had a great idea when he first set up cantometrics as a way
around "transcriptionand analysis" but the team got sidetracked into the
statisticalreifications of social science. The better PD paradigm, systematic
attention to exactly how groovy processes and mysterious textures are
generated and how global feelings are catharsed through music, seems to
be taking forever to arrive.
A number of people have told me that "Motionand Feeling through
Music"(1966) gave them a sense of what an alternative musicology might
be like. John Shepherd has always been especially supportive of the general
frameworkproposed there, and he brought Andrew Chester'sarticle (1970)
to my attention as a coordinate confirmationof my basic ideas. While there
are only a few suggestive sentences of musicology in Chester's piece, his
contrastbetween an "intentional"mode of musicking like rock where qual-
ities of "beat"and "sound"are evaluated and the "extensional"or architec-
tonic Western musics that lend themselves to syntactic evaluation certainly
fits well the with the table of contrasts in "Motion and Feeling through
Music."More recently, Shepherd's work "Towardsa Musicology of Society"
helps to establish a wider theoretical framework for the PD paradigm by
patientlyexplaining how it is that "people, music and 'society' are creatively
'in' and permeate one another"(1988:107), and how it is, since "Music,as
sound, cannot help but stress the integrativeand relationalin human life, that
is, the way in which we are all in constant and dynamic touch with the world
(ibid.:116)," that we can use the work of Catherine Ellis (1985) and Stan
Gooch (1972) to reclaimmusic as the most importantcommunication system

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
6 Ethnomusicology, Winter1995

available to us for relearning participatoryconsciousness. Shepherd, Chris

Small, and others have offered more and better theorizing along these lines
since 1988, but the issue before us here is methods for partiallydemon-
strating the materiality,the physical touches, the phenomenological mo-
ments of "groove"and "sound"creation, so thatwe can move on from these
demonstrationsto a cumulativeand comparativeethnomusicology with life-
affirmingapplications in all corners of the globe.
In the fall of 1987 a panel of papers relatingto PD theory was assembled
by LeeEllenFriedlandfor the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation meet-
ings: "PerformanceStyle and Power: ParticipatoryDiscrepancies in Expres-
sive Culture."As the commentator on four papers by Friedland, Robert F.
Thompson, ChrisWatermanand J. Lowell Lewis, I was proud that my PD
paper of the previous year had done something to inspire these very imag-
inative papers;but they seemed either formallyor semanticallyrelated to PD
theory, not substantively in it and of it. The visual-spatial discrepancies in
the slides of Africanart that Thompson showed, and the moments of truth
("indeterminacies... found precisely at the interstices between forms or
styles") in the ginga movements of Braziliancapoiera described and dem-
onstrated by Lewis, seemed to focus on ambiguities of syntax/structures/
forms/signs. Maybe these papers were the beginning of a compatible and
complementary theory of macro syntax informed by a PD theory of micro
processes and textures, but I couldn't be sure. Similarly,Waterman and
Friedlandgave papers about the semantics of PDs-the glosses for grooves
in Nigerianjujubands Watermanstudied and the technical terms for moves
and grooves in the Philadelphiahip-hop scene that Friedlandfollowed, but
both researcherswere well aware that their analyses did not deal with the
PDs themselves, just the intraculturalnames for phenomena that might be
based on PD processes and textures. Or they might not. Over beers afterthe
panel of papersJohn Chernoff,a very able drummerand theorist,wondered
if in fact the PDs existed at all, suggesting that maybe most or all grooves get
better the more precisely people played together. Watermanand I counter-
theorized that maybe Chernoffwas not intuitingthe PDs because he jumped
into Africanrhythmswithout years of jazz rhythmsection work first.I came
away from the meetings knowing that sooner or later we would have to
demonstrate that PDs exist in primaryreality and can be partiallycaptured
and measured in civilized laboratories.Only then could we begin to show
how they work in diverse musical processes and textures. How else to
separate glossing the grooves from glossing over them?
Steve Feld's "Aestheticsas Iconicity of Style, or 'Lift-up-oversounding':
Gettinginto the KaluliGroove"(1988; also in Keiland Feld 1994) offers many
important contributions to PD theory and extends it to a comprehensive
frameworkfor understandingprime cultures (Diamond 1974) in their com-

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The 7heory of ParticipatoryDiscrepancies 7

plex relationshipswith the naturalworld. For our purposes here, Feld's idea
that many processual PDs may be "insynch but out of phase" is borne out,
I think, by both Progler'sresearch and Alen's. The division of opinion (see
below) among the jazz rhythm section experts I've been talking to-some
of whom are like Chernoffin asserting the importance of "insynch" playing
and glossing their grooves accordingly, while others speak of "edge," "on
top" playing, as they attend to the "out of phase" or "slightlyin and out of
phase"aspects-may be evidence that Feld's formulationis the main one to
keep exploring.
A personal communication from Feld (1987) linking the ins and outs of
the synch and phase four-fold table (in synch/in phase, in synch/out of
phase, in phase/out of synch, out of phase/out of synch) hypothetically to
"sonicdimensions:time/tune and timbre/texture,""actors:individual/group,"
"agencyand means:vocal/instrumental,acoustic/mechanical,""modes:music/
dance," and "channels:mediated/live" yields 6,561 possible PD configura-
tions or interstitialsources of discrepancies, participatoryand otherwise! As
our minds yield to the groovy discrepancies of Gaia'sglorious imperfection
(Sahtouris 1989) still more possibilities will lift-up-over each other!
Pr6gler'sstudies of kora playing technique (1988) added another impor-
tant PD dimension and who knows how many more possible PD configu-
rationsto the matrix.I have been thinking for decades about attacks/touches
generatingboth processual PDs and timbres/texturestoo (since most people
can't tell violin, trumpet, etc. timbres apart once the attack sounds are
removed) but you can't take your firstkora lesson without discovering how
importantmuting and damping can be. Sounds have micro-timedand micro-
tuned endings too! Make that 13,122 PD sources. I knew the left hand
muffling on a samba band surdu was creating great drive, that cutting off
notes on the electricbass pushed things along in Afro-popgroups I've played
with, but I never really theorized it. Similarly, a lot of feelings must be
communicated in the way melodies fade or trailoff, the way sounds swoop
up or dip down as they end. In Progler'smeasurements, a major feature of
the PD tensions between bass and drums probably has to do with the fact
that the tap on the ride cymbal is kept going like a stick on a rolling hoop,
all beginnings and no real endings, while string bass notes have to be
stopped before they are startedagain. Logically,how sounds cease must be
half of the story, and more than half of the PDs that count in making grooves
may be in releases ratherthan attacks.And, finally,how do individualattacks
and releases interact in ensembles?
The Proglerreportwhich follows demonstrates that PDs exist and gives
us clues as to how they may work processually in time. We haven't much
to say yet about pitches, timbres,textures. RodericKnight'sstudies of Mande
tuningsfor balo and koraaffirmthatdifferencesare not inaccuracies(1991:43)

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

in one culture, but he is still a step or two short of celebrating discrepancies

as the source of power and magic. Some of the confusion at the anthropology
meetings may have stemmed from not knowing exactly how "micro"the
processual PDs are. Now we know how small they are. But if some swinging
musicians can assume them while others do not, then they must be largely
subliminalmost of the time and micro indeed. Conversely,just how "macro"
are phrasing and inflection?When do micro-PDs phase into noticeable and
notatable delays and anticipations?The Progler and Alen reports give us
some clues, but to make some real progress in this area we will have to
assemble panels of experts to determine limens, kinds and degrees of PD
perception, and to give us their opinions about kinds and degrees of
grooviness.

My interviews with jazz drummers,bassists, keyboard players and gui-

taristsin recent years suggest that most musicians conceptualize their work
as playing "together"ratherthan as in consistent and deliberate tension with
each other. So far everyone assumes that each person has a unique feel for
time and that bringing different or discrepant personalities together gener-
ates different kinds of groove or swing. In one folk model, time-feel differ-
ences are in the people and are worked out as they play together. In another
model, the same personality-time-feeldifferences are assumed but it is also
assumed that musicians place their attacks in relation to each other to
generate groove, pulse, metronome sense. Drummer,Jimmy Gomes (1989),
usually hears someone ahead, someone "bringingup the rear"and a "pen-
dulum"player who releases energy by positioning sounds between the two
time-feels and/or by joining one and then the other, in synch but in and out
of phase perhaps. BassistSteve Swallow (1991) remembersthinkingin terms
of a similar"PDmodel"when he was younger, tryingto consciously position
himself in terms of the drummer, etc., but too much thinking about the
groove may interfere with "nailing it" so in recent years he lets any PD
perceptions remainsubliminal.Similarly,the late bassist Red Mitchell(1992)
had asked many of the great groovers over the years how they did it and he
treasuredtheir answers, but when it came to playing he tried to get to what
he called "thefourth level of consciousness" beyond individual time sense,
group interactivetime sense, and audience-event time sense, because any
attentionto these three lower levels would surely spoil the sheer joy of being
at the 'fourthlevel.' We lost Red before I could ask him more about thatfourth
level but I trust his spirit is there now.
I share Progler's concern with the impact of measuring PDs on the
consciousness of the musicians making them, both as a factor in explaining
what we are doing as we are doing it in experimentalsituations(do I position
my bass playing in relation to my recorded cymbal tap one consistent way

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theoryof ParticipatoryDiscrepancies 9

because I have a theory to prove while another bassist does not have a theory
or my theory and can play more freely with the pulse?) and over the long
term, as more and more musicians become aware that the PDs do exist and
may feel a need to explain their craftin terms of them to the interviewerwho
comes around a few years later. There may be some urgency about inter-
viewing jazz musicians and other groove-makers in this culture before PD
theory becomes common knowledge so that we have some baseline (par-
don the pun), a set of pre-PD-theoryfolk models, to measure any futureshifts
in consciousness against.
A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing. But I keep the faith that
a lot of knowledge, a clearer and clearer understanding of how PDs work,
can only encourage each and every person to become more musical. Surely
a deepening awareness that abstractperfection, absolute time, perfect pitch,
ideal form, flawless performance, etc., etc., are weird myths of the West and
the eventual death of music, surely this knowledge will help us teach better.
Surelythe excitement of playing a little out of time and a little out of tune in
the paths that all genuine culturesrequirewill bring more and more children
into musicking more of the time. But I am anticipating a closing section of
this article on what praxis might spring from PD theory in the future.
The joy of seeing PDs confirmed in Pr6gler's measurements has only
been surpassed by finding that Olavo Alen Rodriguezin Cuba had indepen-
dently put together the theory and an extensive proof of it by the late 1970s
in his Humboldt University Ph. D. dissertation. Different musical tradition,
different languages (German and Spanish) of conceptualization, different
machinery for measuring, and these differences coupled with a very keen
intelligence at work sometimes make it difficult to understand what each
table of percentages can tell us, but the basic findings are similarto Progler's.
PDs exist. They are patterned. The patternsare consistently not the same as
but in synch and out of phase with our notation systems. And these patterns
are most certainlywhere the power of music comes from:the power to make
us listen, make us dance, make us want to participatein the "same"patterns
and grooves over and over again, year afteryear, generation aftergeneration.
The most important principle I extract from Olavo Alen's research is that
repeated patternsin the drum family "breathe"in definable ways: some are
tight at both ends and loose in the middle, or vice versa, depending on where
one puts the bar lines (see John Collins 1990 for the virtues of concentric
circular notation and a tight summary of theoretical physics in relation to
African drumming); some strokes within a pattern can be sloppier, others
must be very precise; these phrases breathe in relationto each other. Behind
all the measurements and tables are musical organisms whose vital parts
pulse in intricatepatterns that can now be described more carefully, and as
consequence, can probably be better imitated as well.

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
10 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

Perhapsthe most importantinformationI've received from Olavo, how-

ever, was delivered in an office conversation in which he said that it was not
only better to give than to receive music, but also necessary. Unless people
make and give music to others, they can't reallyreceive it. This explains why
people come to my college-level drummingclasses who love music, listen
to it constantly,and can't drumeven a littlebit. Hours of listening, day in day
out, sleeping with the radioon, year afteryear, massive "exposure",does not
capacitate people. On the other hand, learning to play a simple clave beat,
holding it in relation to another drum beat, watching someone smile and
dance to the groove you generate, can capacitate people in profound ways,
can become the equivalent of a conversion experience for some, and even
the least moved by the experience will, I believe, be listening kinesthetically
ever afterwards,thatis, feeling the melodies in theirmuscles, imaginingwhat
it might be like to play what they are hearing. I don't think it is an accident
that my fellow PD theorist in Cuba believes that children need to give music
in order to receive it. Intense curiosity about where the groove comes from
and wanting everyone to be able to get into a groove go together. This
motivation is behind all the programs of Musicians United for Superior
Education,MUSEIncorporated,a non-profit organization bringing African,
African-American,Afro-Latin,and Native American music-dance traditions
to primaryschools and community centers in Buffalo; we hope that self-
sustaining traditions can be generated with older children teaching the
younger ones in every school and center.
For understandingmusical processes PD theory suggests that we: 1)put
mimesis before analysis;2) figureout how to let mimesis guide what analysis
we do; 3) learn from our analysis how to improve our mimesis; so that 4)
more people will want to get into a groove and keep the loops going.
I hope that is exactly what happens when we measure some of the
rhythmicPDs of one culture's musical process. Everyjazz drummerfor the
past 50 years has spent a lot of time holding a stick and tapping a
cymbal.... ding ding di ding ding di ding ding di ding ad infinitum.I have
done this for decades, tryingto imitate and participatethe consciousness of
Gene Krupa, Louis Belson, Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey, Frank Isola, Shelly
Manne,PhillyJoJones, ElvinJones, and others. Earlyin the experiments with
J. Proglerwe recorded and measured my versions of Kenny Clarkeand Elvin
Jones taps on the ride cymbal but only time, and better technology for
discriminatingthe taps on the old recordingsby the masterswill tell whether
my effortswere even an approximation.I have also imitatedmy favoritebass
players-Walter Page,AlMcKibbon,WilburWare,CharlieHaden,RedMitchell,
etc.-for almost as many years. In a mimesis often more imagined and only
partiallypracticed,I have participatedHorace Silver'scomping at the piano,
that is, my mind has entered into his playing and my muscles have tensed,

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theoryof ParticipatoryDiscrepancies 11

fingers actually curled, feeding chords to a desk top or steering wheel,

chords that Blue Mitchell never heard but that I intended. About two years
ago I picked up a cornet and began with mimesis of my childhood hero, Wild
Bill Davison, playing the horn at a left slant angle, growling in my throat,
doing whatever I needed to achieve Wild Bill's sound, attack, timbrel dis-
crepancies, phrasing.The few times I talked with Bill on the phone I usually
wrote a poem about it afterward,trying, for example, to understand what it
was that Bill'swife meant with the anecdote aboutJapanese monks wanting
to meet and touch Bill because he had worked for Al Capone. Participation.
A visceral/poetic/erotic involvement (Berman 1984:147-87). Fusingwith the
ancestor, the totem, the force, the sound, and therefore with the universe.
Wild Bill's sound now connects me to monks in Japan, to Al Capone, to the
"galactictarantella"(Leonard 1986:37).Thanks Bill. And who can I give it to?
Who can I touch with his touch?Tap with my tap?Pluck with my pluck?His?
Mine?Yours?What is used becomes fused. And each of us is destined by
nature and nurture to do it differently, no matter how passionate we are
about imitating.
Canwe analyze the ding ding di ding an sich and the pluck as such?Does
every skilled jazz drummerand bassist have a different"trope"or "way"with
jazz time? Does every drummer "tap"into the silent pulses, the rhythms of
the universe, differentlyand directly?Progler'spreliminaryfindings and the
interviews we have done with jazz rhythm section experts suggest so. But
isn't all the tapping and plucking shaped and modified by a culturally
defined style? Is the carnal or unconscious knowledge embodied in each
"tap"and "pluck"all learned or is some of it, maybe just the kernel or germ
of it, in the genes? Most of the jazz players interviewed think that some part
of the grooving capacity is given and explains the unique time-feel of each
person that is like a fingerprintor signature. And even if all of a "tap"or
"pluck"is learned, can it be taught?Will measuring the discrepancies help
describe the phenomena in a way that will enhance teaching/learning of
such processes?
Getting your hands on the discrepancies, developing wrights or PD
controlling skills, putting your whole self into the discrepancies, getting the
muses incorporatedin your own body, is liberating.And getting a theory and
method handle on the discrepancies, both processual and textural, in time
and in tone, is probably the most liberating thing that musicologists as
analysts can do. Why? Because they are the sine qua non, without which
nothing.
Discrepancies, the differences that make a difference (Bateson 1972),
and the relationshipsbetween them, are the key to music, life, the universe.
But let's stick to music for the moment. Since receiving thatcrucialrephrasing
from Steve Feld, "in synch but out of phase," and since reading Leonard

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
12 Ethnomusicology, Winter1995

summarizingstudies of entrainment(1986: 13-29) in nature and in human

interaction,it is clearer to me that what I have been calling the participatory
discrepancies in musical time-processes and tone-textures are both essen-
tially micro-rhythmicphenomena: the slightly different initiationsof sound
waves in time rubbingagainsteach other, and the slightlydifferentsustained
sound waves through time rubbing or "beating"against each other. Unlike
Leonardwho assumes a "silentpulse" and "perfectrhythm"in the universe
and in each of us, I assume that everything is relational, hence audible,
imperfect, constantly being negotiated, albeit at mostly unconscious levels.
And unlike Leonard,who stresses that silent pulses and perfect rhythmsare
deeper than or beyond culture, I assume that almost all the magic of jazz
"swing" or polka "push" (or name the grooves of any other culture) is
generated through our learning to be co-cultural with it by doing it. Their
magic is also due to their culturalrefusalto become civilized (fixed, printed,
formalized,monumental, predictable)and to the power of wrights to initiate
rites. Another way to put these differences with Leonardis to hypothesize
a few things about human entrainment.Unlike the pendulums on the wall
thatsynch up with each other, I thinkwe have to assume thatthe split-second
and subliminal,out-of-awareness timing thatgenerates the "insynch but out
of phase"plucks and taps of swing, is learned, "tacitknowing"(Polanyi 1962)
at some level and thatnegotiation, give-and-take, imperfection,are constant.
This controlled imperfection, incessant split-second negotiation, con-
stantgive-and-takeis one source of liberatorypower in any culture's"rhythm
section."The jazz rhythmsections of the past centuryhave had to churn their
way through a mazeway of dominant culture mystifications (romanticism,
racism)and the obstacle course (all the theory and method supporting those
written down monumental masterpieces) of Western civilization. This may
explain why so many of our drum-shamanshave used more drugs than the
shamans (already prone to hallucinogens) in other cultures. Drugs may
boost the confidence of "time-lords"in the context of a civilization whose
basic premise is fixed, eternal timelessness, the perfection of death.
Until recently the PDs and the swingwrights who produce them could
not be civilized. Now, however, synthesizers have been programmed for
degrees or percentages of swing, and the mechanical reproduction of PDs
is already an advanced art after two decades of disco, a decade of rap, a
recent crescendo of sampling and recycling the classic rhythm & blues
grooves. The work of MichaelStewart(1987) and others puttingsynthesizers
"in synch but out of phase" with live drummers might be a step toward
restoringspontaneous human integration,"swinger'sfeeling," between civ-
ilized and primaryreality. Or it might be the start of "cyborgiiber alles."
It remainsto be seen and heard whether or not humans will insist upon
live music and cultural reality, will simply settle for civilized AM/FM/LP/

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theoryof Participatory Discrepancies 13

CD/MTVreproductions, or will stay stuck in what might be called "disco-

limbo"-mechanically reproduced music for live dancing that may verge on
the ecstatic but is finally under the control of the man and machinery in the
glass booth, another "dudewho won't move," in Sabu Adeyola's expression
(1989). The expanding mix of "mediatedand live"musics-dub, rap,karaoke,
who knows what next-seems like a limbo or purgatoryto me because the
organic feedback loops are not complete and co-evolving, not in touch with
nature and neighbors, always limited in at least a few ways by electricity,
machinery and commodity forms.
The PDs and the swingwrights who control them are probably the
foundation of all human rites and are certainlythe core of trance-dances and
ecstatic communions in culturesall over the globe. Withoutwrights and PDs,
no rites. And vice versa; if there are no rites, no reason to develop PD skills.
What else but the pleasures of PD vibes will keep people coming back for
more, repeating the moves that make a dance style, repeating the proces-
sionals, communions and recessionals of the "thing predone, clone and
redone" (Harrison 1962 [1912])that constitute a dromenon?The tap on the
jazzman'scymbal, the bell played in tumbafrancesa, the swish of the sha-
man's rattle, the touch on a samba pandera, the blending of double-reeds
from the Balkans to Tibet (the list is as long as the list of surviving localized
traditional cultures), all signal a focus on present-time, the possibility of
participation,sensuous immersion in sound, taking pleasure in life (rather
than asserting power over it), felicity, grace, surrender of self to safe co-
culturalothers and to a benign primaryreality.Isn'tthat what we're here for?

A Quotron for Participatory Discrepancies

The lateJohn Clarke,poet, neighbor, friendand wild piano player, liked
to pile up quotations in what he called a Quotron, sometimes a small one
at the beginning of a poem, or for the fun of juxtaposing statements from
diverse sources, or because he had neither the time to write a narrative
putting them together nor the inclination to play the singular-white-male-
authorityrole again. So here's a pile of quotes thatany PD theoristmight want
to play with.

Participation begins by being an activity,and essentiallya communalor

social activity.It takes place in rites and initiationceremoniesresultingin
[quotingDurkheim]"collectivementalstatesof extremeemotionalintensity,in
whichrepresentation is as yet undifferentiated
fromthe movementsandactions
which make the communion towards which it tends a realityto the group. Their
participationis so effectively lived that it is not yet properly imagined."
This stage is not only pre-logical, but also pre-mythical. It is anterior to
collective representationsthemselves, as I have been using the term. Thus, the

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
14 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

first development Durkheim traces is from symbiosis or active participation

(where the individual feels he is the totem) to collective representationsof the
totemic type (where the individual feels that his ancestors were the totem, that
he will be when he dies, etc.). Fromthis symbolic apprehension he then arrives
at the duality, with which we are more familiar,of ideas on the one hand and
numinous religion on the other.
Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances:
Studies in Idolatry (1965:32)

discrepant.... not consistent or matching;disagreeing ... from Latin... discre-

pare, to sound different, vary; dis- apart plus crepare, to rattle, sound ...
American Heritage Dictionary (1969)

Althoughhuman beings found their"meaning"within naturefor several millions

of years, at some point that "meaning"became insufficient,and "man"began to
define himself, to find signification in opposition and superiorityto nature.The
unspeakable truth, the Gorgon's head upon which patriarchyis built, is the
condition of creaturedom itself.
Power-to is one of the greatestpleasures availableto humans;power-over is one
of the greatest pains.

Patriarchycannot continue, it cannot survive, if people turn away from power

and move toward pleasure. And of all elements on earth,pleasure is the one that
is least able to be coerced.
MarilynFrench in Beyond Power
(1985:543, 509, 529)

RITES: RIGHTS:: WRIGHTS: WRITES

REITS
(Real Estate Investment Trusts)
Charles Keil in Echology #1
(1987a:28)

The Ding an sich in nature is the Ding an sich in ourselves, namely our bodies,
or unconscious minds, which can never be fully known.
MorrisBerman in The Reenchantment
of the World(1984:177)

We don't need no masterpiece! More peas.

James Brown in TheJ.B.'s:
Doin' it to Death (1973)

Once when correcting a pupil's study, Bryulov just touched it in a few places
and the poor dead study immediatelybecame animated."Why,you only touched

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies 15

it a wee bit, and it is quite another thing!"said one of the pupils. "Artbegins
where the wee bit begins," replied Bryulov, indicatingby these words justwhat
is most characteristicof art.... So thatthe feeling of infection by the artof music,
which seems so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive only when
the performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are necessary to
perfection in music. It is the same in all arts:a wee bit lighter, a wee bit darker,
a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left-in painting; a wee bit weaker
or stronger in intonation, a wee bit sooner or later-in dramaticart;a wee bit
omitted, overemphasized, or exaggerated in poetry, and there is no contagion.
Infection is only obtained when an artistfinds those infinitely minute degrees
of which a work of art consists, and only to the extent to which he finds them.
And it is quite impossible to teach people by external means to find these minute
degrees: they can only be found when a man yields to his feeling.... The
teaching of the schools stops where the wee bit begins-consequently where
art begins.
Leo Tolstoy in What is Art?
(1962 [18891:199-201)

A "bit"of informationis definable as a difference which makes a difference. Such

a difference, as it travels and undergoes successive transformationin a circuit,
is an elementary idea.
Gregory Bateson in Stepsto an
Ecology of Mind (1972:315)

Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery

is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years.
For in this Period the Poets Work is Done: and all the Great
Events of Time start forth & are concievd in such a Period
Within a Moment: a Pulsation of the Artery.
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the industrious find
This Moment & it multiply. & when it once is found
It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed.
William Blake in "Milton"
(The CompletePoetry and Prose, 1988)

The Minute Particularsof God are men (J 91:31); of men, they are their
children (J 55:51); of life, the joys of living J 31:7), especially the embraces of
love (J 69:42); of ethics, forgiveness instead of judgment (J 43:61); of art, the
vision and the finished product;of science, the basic facts (J 55:62). In short, they
are realityas we encounter it. They are not negligible aberrationsfrom a Platonic
norm, but are highly organized and direct expressions of their eternal and
individual existences. "EveryMinute Particularis Holy" (J 69:42)
S. Foster Damon in
The Blake Dictionary (1965:280-81)
["J"stands for "Jerusalem"in The CompletePoetry and Prose, 1988]

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
16 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

But to see even traces of the particle dance, they must disturb it and try to
work out what the realdance is like fromtracesof this disturbance.Whatmatters,
it turnsout, is the patternof the steps in the dance, for certainpatternsof energy
are what we call "matter."Dancers not dancing are no dance-and the dance
is all there is!
Though we can never see the naturalparticle dance undisturbed, we can
be sure it is there-forming and connecting the stars and their reflections in the
sea, the earthand all its creatures,ourselves and all the things we make and use.
Everything is made of countless invisible dancers' movements in one single
dance forming endlessly new patterns-a dance far too small to see and yet so
large that it is the whole universe.
The art of dance seems to depend on human variation,on personal style,
on imperfections, on surprise, to give it life and interest.
Perfection would be the end of evolution, the end of freedom, the end of
creativity.We have learned that nature is far less than perfect for a very good
reason-for the same reason that nature is far more than mechanism!
Elisabet Sahtourisin Gaia: The HumanJourney
from Chaos to Cosmos(1989:188-89, 191)

There is an entrainmentbetween sound and gesture, between participants,and,

if you are willing to entertain such an idea, between self and cosmos.
George Leonardin
TheSilent Pulse (1986:27)

The highest forms of originality are far more closely akin to the lowest biotic
performances than the external circumstances would indicate. It is true that
creative human achievements rely on a far flung, highly articulate, cultural
structure,but the creative act itself is performed by informal comprehensive
powers-by powers which the man of genius shares with all men and which
all men share with infants, who in their turn are about on a par in this matter
with the animals.
Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge
(1962:400)

From the point of view of the listener, it [the metronome sense] entails habits
of conceiving any music as structuredalong a theoretical framework of beats
regularlyspaced in time and of cooperating in termsof overt or inhibited motor
behavior with the pulses of this metric pattern whether or not the beats are
expressed in actual melodic or percussion tones. Essentially,this simply means
thatAfricanmusic, with few exceptions, is to be regardedas music for the dance,
although "thedance" involved may be entirely a mental one.... It is assumed
without question or considerationto be partof the perceptualequipment of both
musicians and listeners and is in the most complete way, taken for granted.
The maintenance of a subjective meter, in terms of the metronome sense,
requireseffortand, more particularly,a series of efforts regularlyspaced in time.

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies 17

The development of "feeling for the beat,"so importantin jazz musicianship, is

neither more nor less than the development of the metronome sense.
RichardWatermanin AfricanInfluence
on the Music of the Americas (1952:211, 213, 217)

Mom remembers sending him downstairs in their Evanstonapartmentto do the

laundry, and discovering him a half-hour later playing cornet with the old gas-
powered machine bashing 2 and 4 against the wall. Metronome socks.
Chris Waterman,The Sweetest Secret
in Echology #3 (1989:35)

A pianist's touch is prized alike by the public and by his pupils; it has a great
value in money. Yet when the process of sounding a note on the piano is
analyzed, it appears difficult to account for the existence of "touch."
Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge
(1962:50)

In fact, the (lifferences are as essential to the expected sound of the music as the
accuracies.
Roderic Knight in "VibratoOctaves"
(1991:43)

If, perhaps, ancient cultures may not have felt the need for gods who were in
command of time. . ., they seem to flourish in modern literatureand theater,
where the sacred unity of time, place and action has been abandoned.
John A. Michon in Time,Mind
and Behavior (1985:25)

In the mean time

in between time
ain't we got fun
"Ain'tWe Got Fun,"words and music by
RichardA. Whiting, Gus Kahn, and
Raymond B. Egan, 1921, used in
cruise ship advertisements on TV

References
Adeyola, Sabu. 1989. Interview with C. Keil, 3 August.
Alen Rodriguez, Olavo. 1986. La Musica de las Sociedades de Tumba Francesa. Havana:Casa
de las Americas.
AmericanHeritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969. edited by W. Morris.New York:
American Heritage.
Barfield,Owen. 1965. Saving theAppearances:Studies in Idolatry.New York:Harcourt,Brace,
Jovanovich.

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
18 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1995

.1967. Speaker'sMeanings. Middletown:Wesleyan University Press.

Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Stepsto an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Berman, Morris.1984. TheReenchantment of the World.New York: Bantam Books.
Blake, William.1988. TheCompletePoetryand Prose of WilliamBlake,. Newly RevisedEdition.
edited by David V. Erdman.New York: Anchor.
Brown, James. 1973. TheJ.B.'s:Doin' it to Death. People Records PE5603.
Chester, Andrew. 1970. "Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band." New LeftReview
62:75-82.
Collins,John. 1990. "AfricanMusicin the Space Age:The Agbadza Drums."MUSELetter1:57-68.
Damon, S. Foster. 1965. TheBlake Dictionary; TheIdeas and Symbolsof WilliamBlake. Provi-
dence: Brown University Press.
Diamond, Stanley. 1974. In Search of the Primitive. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction.
Ellis,Catherine. 1985. Aboriginal Music:EducationforLiving. St. Lucia:Universityof Queens-
land Press.
Feld, Steven. 1987. Personal communication, 24 February.
. 1988. "Aestheticsas Iconicity of Style, 'Lift-up-oversounding': Getting into the Kaluli
Groove." YearbookforTraditional Music 20:74-113.
French,Marilyn.1985. Beyond Power. On Women,Men andMorals. New York:SummitBooks.
Gomes, Jimmy. 1989. Interview with C. Keil, 26 August.
Gooch, Stan. 1972. TotalMan: Notes Towardsan Evolutionary Theoryof Personality. London:
Allen Lane.
Harrison,Jane Ellen. 1962 11912]. Themis:A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion.
Cleveland: MeridianBooks.
Keil, Charles.1966. "Motionand Feeling ThroughMusic."Journalof Aestheticsand ArtCriticism
24(3):337-49.
. 1987a. "Rites:Rights: : Rights: Writes
REITS
(Real Estate Investment Trusts)."Echology 1:28.
1987b. "ParticipatoryDiscrepancies and the Power of Music."CulturalAnthropology
2(3):275-83.
1988. "Sociomusicology:A ParticipatoryApproach."Echology 2:125-32.
Keil, Charles,Angeliki V. Keil, and RichardBlau. 1992. Polka Happiness.Philadelphia:Temple
University Press.
Keil, Charles, and Steven Feld. 1994. Music Grooves.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.
Knight, Roderic. 1991."VibratoOctaves: Tunings and Modes of the Mande Balo and Kora."
ProgressReportsin Ethnomusicology3 (4):1-49.
Leonard,George. 1986. The Silent Pulse. New York: Dutton.
Michon,John A., and JanetJackson, editors. 1985. Time,Mind and Behavior. Berlin:Springer-
Verlag.
Mitchell, Red. 1992. Interview with C. Keil, 14 June.
Mumford, Lewis. 1970. TheMyth of the Machine, Vol.2. The Pentagon of Power. New York:
Harcourt,Brace, Jovanovich.
Naess, Arne. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle:Outline of an Ecosophy,translatedand
edited by David Rothenberg. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.
Polanyi, Michael. 1962. Personal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Progler,J. A. 1989. "Childrenof Jaliya."Echology 3:75-89.
1988. "Fingersand Strings:A Lesson on the Kora."Unpublished course paper, SUNY
at Buffalo.
Sahtouris,Elisabet. 1989. Gaia: TheHumanJourneyfrom Chaos to Cosmos.New York:Pocket
Books.
Sapir, Edward. 1949. "Culture:Genuine and Spurious." In Selected Writings in Language,
CultureandPersonality, edited by David G. Mandelbaum.Berkeley:Universityof California
Press.

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Theory of Participatory Discrepancies 19

Schmookler, Andrew Bard. 1984. The Parable of the Tribes:The Problem of Power in Social
Evolution. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.
Shepherd, John. 1988. "Towardsa Musicology of Society." Echology 2:101-24.
Stewart,Michael. 1987. "The Feel Factor:Music with Soul." ElectronicMusician, Oct.: 57-65.
Swallow, Steve. 1991. Interview with C. Keil, 7 July.
Tolstoy, Leo. 1962 [18981. What is Art?London: Oxford University Press.
Waterman,Chris. 1989. "The Sweetest Secret."Echology 3:35-36.
Waterman,Richard.1952. "AfricanInfluence on the Music of the Americas."In Acculturation
in the Americas, Vol. 2. Proceedings of the 29th InternationalCongress of Americanists,
edited by Sol Tax:207-18. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This content downloaded from 130.68.1.203 on Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:13:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions