Winikoff 2025

AAWM Journal 13/No. 1 (2025)

Mungongi: Metric Ambiguity and Analytical Uncertainty in Zambian Luchazi Percussion

Jason Winikoff

Mungongi, Luchazi, Percussion, Zambia, Meter, Ambiguity, Certainty, Beat Non-Isochrony

Is analytical uncertainty an appropriate way to convey an ambiguity that frequently stumps enculturated performers? Conversely, does analytical confidence inherently erase the difficulties musicians and analysts may confront when performing or theorizing about a piece? What responsibility does the analyst have to represent these challenges? In this paper I address these questions through the case study of the Luchazi dance music of Mungongi. In the cultural region spanning northwestern and western Zambia, eastern Angola, and southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Luchazi and related communities perform Mungongi in several settings. It is the preferred music for certain makishi (manifest ancestral spirits), accompanies graduation from traditional initiation ceremonies, and is a royal dance of conquest at festivals. Despite Mungongi’s importance, performers from this cultural zone often have difficulty executing its drum patterns and dance steps. Some of these performance challenges (especially those related to the primary timeline instrument, the mikakaji) provide evidence of emic metric ambiguity. Performers often disagree on the number of fastest pulses that structure this music. These discrepancies make notation and analysis of Mungongi challenging.

Throughout my studies of this genre, I have oscillated between representing its meter with three different time signatures: 6/8, 2/4, and 5/8. In this paper, I recount my shifting perceptions of the metrically ambiguous Mungongi by outlining the ethnographic data (collected through extensive field research) that has led me to seemingly conflicting conclusions about its meter. I consider the implications of dance steps, vocables, variations in supporting drum parts, song, lead drum phrases, the larger Luchazi musical repertoire, and performance on instruments not traditionally used for this genre. Acknowledging that any analysis is inherently shaped by its analyst, I also consider the role my own positionality has played in informing my understanding of Mungongi. This autoethnographic section closes with an explanation of why I feel most comfortable mapping this piece onto a 5/8 structure consisting of non-isochronous beats. The paper concludes with commentary on the practice of analysis. I ruminate on the positives of uncertainty, embrace ambiguity, contemplate the possible colonial undertones of this venture, champion embodied knowledge, advocate for attention to performers’ errors, and question our tools of analysis.

Jason Winikoff is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology and Sessional Lecturer at the University of British Columbia.

---

Click for DOI, citation, PDF version.

---

 

Introduction[1]

 

[1] We begin this journey into Luchazi musical culture and analytical uncertainty with a video I took during the end of a mukanda male initiation school in northwestern Zambia.[2] Video Example 1 features a group of men attempting to perform the Luchazi dance music called Mungongi (alternate spelling: Mungonge). Watch as four different musicians (including one determined repeat offender) try their luck at executing the lowest support drum (second from the right) while two attempt the highest support drum (left). Perhaps surprisingly, this is a common occurrence when musicians are required to perform this piece, and it makes transcription and analysis quite difficult. Performer mistakes, a variety of conflicting accepted variations, confusion around fastest pulses, and personal style suggest that there may be some emic metrical ambiguity. This raises a few questions. (1) Is analytical uncertainty an appropriate way to convey an ambiguity that frequently stumps enculturated performers? Conversely, (2) does analytical confidence inherently erase the difficulties musicians and analysts may confront when performing or theorizing about a piece? And (3), what responsibility does the analyst have to represent these challenges?

Video Example 1. A group of drummers attempt to perform Mungongi at a mukanda ceremony in Chinyingi, Zambia on November 12, 2021.

[2] In this paper I address these topics through the case study of the aforementioned genre of dance music, Mungongi. I begin with introductions to the Luchazi people and the item of repertoire before describing my decade-long relationship with the genre. Throughout my studies of Mungongi I have oscillated between representing this music’s meter with three different time signatures: 6/8, 2/4, and 5/8. Acknowledging that the process of analysis often reveals more about the analyst’s experience than about the music at hand (Lochhead 2015), I then recount my shifting perceptions of this metrically ambiguous genre. Akin to Daniel Goldberg’s (2020) analysis of meter in Bulgarian folk dance, I outline the ethnographic data collected through extensive fieldwork that has led me to seemingly conflicting conclusions about Mungongi’s meter. That autoethnographic section closes with an explanation of why I feel most comfortable mapping this piece onto a 5/8 structure consisting of non-isochronous beats. The paper concludes with commentary on the practice of analysis. I ruminate on the positives of uncertainty, champion intrasensory embodied knowledge, advocate for attention to performers’ errors, and question our tools of analysis.

 

Background

 

The Luchazi

[3] The Luchazi people are a matrilineal Bantu[3] group primarily located in present day eastern Angola, western and northwestern Zambia, and southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are part of a larger grouping of people including the Chokwe, Luvale, Mbunda, and a handful of other smaller ethnolinguistic groups that are united by a relatively homogenous culture.[4] Amongst other things, these shared cultural practices include mukanda (boys’ initiation school) and makishi (ancestral spirit manifestation).[5]

[4] These ethnolinguistic groups also share a musical repertoire. Music is an integral part of life cycle events, mukanda ceremonies, and makishi performance. Music in these settings frequently consists of antiphonal singing atop a percussion ensemble. There are different instrumentations for this ensemble when it is in ceremonial and recreational settings (Picture 1). The ceremonial ensemble consists of a lead drum (ngoma ya shina – alternatively ntangi or chipwali) who spontaneously composes over the recycled ensemble thematic cycle (ETC)[6] created by interlocking support drums (ngoma yahakachi, ngoma yakusongo, and – occasionally – ngoma yakasumbi) and a struck timeline (mikakaji or mingongo and – occasionally – njenje).[7] This is the instrumentation employed in most performances of Mungongi. Except when otherwise noted, all notations will make use of the symbols outlined in the below notation legend (Figure 1).

Picture 1. The two primary percussion ensemble instrumentations in this shared culture.

Figure 1. Notation legend.

 

Mungongi

[5] In old Luchazi culture, graduates of the preliminary mukanda initiation school could further their traditional education through enrollment in the grueling (and now rare) mungongi funerary cult.[8] Ethnomusicologist Kenichi Tsukada expresses uncertainty on whether the dance of the same name originates from this initiation cult (1997a, 357). However, evidence of the dance’s origins in the funerary cult may lie in the fact that the stilt-walking spirit Mbongo, who is associated with the mungongi cult (Kubik 1993, 21), has historically and continues to perform this genre. As early as 1954, C.M.N. White (1954, 110) described stilted, decorated figures’ appearance in these rituals. René Ménard states that a stilted Mbongo dances to music of the same name during the mungongi initiation (1984, 27-28). Though his appearances are rare, Mbongo still dances Mungongi to this day. Regardless of its origins, communities of this homogenous cultural zone now perform the dance of Mungongi in various other settings. Chizaluke, an important and common likishi (singular of makishi), also dances Mungongi before his primary dance of Fwifwi. For Chizaluke, Mungongi acts as his entry music into the chilende (dancing arena) (Picture ).

Picture 2. The likishi Chizaluke entering the chilende at a mukanda in Chinyingi, Zambia on November 12, 2021.

[6] Mungongi similarly acts as entry music for both male and female initiates (respectively, tundanji and myali) as they return to the village after months of seclusion in their initiation schools (mukanda for boys, litungu/wali for girls) (Tsukada 1997a, 357). Because of its associations with the grueling mungongi school and the difficult male and female initiation traditions, Mungongi is performed with an attitude of vigor and a resilience that only the strongest and most determined can possess. Finally, Mungongi is a royal dance of conquest that honors and welcomes chiefs during important festivals such as the Likumbi Lya Mize of the Luvale or Chivweka of the Luchazi. In these settings, however, the dance goes by a different name: Kuthopoka. As Picture  shows, the Kuthopoka is danced by a specially selected performer called the chitapanga. William Vunda, one of the most respected musicians in this region, ultimately views each of these performance settings as fulfilling the same social purpose.

Mungongi is for something coming out. When myali are coming, when tundanji are coming out, also when Chizaluke is coming out, we can perform Mungongi…Even the chief, if he’s coming out, we can play Mungongi for him. That’s why there’s Kuthopoka, the royal dance…It’s not like Chiyanda that you can perform anyhow or at any event, no. It is strictly just for welcoming guests who are coming out from the initiation and all that. (pc 7/2024)

Picture 3. The Kuthopoka in Cazombo, Angola during a ceremony welcoming Mwaant Yamvwa on August 12, 2019.

[7] Regardless of its name or setting, the sounds of Mungongi are deeply seated within Luchazi and related culture. Yet despite Mungongi’s importance, drummers from this cultural zone often have difficulty executing its drum parts. When I brought this up to Vunda, he offered a simple (though effective) explanation.

Jason Winikoff: I notice a lot of drummers have trouble playing Mungongi.

William Vunda: Yes, because it’s not played all the time. (pc 7/2024)

Indeed, Mungongi’s performance is restricted. It is very rarely performed in recreational settings. And practitioners might only perform it once per ceremonial occasion, usually only for a short amount of time. After all, men can only carry a wildly dancing ancestral spirit atop their shoulders for so long! To Vunda, the infrequent performance explicates the difficulties drummer face when tasked with performing Mungongi.  

[8] I first heard Mungongi in 2014 in Zambezi, northwestern Zambia when I arranged a performance, lesson, and interview session with the local troupe, Lenga Navo. Since that day I have been studying this piece through both observation and a regular program of extremely focused, formal lessons. This participant-observation occurred over a period of five extended trips. My main instructors were some of the most respected in this larger cultural grouping (Table 1).

Group Name	Home Base	Leader
Chota	Lusaka (Kabwata)	William Vunda
Lenga Navo	Zambezi	Kapalu Lizambo
Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya	Lusaka (Chibolya)	Josephine Sombo Muzala Chipango
Likumbi Lya Mize Western Province Mongu	Mongu	Douglas Mwila

Table 1. Primary teachers and research collaborators of the author.

I took lessons with members of these groups, conducted interviews, traveled together for performances, drummed alongside them during festivals and ceremonies, held recording sessions, and became close friends. These methods have provided me with what Judith Lochhead calls “a broad range of sounding encounters” (2015, 87). With each encounter came a different metrical understanding. Before I describe these, I recommend the reader first listen to the song “Mbongo” – one of the few commercially available recordings of Mungongi – as performed by my teachers in the Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya Cultural Group.[9] A staged performance of Mungongi is also available on its respective page on the Makishi Music website.

Terminology

[9] As a final introductory step, I must also define some of the terminology utilized throughout the paper. I embrace hierarchical and interrelated conceptions of meter, beat, and pulse that have been hypothesized by Africanist music scholars and universalizing music theorists alike. Justin London (2012, 32) thoroughly outlines the multi-level hierarchy that contains each of these concepts. Within this framework, he acknowledges that certain levels of this hierarchy are often privileged. African music scholars frequently refer to events in this privileged level as “beats.” David Locke (1982, 220–21) defines “beats” as evenly spaced (isochronous) and unchanging stresses or accents that are felt by and guide performers. This is inspired by J. H. Kwabena Nketia’s (1963, 64) concept of a “regulative beat.”[10] According to Nketia (1974, 126–27), each beat is subdivided into pulses of smaller duration (which exist on a different level than the beats). He further labels the smallest musically relevant subdivision the “density referent,” which resembles the concept of a fastest pulse (Koetting 1970; Koetting and Knight 1986). In other words, both Locke and Nketia (as well as other Africanist music scholars Willie Anku [2000, 4] and Simha Arom [1991, 211]) all dictate that both the beats and fastest pulses must be isochronous. To Locke, meter “is the constant frame within which musical events take place” (1982, 221). It is determined by the time span of the timeline and the flow of beats; it is musical periodicity and its inherent accentuation. This aligns with Eric Clarke’s definition of meter as “a framework of regular accents at a number of levels, segmenting the temporal continuum into a system of time-spans and their subdivisions” (1987, 213). I employ the concepts of meter, beat, and subdivision as presented above with one notable exception: I do not ascribe to the necessity of isochrony in African beats and subdivision.[11]

[10] Dozens of studies have similarly challenged a requisite isochrony in African percussion. The strongest push for this expansion of African rhythmic theory comes from Rainer Polak. His (2010) quantitative study of jembe music from Mali details the phenomenon of non-isochrony at the metric level of the beat’s subdivision (or, as he labels it, subpulse). Polak and London (2014) analyze this subpulse non-isochrony in two Mande pieces of dance music. Polak later (2022) made a convincing case for the consideration of subpulse non-isochrony as a fundamental component of Mande musical structure (rather than as performance deviation from an isochronous temporal structure). James Morford and Aaron David’s (2023) related analysis of Mande drumming outlines a concept of metric modes that feature non-isochronous pulsation. This type of subdivision non-isochrony may also exist in many other traditions in the continent outside of the immediate Mande region. Gerhard Kubik posits that there is a “swing belt which stretches from the western Sudan to central Cameroon and further east up to the Ingassana hills in eastern Sudan” (2010, 50) within which music is often swung. What he labels “swing” may indeed resemble a metric mode or other fundamental component of musical structure grounded in subdivision non-isochrony. This paper, however, is not concerned with subdivision-level non-isochrony. Instead, it modestly contributes to the (comparatively) understudied topic of beat-level non-isochrony with a geographically and culturally novel case study.

[11] Throughout this paper I use the phrase “metric ambiguity” as if that is a well-defined concept in the field. In practice, however, it is inconsistently employed in reference to various musical phenomena. In his analysis of electronic dance music, Mark Butler (2001) describes various kinds of metric ambiguity involving both individual patterns and several layers. The former essentially involves unclear accentuation, starting point, and placement of a strong beat. The latter type of ambiguity occurs when an antimetrical layer is perceived as metrically out of sync from a primary layer. Polak (2010, 10) mentions that metric ambiguity has been a topic of controversy in Africanist music theory for decades. Driving this debate are the concepts of consistent off-beat phrasing, [12] cross-rhythm, and polymeter. Polymeter entered the academic conversation in A. M. Jones’ magnum opus (1959) when he notated various parts of the Ewe percussion ensemble with different meters, staggered barlines, and a reliance on accents. Though this has become an almost unanimously criticized concept within African musicology, if offers insight into how metric ambiguity has been theorized. In a sympathetic though sturdy rebuke, Locke acknowledges feelings of polymeter while strongly contending that there is always a single inexorable flow of metric beats that undercuts the concept of polymeter (1982, 224). Kofi Agawu philosophically argues against polymeter, stating that it indexes coexistence rather than cooperation (2003, 79).[13] Mungongi has cooperation, and I have been led to believe that drummers latch on to one flow of beats; I am not arguing for a consideration of polymeter. Nor are there any 2-in-the-space-of-3 (or vice-versa) cross-rhythms, consistent offbeat accentuation, antimetrical layers, or unclear starting points. Indeed, the concept of metric ambiguity I present seems distinct from those previously mentioned. Many performers seem unsure of the number of fastest pulses in Mungongi.[14] In performance, they also borrow phrases from and voice similarities to other genres of various meters. Performers sometimes struggle to perform within and move to Mungongi’s metric structure. As a result, I am unsure how to notate Mungongi and analyze its meter.

Ethnographic Data Informing Conflicting Meters of Mungongi

[12] When I first heard Mungongi, I immediately felt it in 6/8 or, to borrow terminology from Locke (1982; 2010), in a ternary duple structure. Admittedly, though, this was a hearing void of cultural knowledge. Unburdened by analytical inquiry, I did not count; I simply nodded, tapped, and stepped in 6/8. In other words, this metrical experience of Mungongi is what Don Ihde (1990, 29) would term a microperception. “Microperceptions of musical sound involve bodily engagements with its sounding, either in the time of its occurring or through memory or anticipation” (Lochhead 2015, 87).[15]

From the Diaspora

[13] I believe my initial microperceptions were aligned with a ternary duple meter because of prior experience with other African and diasporic traditions with similar timelines. Listen to the timeline of Mungongi as played on the njenje in Audio Example 1.

Audio Example 1. The Mungongi timeline performed on njenje by Kaumba Kaumba (Chota Cultural Group) during a recording session in Kabwata Cultural Village, Lusaka, Zambia on October 28, 2021.

I have spent significant time studying Haitian Vodou culture and drumming. Within that repertoire is a musical style/rite called Nago. For years, the timeline of Nago seemed to me identical to that of Mungongi (see Notation 1). The meter of Nago never confused me, so I relied on my confidence with that timeline whenever I needed to notate Mungongi. Several rites of Haitian Vodou (such as Kongo) are drawn from African cultures from this region. This diasporic reality made the connection not only musically but also historically relevant.

Notation 1. ETC for Nago, as taught to me by the late Damas “Fanfan” Louis.

[14] Alternatively, perhaps I felt Mungongi as such because of my training and performance experience with jazz. Whether we notate the basic drumset swing pattern in 12/8, as a swung 4/4, or with triplets (Notation 2), this ubiquitous groove is merely the same pattern displaced.

Notation 2. Various ways of notating the basic swing pattern.

From the Repertoire

[15] Audio Example 2 features the highest support drum (ngoma yakasumbi) part for this piece while the top line of Notation 3 shows how I formerly notated the pattern. In the shared musical repertoire of this cultural region, many support drum parts appear in multiple dances. To my knowledge, though, this part does not appear elsewhere in the repertoire. However, the highest support drum part of the Mbunda Kuhunga dance and a common variation for the same drum in the Luchazi dance of Unyanga are nearly identical (Notation 3). As the open strokes (represented with normal noteheads) provide the main contribution to the ensemble’s conversation and the effect of a shuffled rhythm accenting backbeats remains the same, I considered these parts related. Contextualizing this support drum in the larger repertoire, I thought, further validated my analysis.

Audio Example 2. The Mungongi high support part performed on ngoma yakasumbi by William Vunda (Chota Cultural Group) during a recording session in Kabwata Cultural Village, Lusaka, Zambia on October 28, 2021.

Notation 3. A ternary interpretation of the ngoma yakasumbi part for Mungongi compared to the primary Kuhunga Mbunda pattern and a common variation for the same drum in the Unyanga dance.

[16] But as I began lessons on the lead drum, I started to doubt my metric understanding. This was because multiple musicians taught me a Mungongi lead drum phrase (Notation 4) that I have also heard in two other dances – both of which are solidly planted in quaternary duple meters. Video Example 2 shows Kennedy K. Mweene teaching me an extended version of the phrase during a Mungongi lesson. Video Example 3 shows the late Oscar Shimishi performing it during the Kuthopoka five years earlier. On the same day, Shimishi also played that phrase in the quaternary duple dance of Kuhunga (tundanji) (Video Example 4). Finally, Video Example 5 shows Graphics Mukumbi Kalomo teaching me this phrase for the quaternary duple Luvale dance of Shikinya. Shina drum performance is highly determined by personal style; there is not a strict vocabulary of phrases that drummers must play in each dance. Therefore, I felt as though I could not overlook the fact that several musicians were frequently playing and teaching me the same phrase – and this phrase, in the context of the larger musical repertoire, implied a quaternary subdivision.

Notation 4. The same lead drum phrase in the Mungongi, Kuhunga (tundanji), and Shikinya dances.

Video Example 2. A Mungongi lead drum phrase performed on ngoma ya shina by Kennedy K. Mweene (Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya Group) during a Mungongi lesson in Chibolya, Lusaka, Zambia on February 11, 2022.

Video Example 3. A Mungongi lead drum phrase performed on ngoma ya shina by Oscar Shimishi (Tulizangenu group) during the Kuthopoka dance in the Likumbi Lya Mize festival in Mize, Zambia on August 30, 2017; the phrase starts and ends this excerpt.

Video Example 4. A lead drum phrase performed on ngoma ya shina by Oscar Shimishi (Tulizangenu Group) during the Kuhunga (tundanji) dance in the Likumbi Lya Mize festival in Mize, Zambia on August 30, 2017; the phrase starts and ends this excerpt.

Video Example 5. A lead drum phrase performed on ngoma ya shina by Graphics Mukumbi Kalomo (Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya Group) during a Shikinya lesson in Chibolya, Lusaka, Zambia on March 2, 2022; the phrase occurs towards the end of the excerpt.

[17] Further justification for a quaternary duple meter came with study of the low supporting drum. Although I was able to perform this part, I struggled to notate it. And so, I started asking my teachers if there was a basic version of this pattern that was the foundation for the embellished styles I knew and more frequently heard. Several teachers answered with the phrase represented in Notation 5. I was surprised because this is also the low support part for the Kuhunga (tundanji) dance, a quaternary duple piece mentioned earlier.

Notation 5. The ngoma yahakachi part for the Kuhunga (tundanji) dance and a simplified, basic version of the ngoma yahakachi for Mungongi in quaternary interpretation.

[18] However, as Notation 5 shows, Mungongi has a tempo twice as fast as Kuhunga (tundanji). So perhaps these are emically considered different parts, even though the timbre pattern[16] and performed speed are the same. But when Lote Sapato, one of my teachers, provided the same verbal representation[17] (“ndi”) for ngoma yahakachi in both of these dances, I felt relieved and indeed embraced these as the same part. This vocable, however, only accounts for the open strokes.[18] While that confirms that the two parts are thought of as equal (at least by Lote), it does not provide information on the other strokes and, thus, how they may fit into a meter. In possibly the only academic study that touches on Mungongi drumming, Kenichi Tsukada (1997a, 357) similarly calls the ngoma yahakachi part for Mungongi a variation of the ngoma yahakachi part for Kuhunga (tundanji). Unfortunately, Tsukada’s unique notation system, while sensitive to issues of technique, avoids representation of meter and does not depict instruments’ relationships to each other. The mystery continues.

[19] At their weekly gig in Zambezi, Lenga Navo occasionally performs ceremonial dances in recreational instrumentation. In 2022 I heard them do just that with Mungongi. Ngoma pwita, the lead drum of this ensemble, essentially has a quaternary and a ternary vocabulary; regardless of the exact piece, all dances of the same meter will usually contain similar basic parts (Notation 6).

Notation 6. Basic phrases for ngoma pwita in common meters.

[20] Performance of Mungongi on ngoma pwita, I thought, could help me solve the metrical puzzle. At a set break, I asked the lead drummer Kakoma Sawemba, to demonstrate Mungongi on ngoma pwita (Audio Example 3, Notation 7). When his performance revolved around the basic ternary ngoma pwita phrase, I thought my structuring of Mungongi in 6/8 was justified. Or was this merely how Mungongi was creatively forced into a structure that is normally foreign to it?

Audio Example 3. Mungongi performed on ngoma pwita as performed by Kakoma Sawemba (Lenga Navo group) at Romaside Nightclub in Zambezi, Zambia on July 22, 2022.

Notation 7. Ngoma pwita lead drumming in Mungongi with instances of the basic ternary ngoma pwita phrase highlighted.

Considering Song

[21] Audio Example 4 is a popular Mungongi song frequently sung when Chizaluke enters the dancing arena. I provide the Luchazi lyrics, precise English translation, deeper meaning, and list my partners in translation below.

Luchazi: Mwaulamba/e, mwaulamba yaya ngongola/e, mwaulamba/e, mwaulamba yaya ngongola/e, muyenda ngongola[19]

Precise English translation: You walk majestically, you walk majestically elder royal, you walk majestically, you walk majestically elder royal, you go royal

Meaning: This song describes how royal figures (such as chiefs) walk, which is in a slow, deliberate, smart, and majestic manner. Since Chizaluke is a royal likishi, he also walks majestically.

Translated with: Douglas Mwila and Abraham Kapalu Chilemu

[22] This song is also performed acapella outside of Mungongi to the sole accompaniment of clapping as part of a practice known as kusangala. During kusangala, women – especially vanyatundanji (mothers of boy initiates) – will clap one of several patterns (Notation 8). The first few are used for songs with ternary subdivision, the others for quaternary. I was thus hoping that attention to the clapping pattern of this acapella version would help me understand Mungongi’s meter. Unfortunately, I have heard this song sung to both ternary and quaternary clapping schemas (Audio Example 5, Audio Example 6). Both of these versions of the song include some Luvale words though the structure, basic melody, translation, and meaning remain essentially the same.

Luvale: Mwaulamba/e, kutambukisa ngongola/mwangana/likishi, mwaulamba ngongola/mama[20]

Precise English translation: You walk majestically, to walk royal/chief/ancestral spirit, you walk majestically royal/mother

Meaning: Chizaluke is trying to act like a chief by moving slowly and majestically. This is because Chizaluke represents a headman with wisdom.

Translated with: Josephine Sombo Muzala Chipango

Audio Example 4. A popular song for the likishi Chizaluke sung with Mungongi percussion performed by the Likumbi Lya Mize Western Province Mongu group in Mongu, Zambia on April 8, 2022; excerpt from a staged likishi performance recorded both for the online chapter of my upcoming dissertation and a recording partnership between the International Library of African Music (ILAM) and the Likumbi Lya Mize Cultural Association (LLMCA).

Notation 8. Basic clapping schemes for kusangala in different meters.

Audio Example 5. A popular song for the likishi Chizaluke sung with ternary kusangala clapping; this audio excerpt is from the kuvumbuka stage of a mukanda initiation. It features a group of vanyatundanji welcoming a likishi to their village. This was recorded with permission of the chijika cha mukanda (owner of the initiation school) in Chinyingi, Zambia on November 9, 2021. The full recording is now stored in the audio-visual archives at ZNBC.

Audio Example 6. A popular song for the likishi Chizaluke sung with quaternary kusangala clapping; this audio excerpt is from the kuvumbuka stage of a mukanda initiation. It features a group of vanyatundanji welcoming a likishi to their village. This was recorded with permission of the chijika cha mukanda in Chinyingi, Zambia on November 8, 2021. The full recording is now stored in the audio-visual archives at ZNBC.

[23] Perhaps, then, this song does not hold the key to Mungongi’s meter. Instead, it may simply demonstrate how certain songs are linked to specific makishi, regardless of the meter, instrumentation, or performance setting.

 

Timelines

[24] Outside of Mungongi, there are three timelines in this shared musical repertoire that are recycled for all the dances, each being used for quite a few (Notation 9).

Notation 9. Timelines in the greater Luchazi (and related) musical repertoire.[21]

I believe this is part of the reason that performers struggle with Mungongi so much; it is grounded in a timeline found nowhere else in the repertoire. William Vunda posits this is because of the uniquity of the dance’s performance settings.

Jason Winikoff: Why do you think Mungongi has such a different mikakaji from every other ngoma?

William Vunda: The difference between Mungongi and other rhythms is that Mungongi is the only dance that we do when something is coming out. For example, when myali are coming out, we do Mungongi…[It is] unlike how we perform Chiyanda, unlike how we perform Mwokolo, unlike how we perform Lilombola. (pc 7/2024)

[25] To him, music’s specific social purpose may be responsible for its constituent parts. Mungongi is the only dance in this culture that fulfills this purpose and, according to Vunda, this is why it is the only one with this timeline. I have asked different teachers if the Mungongi timeline comes from or can be substituted with one of the more common ones. Though the answer was always “no,” I have occasionally heard drummers use these well-known timelines in Mungongi. It is difficult to tell if this is because it is more comfortable, because it is also culturally acceptable or because performers are unsure about the part and/or Mungongi’s meter. In this video[22] of the Kuthopoka dance from the Likumbi Lya Mize festival, minutes 1:12–2:16 feature the quaternary duple timeline, here played on the njenje (the bright, metallic bell). It does not seem that a clear answer lies in the other timelines of this repertoire, either.

[26] By then I ought to have realized the timeline was unique. If there is a timeline for 12/8 dances, one for 4/4, and one for 2/4 (Notation 9), then perhaps Mungongi uses the timeline of some other meter I had not previously considered. After all, Locke contends that the timeline pattern and its subdivision determine meter (1982, 221). In this culture, timelines are only occasionally performed in isolation. As Kubik (1972) and I (Winikoff 2018, 44–48) have shown, the mikakaji (two wooden sticks usually struck against the body of a drum) articulates each of the isochronous fastest pulses, with one hand accenting those in the timeline (Notation 10).

Notation 10. Timelines (left) and their corresponding mikakaji patterns (right); s = strong hand, w = weak hand.

[27] The mikakaji pattern for Mungongi has five strokes arranged as such (utilizing the abbreviations found in Notation 10):

S W S S W

If we map this onto a 5/8 meter, this part also articulates the fastest pulses (Notation 11).

Notation 11. The timeline and corresponding mikakaji pattern when mapped onto a 5/8 meter.

[28] Though traditional music in this meter does exist in other parts of the African continent, it is relatively rare.[23] Some scholars have even gone so far as to deny the existence of the meter in African music. David Temperley states that quintuple metric relationships “seem virtually nonexistent” in African music (2000, 70). Anku claims that “African music is isometric. The music is either 6/8 or 2/4. 3/4 is rarely or never used in African music” (2000, 7). Robert Kauffman similarly denies an African 5/8, claiming that that type of non-isochronous structure can only exist within the internal organization of isochronous phrases (1980, 408–9). Perhaps this is why I did not initially consider it a possible structure. Yet both 2/4 and 6/8 mappings of this mikakaji part fail to embed the timeline in a manner that adheres to Luchazi practice (Notation 12).

Notation 12. Potential mappings of timelines and mikakaji parts onto various meters; red circles indicate a non-articulated fastest pulse; blue circles indicate articulation of a pulsation faster/smaller than the fastest pulse.

[29] All these options do not account for every fastest pulse. Through its employment of dotted eighths, the second ternary structure implies a level smaller than the fastest pulse. These failings seem far more foreign to this culture’s compositional practice than a cycle of five isochronous subdivisions since various dances are already structured in different amounts of density referents. I consider the fastest pulse feature to be determinative. In addition to aligning with other dances in this shared repertoire, basing metric analysis on the fastest pulse follows scholars such as James Koetting and Hewitt Pantaleoni who argue that this level is “the only level of meter in drum ensemble music” (Temperley 2000, 70).

[30] While attention to fastest pulses has provided breakthroughs in my understanding of Mungongi’s meter, it has also demonstrated how ambiguous this genre’s metrical structure is within the culture. I have heard some unconfident mikakaji players perform parts with more than five fastest pulses, suggesting different metrical understandings. Performers unsure about the density referent sometimes instead choose not to articulate each fastest pulse – an oddity in mikakaji performance practice. In these scenarios, drummers either only perform a pattern with their strong hand or play a phrase with both hands that contains an unarticulated pulse(s). Whether changing the number of fastest pulses or opting not to articulate each one, mikakaji pattern adjustments evince emic metric ambiguity. In the recording “Nyamabunda/Liveluvelu/Mbongo/Munguli”, the Zambian National Dance Troupe performs a medley of makishi music.[24] From 3:19–5:16 they perform Mungongi and utilize two adjusted mikakaji patterns. The drummer first marks the downbeat with one stroke per cycle, akin to the open strokes of ngoma yahakachi. They then perform a four-stroke phrase which seems to impose a different density referent. What metric framework exists in that performer’s mind? Tsukada’s excellent field recordings of a mukanda graduation ceremony show similarly ambiguous patterns.[25] The drummer switches between a single-stroke pattern and playing the timeline without the other fastest pulses.

[31] Video Example 6 presents several other relevant examples from a variety of settings including ceremonies, festivals, lessons, and rehearsals. In Chinyingi, the drummer tries using the ternary quadruple mikakaji pattern, suggesting a metric understanding grounded in twelve fastest pulses. The highest support drummer (left) eventually corrects him by demonstrating the accepted pattern. At the New Years bash, the drummer instead doubled the rhythm of the ngoma yakusongo – a pattern with only four strokes and an unarticulated fastest pulse. Kapalu Lizambo shows a different four-stroke pattern. In Mongu, the drummer seems unsure of when to use his weak hand – showcasing an uncertain grasp on the density referent. And in Chibolya the drummer performs a two-stroke pattern that seems at odds with a quintuple density referent scheme.

Video Example 6. Various mikakaji performances that suggest different metric frameworks; some of these recordings are now stored in the audio-visual archives at ZNBC.

The mikakaji pattern indeed suggests a 5/8 meter, though this structure may not exist in all performers’ minds. In my experience, no other item of this culture’s musical repertoire is met with this much difficulty in mikakaji performance.

Embracing 5/8

[32] Once I began feeling Mungongi over a metric structure of five fastest pulses, other musical details started to make sense. One of these is a common rhythm found in several instruments. This is what John Brownell terms a seed pattern: “a formulaic unit defined as a relatively simple physical gesture that is capable, through timbral and amplitude modification, of generating a large variety of sonic outputs” (1994, iv). Though several scholars have offered similar concepts,[26] I appreciate Brownell’s emphasis on physical gesture and his definition of the seed from the perspective of the sound’s producer (as opposed to its receiver). The Mungongi seed pattern at the top of Notation 13 (with either accepted hand order) manifests differently with each example through timbral change.

Notation 13. Seed pattern 1 (with 2 acceptable hand patterns) and various parts derived from it.

[33] Audio Example 7 (the ngoma yakusongo example in Notation 13) features the most common mid drum support part for Mungongi.[27] Through timbral manipulation, this seed also becomes a common low support drum part (the ngoma yahakachi example in Notation 13). Several of my teachers have taught me the lead drum phrase (the first shina example in Notation 13), again using the seed pattern. Finally, Kennedy K. Mweene taught me a lead drum phrase that uses repetitions of this seed pattern (the second shina example in Notation 13, Audio Example 8).

Audio Example 7. The Mungongi mid support part performed on ngoma yakusongo by Martin Kasweka (Chota Cultural Group) during a recording session in Kabwata Cultural Village, Lusaka, Zambia on October 28, 2021.

Audio Example 8. A Mungongi lead drum phrase performed on ngoma ya shina by Kennedy K. Mweene (Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya Group) during a lesson in Chibolya, Lusaka, Zambia on February 11, 2022.

[34] A 5/8 meter also allowed for similar epiphanies with a two-measure seed pattern (top of Notation 14). I now felt as if I understood a common mid support part as well as two low support variations (respectively, the ngoma yakusongo,[28] first ngoma yahakachi, and second ngoma yahakachi[29] examples in Notation 14). This meter allowed me to notate various embodied seed patterns that had previously evaded my written analysis.

Notation 14. Seed pattern 2 (with 2 acceptable hand patterns) and various parts derived from it.

Considering Dance

[35] Like most of the other music in this repertoire, Mungongi is designed to accompany movement. Agawu contends that “the movement of feet in turn registers directly or indirectly the metrical structure of the dance” (2003, 73). I thus assumed attention to dance steps would provide more metrical clarity. Practice and analysis of dance steps not only further suggested a 5/8 meter, but also one consisting of non-isochronous beats. The basic footwork I was taught for both Mungongi and Kuthopoka involves two quicker, slightly uneven steps that temporarily resolve on a longer lead foot stomp. Video Example 7 allows us to watch and, thanks to jisangu leg rattles, hear these steps. Sonically and physically articulated, these steps help outline the non-isochronous beat structure consisting of two beats: the first lasting three fastest pulses, the second lasting two (Notation 15).

Notation 15. Dance steps and non-isochronous beat structure.

Video Example 7. The likishi Chizaluke and an energetic crowd dance to Mungongi with non-isochronous beats; excerpt features the Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya group performing at the Chivweka festival in Chikenge, Zambia on July 29, 2022.

[36] African non-isochrony, though often present at the fastest pulse level,[30] is rare at the beat level and has received scant academic study. But it is precisely this beat non-isochrony that captures a defining component of Mungongi: a heavier feeling, imbalanced first beat.[31] An agogic accent manifesting as a longer beat at the beginning of each timeline cycle helps convey this, and a 5/8 meter represents this. For years I had been searching for ways to imbed this imbalanced feeling into my notation. This is why I previously notated the mikakaji part in 2/4 or 6/8 as in Notation 12; I thought the emptiness (a result of decreased horizontal density) in beat 2 allowed for a comparatively heavier feeling beat 1. But these gaps convey silence more than lightness and they never felt right to me. I believe this is because the heavier feeling is a result of agogic accentuation (in the form of a longer beat) rather than onset density.

[37] In addition to dance steps, this 3-2 beat non-isochrony is embedded in the timeline and highest support drum. The middle note of each phrase acts as a pickup to the second beat (see the njenje, mikakaji, and ngoma yakasumbi lines of Notation 16).

Notation 16. Various non-isochronous beat groupings in a 5/8 mapping of Mungongi.

[38] Sometimes, however, the bell player (if present) drops the last note of its pattern as in Audio Example 9.[32]

Audio Example 9. Usage of a shortened timeline part performed on njenje; excerpt from the Kuthopoka dance during the Likumbi Lya Mize festival in Mize, Zambia on August 30, 2017.

It is tough to tell if this is due to performer exhaustion or the non-standardized nature of the njenje. Whatever the reason, this move has a significant impact on the meter. This immediately flips the non-isochronous beats and suggests a 2-3 structure with the bell now marking the uneven beats (see the njenje alternate line of Notation 16).

[39] This structuring is also embedded into the prominent slaps of the mid support part with the open strokes here now acting as pickups to each beat (see the ngoma yakusongo line of Notation 16). Furthermore, this 2-3 structure is outlined in another common dance step that can be seen in Video Example 8 (focus on the first woman) and is notated in Notation 17. Is Mungongi, then, capable of flipping its beat structure based on various musical and danced stimuli? Or is it an example of a 5/8 meter with contradictory beat schemas? Perhaps that is what stumps performers and makes this such a difficult piece to execute, even amongst the enculturated.

Video Example 8. Dance steps outlining a 2-3 structure; from a rehearsal/lesson of Mungongi with the Chota culture group in Lusaka, Zambia on July 8, 2019.

Notation 17. Dance steps outlining a 2-3 non-isochronous structure.

[40] As a final piece of evidence, I direct the reader back towards the New Years Bash excerpt of Video Example 6 (0:33-1:07) and the entirety of Video Example 7. In both these examples, dancers predominately perform the non-isochronous, long-short (3-2) dance steps I was taught to be essential. However, both human dancers and the likishi Chizaluke occasionally execute these steps in a more even, isochronous manner – one that suggests a ternary duple meter. Notation 18 visualizes this dance step ambiguity.

Notation 18. Various possible metrical mappings of dance steps in Video Example 7.

[41] It is difficult to state with certainty whether the isochronous steps are an alternate version, the idealized non-isochronous structure poorly performed, or evidence of an acceptable range for these steps to occur within – regardless of the beat structure they may suggest.[33] Mungongi may just be fluid and slide from meter to meter depending on who is playing/dancing it. Or it may sit comfortably (or, depending on who you ask, uncomfortably) at the in-between of 6, 5, and 2. Perhaps the grey area is the desired aesthetic. If so, what is the best way to notate Mungongi? Does the list below or the one image of Notation 16 succeed in representing the metric ambiguity of this piece? Or is this entire written journey of discovery – a narrative of uncertainty saturated with backtracking – a more accurate representation?

On Certainty, Analysis, Reflexivity, and Meter

[42] When Luchazi musicians and dancers perform Mungongi correctly, as they often do, it is powerful music. In those moments it serves as a sonic backdrop to occasions that showcase the strength and perseverance of determined initiates, chiefs, and important ancestral spirits. That this dance solely occurs in rare circumstances underlines this attitude of earned exclusivity; only a few have demonstrated that they have what it takes to use Mungongi as entry music. Because it is rare, many drummers within the tradition have less experience performing this genre. For that reason, they often struggle to execute its parts. Perhaps this challenge is fitting considering the grueling attitude embodied in Mungongi and its exclusive, selective nature. These struggles in performance raise a few questions. (1) Are they solely the result of rare performance (and, thus, unfamiliarity) or are there also musical reasons performers have difficulty? (2) Is this indeed a case of performers’ inability to execute parts or are they instead exploiting what may be a very fluid, flexible genre? (3) How can (and should) the analyst navigate these epistemological issues?

[43] I believe that there are musical reasons Mungongi is a struggle for some performers. If we are to embrace the fastest pulse (as articulated by the mikakaji and exploited by seed patterns) and the non-isochronous beat structure (as marked by dance steps and various percussion parts) as the determinant metrical factors, then Mungongi uses a framework that can be represented with a 5/8 time signature. This meter is rare in Luchazi and related culture. It is essentially absent from all other traditional items of repertoire and, in my experience, is a nonexistent structure for this shared culture’s pop music. I do not believe there is anything inherently more challenging about a non-isochronous beat structure for the Luchazi, but metrical unfamiliarity can plausibly cause performance issues.

[44] This is increasingly the case if performers seem unsure about Mungongi’s metric framework. As evinced in mikakaji practice, percussionists sometimes try structuring their performance in differing numbers of density referents. Alternatively, they may opt to avoid the usual role of that instrument by only articulating some fastest pulses. Since other musical ingredients of Mungongi seem to overlap with other genres of various meters, confusion is understandable. While these may indeed evince emic metric ambiguity, they could also prove that Mungongi is a relatively flexible genre. As every performer will execute their parts in idiosyncratic ways, it may be culturally acceptable for some performances (or individual performer’s parts) to feel slightly more ternary or quaternary. Or perhaps this ambiguity is the desired aesthetic. For example, performers may prefer the wash of jisangu leg rattles that results from slightly offset dance steps. So how do I, the analyst, account for all this?

[45] First and foremost, I do not believe it is my responsibility (nor would it even feel appropriate) to determine which collaborators are correct and incorrect. Instead, I want to embrace plurality. Let this paper, then, push back against notions of a unified emic perspective. This stance seems to adopt the view of a metrically flexible Mungongi. That said, practitioners have preferences, performers make and correct mistakes, and not every variation or alternate pattern is accepted.[34] A genre’s flexibility and plurality can coexist with cultural preferences and degrees of acceptability. But in the face of this, how can I present a stance of analytical certainty?

Uncertainty and Reflexivity

[46] The more appropriate question may be whether I should present a stance of certainty. As an analyst from outside Luchazi culture who is using the Western staff and metric theory to determine certainty, considering the possible colonial undertones of this analytical venture is at the very least a well-intentioned, ethical thought experiment (and, at the other extreme, an absolute necessity). Scholarship on settlement often pairs colonialism with certainty. In her study of settlement law, Eva Mackey argues that “certainty is at the core of coloniality [so] settler uncertainty may actually be necessary for decolonization” (2014, 249). In his analysis of Palestinian resistance to settler colonialism, Mark Muhannad Ayyash presents the binary of fixity and flux – the former associated with colonialism, the latter with indigeneity (2018, 27). Flux, he argues, is a challenge to colonial efforts to order the indigenous. In a more explicitly musicological example, Dylan Robinson argues that moving towards anticolonial listening practices requires a distancing from knowledge-hungry goals of certainty (2020, 53). While it is a worthwhile exercise to at least reflect on the implications of my positionality, not all outsiders to Luchazi (or, for that matter, any other) culture are settlers, and a stance of uncertainty is not inherently anticolonial. Agawu (2003) interprets the ethnomusicological urge to avoid certainty as problematically grounded in a desire to present fundamental differences between Africans and Westerners. Following that line of thought, analytical uncertainty would cast Mungongi as unnecessarily beyond the reach of non-African music scholars due to some excessive notion of Luchazi difference. However, because some performers themselves seem uncertain of metrical structure, an outsider’s certainty may be an imposition with colonial undertones. As uncertainty accurately reflects the relationship both I and some enculturated performers have with Mungongi, it may be more appropriate to avoid analytical certainty. This is by no means a critique of all analytical certainty nor a call for every analyst to adopt a stance of uncertainty. Instead, it is an outlining of my thought process in this particular case study.

[47] Lochhead describes the analyst’s task as the process of speculating on sounding possibilities. She prefers this approach to the conceptualizing of a work in a fixed structure (2015, 96). By explicitly rejecting fixity, an analysis of possibility not only embraces indigenous fluidity, but also allows the analyst to avoid certainty. Analytical uncertainty can manifest as an acceptance of plurality, an openness to possibilities. Throughout this paper I have tried to present the metric possibilities of Mungongi because a conclusion of options feels more appropriate to the genre than one of a single, definitive truth. As I have shown, there is ethnographically informed justification to understand Mungongi (or at least its constituent parts) in various meters. In this way, uncertain analysis can open a dialogue about Mungongi’s meter rather than ending one (Hanninen 2014, 1.12). Analytical uncertainty can also be an acceptance that the analyst may be (has been, or will be) wrong. For me, self-reflexive autoethnography yielded productive analytical insight at the intersection of uncertainty, possibility, and my own missteps. Over the years I have notated Mungongi in a variety of ways – some that I now disagree with. But instead of denouncing those previous mappings, I try to leave space for them at the table. After all, they (1) were also informed by aspects of cultural practice and my own positionality, (2) can still reveal something about Luchazi music, and (3) help convey this uncertainty I find appropriate.

[48] I adopted this reflective approach in response to Meki Nzewi’s belief that (African musical) scholarship must include self-assessment (1997, 24). Agawu similarly acknowledges that auto-ethnography can provide vital information that contextualizes how information was gathered (2003, 46). That said, he cautions the self-reflexive researcher of African music from outside of the tradition as that combination may end up presenting more about the scholar than the music (2003, 47–48). Agawu’s warning is well received and indeed I do hope that this paper reads as about Mungongi rather than about myself. Yet I can never truly separate these, for any analysis I present of Luchazi musical culture is inexorably colored by my relationship with it. As Lochhead notes, analysis is always shaped by the analyst (2015, 88). Even “transcriptions bear within them the result of a transcriber’s analytical understanding of the music [emphasis in original]” (Tilley 2018, 961). Analysis is not objective, rather it is “subjective, an invitation to a way of perceiving” (Agawu 2004, 276). Embracing Theodor Adorno’s notion of an analytical truth concept, Agawu states that analysis does not reveal a single concrete, objective truth, but rather “a constantly receding target, an object that becomes more elusive the closer one gets to it” (2004, 273). Marion Guck frames analysis as an attempt to close that gap between the self and the object; it is the analyst’s “increasing closeness” to and “process of growing awareness” about a piece (1996, 34). If this is indeed analysis, why not show the entire process of growth rather than just the final stage? Too often a transcription is presented in service of some other analytical argument without first acknowledging the analysis inherent to even the process of transcribing. And so, I toss aside the quest to find an objectively correct way of notating and analyzing Mungongi; embracing possibility in the face of the subjectivity inherent to analysis, that goal is unattainable, anyway. With this acceptance comes an embrace of ambiguity. Agawu states:

The disappearance of an author behind a stance of objectivity and a mass of facts tends to hide the extent to which our ethnographies are inflected. Better to bare it all, thematize conflicts and ambiguities, and convey an unsettled or precarious picture. (2003, 215)

This paper is my honest attempt to bare it all, trace the conflicts that created my unsettled analytical stance, and thematize ambiguity.

Meter

[49] Though I struggle to notate and analyze Mungongi, I perform it up to cultural standards. This has been reaffirmed through years of accepted festival and ceremonial performances (Picture ). Unsurprisingly, I play this best when I stop thinking about which meter I may be operating within or conveying. Thus, while analytical certainty escapes me, my ability to perform demonstrates my embodied certainty. But as Mariusz Kozak notes, embodied action is itself a type of analysis (2020, 109).[35] So I actually may not be analytically uncertain and Mungongi may not be in conflict with the practice of analysis. Instead, it may just challenge the specific analytical tools of meter and notation.

Picture 4. The author (right-most drum) performing Mungongi at the Likumbi Lya Mize festival in 2017 in Zambezi, Zambia.

[50] Though Martin Clayton believes it is “possible to develop a concept of metre which is applicable beyond our own [Western] culture [emphasis in original]” (2008, 41), Locke – perhaps the most renowned scholar of African meter – insists against a unitary, universal metric concept (2019, 105–6). He instead calls for adjustments to meter that accommodate each music culture’s (or genre’s) particular metric features. This is representative of a recent trend in music theory to reframe meter as inherently flexible.[36] For this reason, Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty problematize “a strictly numerical understanding of meter” (2019, 13). I embrace this approach and suggest that a numerical understanding of meter may not be the most appropriate for the flexible Mungongi. After all, Mungongi is not in 2, 6, or 5 – these are simply numerical ways of representing its structure. Confining Mungongi to the frameworks of these numbers: (1) does not allow for the flexibility embedded in the contradictory cultural cues, (2) runs the risk of denying possibility by fixing indigenous fluidity in a historically colonial structure, and (3) erases the difficulties musicians and I feel. By this I do not intend to paint meter as inherently rigid and colonial, nor do I wish to uncritically pair metrical confidence with ease of performance/analysis. In fact, I believe just the opposite; scholars have indeed used meter in flexible ways, denying African music meter is a colonial exaggeration of difference (Agawu 2003; Temperley 2000, 76), and difficulty can be included or excluded from analysis in a myriad of ways. While I have no qualms calling Mungongi metrical, I do not know how to account for the nuances of its performance through the utilization of one numerical structure over another.[37]

[51] Perhaps, then, in the case study of Mungongi, the utility of meter lies precisely in its shortcomings. Mungongi is structurally organized by one meter; it is not polymetric. That said, some of the genre’s accepted percussion parts, songs, and dance steps index metrical possibilities – a conclusion that may initially seem at odds with metric theory. These possibilities do not place Mungongi or Luchazi musical sensibility beyond the reach of Western analytical tools. In fact, the use of the staff and various meters has allowed me to show the ways in which Mungongi is both distinct from and like other genres within its own and other traditions. It is for this paradoxical reason that Agawu defends these same analytic tools; only through their employment can Africanists truly show the differences that challenge meter and staff notation (2003, 67–68). The metric ambiguity of Mungongi – a phenomenon that affects both performers and me – need not be remedied, but rather acknowledged, demonstrated, and explained. I choose to do so with an openness to possibility and an acceptance of analytic uncertainty.

[52] In this paper I have presented the ethnographic data that led me to conflicting conclusions about Mungongi’s meter. Eventually I decided to represent it with a 5/8 time signature consisting of non-isochronous beats.[38] I was hesitant to consider this organization because it is uncommon in the Luchazi repertoire, Afro-diasporic performance, and scholarly literature. In this way, ethnographic data and my pan-African approach paradoxically yielded initial oversight of what I now believe to be the best metric representation. Yet I still find this structure unable to represent many of the examples presented throughout this paper. For that reason, I prefer to characterize this analytical journey as one of metric ambiguity. It is an ethnographically informed and critically self-reflexive presentation of Mungongi’s metrical possibilities. I argue that analytic uncertainty is an appropriate and sensitive way to convey this framework. This position is especially informed by attention to performer mistakes and my own obstacles in analysis. As these challenges can reveal information about the music and how I chose to represent it, I do feel a responsibility to acknowledge and include them in my analysis. Failure to do so runs the risk of erasing these difficulties and, thus, withholding information from the reader about both the culture and how the analysis was created. However, this uncertainty must be qualified; my own embodied certainty (and that of successful performers) implies that this is more a challenge to specific types of knowledge than to the entire stance of analytic confidence. Western notation and meter are indeed fit for this exercise as long as we can accept their limitations. For it is precisely at the limits that these tools offer their unusually beneficial gift: culturally informed uncertainty.

Acknowledgments

This research was generously funded in part by the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research, the UBC Public Scholars Initiative, and Dr. John Roeder and Dr. Michael Tenzer’s “Cycles in the World of Music” SSHRC Insight grant. During my most recent field research trip, I was affiliated with the University of Zambia and am grateful for the supervision and connections this partnership allowed. I especially want to thank Dr. Bibian Kalinde. Additional supervision was vitally provided by the Likumbi Lya Mize Cultural Association. Finally, I am eternally grateful for the knowledge shared and kindness shown by my primary teachers: Kapalu Lizambo, Josephine Sombo Muzala Chipango, William Vunda, Douglas Mwila, and their respective groups.

REFERENCES

Agawu, Kofi. 2003. Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315810942

———. 2004. “How We Got out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again.” Music Analysis 23 (2/3): 267–86.

Anku, Willie. 2000. “Circles and Time: A Theory of Structural Organization of Rhythm in African Music.” Music Theory Online 6 (1). https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.6.1.2

Arom, Simha. 1991. African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518317

Ayyash, Mark Muhannad. 2018. “An Assemblage of Decoloniality? Palestinian Fellahin Resistance and the Space-Place Relation.” Studies in Social Justice 12 (1): 21–37. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v12i1.1528

Bastin, Marie-Louise. 1993. “The Akishi Spirits of the Chokwe.” In Face of the Spirits: Masks From the Zaire Basin, 79–95. Snoeck-Ducaju: Gent.

Brownell, John. 1994. “Drum Set Improvisation: Towards a Conceptual Model.” North York, Ontario: York University.

Butler, Mark J. 2001. “Turning the Beat Around: Reinterpretation, Metrical Dissonance, and Asymmetry in Electronic Dance Music.” Music Theory Online 7 (6). https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.7.6.1

Chernoff, John M. 1991. “The Rhythmic Medium in African Music.” New Literary History 22 (4): 1093–1102. https://doi.org/10.2307/469080

Clarke, Eric F. 1987. “Levels of Structure in the Organization of Musical Time.” Contemporary Music Review 2 (1): 211–38.  https://doi.org/10.1080/07494468708567059

Clayton, Martin. 2008. Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre, and Form in North Indian Rag Performance. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195339680.001.0001

Cook, Nicholas. 1989. “Music Theory and ‘Good Comparison’: A Viennese Perspective.” Journal of Music Theory 33 (1): 117–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/843668

Fiagbedzi, Nissio. 1980. “A Preliminary Inquiry into Inherent Rhythms in Anlo Dance Drumming.” Journal of the Performing Arts 1 (1): 82–92.

Fujita, Takanori. 2019. “Layers and Elasticity in the Rhythm of Noh Songs: ‘Taking Komi’ and Its Social Background.” In Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives, edited by Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty, 212–31. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190841485.003.0009

Gluckman, Max. 1974. “The Philosophical Roots of Masked Dancers in Barotseland (Western Province), Zambia.” In In Memoriam António Jorge Dias, 139–57. Lisboa: Instituto de Alta Cultura.

Goldberg, Daniel. 2020. “What’s the Meter of Elenino Horo? Rhythm and Timing in Drumming for a Bulgarian Folk Dance.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 7 (2).

Guck, Marion. 1996. “Music Loving, Or the Relationship with the Piece.” Music Theory Online 2 (2). https://doi.org/10.2307/763915

Hanninen, Dora A. 2014. “Asking Questions.” Music Theory Online 20 (2). https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.hanninen-questions.php.

Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jones, A.M. 1959. Studies in African Music. Vol. 1. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press.

Jordán, Manuel. 2006. Makishi: Mask Characters of Zambia. Fowler in Focus. Los Angeles: University of California.

Kauffman, Robert. 1980. “African Rhythm: A Reassessment.” Ethnomusicology 24 (3): 393–415. https://doi.org/10.2307/851150

Knight, Roderic. 1974. “Mandinka Drumming.” African Arts 7 (4): 24. https://doi.org/10.2307/3334885

Koetting, James. 1970. “Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music.” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 1 (3): 115–46.

Koetting, James, and Roderic Knight. 1986. “What Do We Know about African Rhythm?” Ethnomusicology 30 (1): 58–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/851829

Kolinski, Mieczyslaw. 1973. “A Cross-Cultural Approach to Metro-Rhythmic Patterns.” Ethnomusicology 17 (3): 494–506. https://doi.org/10.2307/849962

Kozak, Mariusz. 2020. Enacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080204.001.0001

Kubik, Gerhard. 1971. “Music and Dance Education in Mukanda Schools of Mbwela and Nkangela Communities.” In Lusaka International Music Conference: June 1971 Proceedings. Lusaka.

———. 1972. “Oral Notation of Some West and Central African Time-Line Patterns.” Review of Ethnology 3 (22): 169–76.

———. 1981. Mukanda Na Makisi/Angola: Beschneidungsschule Und Masken. Berlin: Musikethnologische Abteilung, Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

______. 1993. Makisi, Nyau, Mapiko: Maskentraditionen im Bantu-Sprachigen Afrika. München: Trickster Verlag.

———. 2000. “Masks from the Lands of Dawn: The Ngangela Peoples.” In In the Presence of Spirits: African Art from the National Museum of Ethnology, Libson, 123–43. New York: Museum for African Art.

———. 2008. “Central Africa: An Introduction.” In The Garland Handbook of African Music, 2nd ed., 328–61. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203927878

———. 2010. Theory of African Music. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

La Voix des Masques de Zambie: Rituels d’initiation Makishi et Nyau. 1997. France: Arion.

Lochhead, Judith. 2015. “Reconceiving Structure: Investigating, Mapping, Speculating.” In Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music: New Tools in Music Theory and Analysis, 85–102. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315740744

Locke, David. 1982. “Principles of Offbeat Timing and Cross-Rhythm in Southern Eve Dance Drumming.” Ethnomusicology 26 (2): 217–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/851524

———. 1998. Drum Gahu: An Introduction to African Rhythm. Tempe: White Cliffs Media, Inc.

———. 2010. “Yewevu in the Metric Matrix.” Music Theory Online 16 (4). https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.10.16.4/mto.10.16.4.locke.html.

———. 2019. “An Approach to Musical Rhythm in Agbadza.” In Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives, edited by Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty, 100–145. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190841485.003.0005

London, Justin. 2012. Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199744374.001.0001

Mackey, Eva. 2014. “Unsettling Expectations: (Un)Certainty, Settler States of Feeling, Law, and Decolonization.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 29 (2): 235–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/cls.2014.10

Mapoma, Mwesa Isaiah. 1980. “Zambia.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th ed., 20:630–35. London: Macmillan.

Ménard, René. 1984. Musiques des Tshokwe du Bandundu. Compact Disc and Liner Notes. Vol. 5. Anthologie de la Musique Congolaise (RDC). Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale.

Morford, James B., and Aaron M. David. 2023. “Metric Modes and Fluid Meter in Mande Drumming Music.” Music Theory Online 29 (3). https://doi.org/ 10.30535/mto.29.3.4

Mubitana, Kafungulwa. 1971. “Wiko Masquerades.” African Arts 4 (3): 58. https://doi.org/10.2307/3334434

Murdock, George Peter. 1959. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company.

Mwondela, W. R. 1972. Mukanda and Makishi: Traditional Edeucation in North-Western Zambia. Lusaka: National Educational Company of Zambia Limited.

Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. 1963. African Music in Ghana. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

———. 1974. The Music of Africa. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Nzewi, Meki. 1997. African Music: Theoretical Content and Creative Continuum. Oldershausen: Institut für Didaktik populärer Musik.

Phiri Chitungu, Victoria. 2013. “Makishi Masquerade and Activities: The Reformulation of Visual and Performance Genres of the Mukanda School of Zambia.” In Contemporary African Cultural Productions, edited by V.Y. Mudimbe, 67–82. Dakar: African Books Collective.

Polak, Rainer. 2010. “Rhythmic Feel as Meter: Non-Isochronous Beat Subdivision in Jembe Music from Mali.” Music Theory Online 16 (4). http://doi.org/10.30535/mto.16.4.4

———. 2022. “Non-Isochronous Metre in Music from Mali.” In The Oxford Handbook of Time in Music, 252–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190947279.013.22

Polak, Rainer, and Justin London. 2014. “Timing and Meter in Mande Drumming from Mali.” Music Theory Online 20 (1). http://doi.org/10.30535/mto.20.1.1

Robinson, Dylan. 2020. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvzpv6bb.4

Serwadda, Moses, and Hewitt Pantaleoni. 1968. “A Possible Notation for African Drumming.” African Music 4 (2): 47–52. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v4i2.782

Temperley, David. 2000. “Meter and Grouping in African Music: A View from Music Theory.” Ethnomusicology 44 (1): 65–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/852655

Tilley, Leslie. 2018. “Analytical Ethnomusicology: How We Got Out of Analysis and How to Get Back In.” In Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology, edited by Rolf Bader, 953–77. Berlin: Springer-Verag. https://.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55004-5

Titon, Jeff Todd. 1978. “Every Day I Have the Blues: Improvisation and Daily Life.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 42:85–98.

Tsukada, Kenichi. 1988. “Luvale Perceptions of ‘Mukanda’ in Discourse and Music.” ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Ph.D., Ann Arbor: Queen’s University Belfast (United Kingdom). 303713783. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/303713783?accountid=14656.

———. 1990. “Kukuwa and Kachacha: The Musical Classification and the Rhythmic Patterns of the Luvale in Zambia.” In Peoples and Rhythms, 229–75. Tokyo.

———. 1997a. “Drumming, Onomatopoeia and Sound Symbolism among the Luvale of Zambia.” In Cultures Sonores d’Afrique, 349–91. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages & Cultures of Asia & Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

———. 1997b. Zambia: The Songs of Mukanda: Music of the Secret Society of the Luvale People of Central Africa. Compact Disc. Music of the Earth. Barre, VT: Multicultural Media.

Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols; Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Vrydagh, P. Andre. 1977. “Makisi of Zambia.” African Arts 10 (4): 12-19+88. https://doi.org/10.2307/3335136

Waterman, Richard. 1952. “African Influence on the Music of the Americas.” In Acculturation in the Americas, edited by Sol Tax, 207–18. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wele, Patrick. 1993. Likumbi Lya Mize and Other Luvale Traditional Ceremonies. Lusaka: Zambia Educational Publishing House.

White, C.M.N. 1954. “Notes on the Mungongi Ritual of the Balovale Tribe.” African Studies 13 (3–4): 108–16. https://.doi.org/10.1080/00020185408706938

Winikoff, Jason. 2018. “Zambian Luvale Ngoma: Timbre, Voice, and Rhythm.” Medford: Tufts University.

———. 2021. “Kuvunga: Timbre, Interlocking, and Composite Melodies in Zambian Luvale Ngoma.” In Future Directions of Music Cognition. Virtual. https://doi.org/10.18061/FDMC.2021.0052

Wolf, Richard K., Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty. 2019. “Introduction.” In Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives, edited by Richard K. Wolf, Stephen Blum, and Christopher Hasty, 440. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190841485.003.0001

 

[1]. An early version of this paper was presented at the Analytical Approaches to World Music (AAWM) 2023 Symposium on Rhythm and Meter. Media examples (unless directed elsewhere) are available here and as in-text hyperlinks.

[2]. Other aspects of mukanda have been discussed by several scholars including Kubik (1971; 1981), Mwondela (1972), Tsukada (1988), Turner (1967), and Wele (1993).

[3]. Murdock (1959, 293) lists the Luchazi as members of the Lunda Cluster of the Central Bantu.

[4]. Gluckman (1974) and Mubitana (1971) note how the Chokwe, Luvale, Luchazi, and Mbunda are sometimes collectively referred to in Zambia as “Mawiko” or “Wiko,” meaning “people of the west.” Kubik (1981) acknowledges that Ovimbundu and Portuguese traders have also used the term “Ngangela” to group various peoples (including the Luchazi and Mbunda) found in eastern Angola. Though these terms are condemned by those within the culture, they demonstrate that numerous communities have considered these groups related and culturally united for decades. Similarly, my local research partners frequently stress the unity between these groups and the need to treat them as a collective unit.

[5]. Other aspects of makishi have been addressed by scholars including Bastin (1993), Jordán (2006), Kubik (1981; 2000), Mwondela (1972), Phiri Chitungu (2013), Vrydagh (1977) and Wele (1993).

[6]. The term “ensemble thematic cycle” was coined by Meki Nzewi. It is “the span of an ensemble gestalt…which recurs in essentially the same shape and time but with continually changing sound quality” (1997, 44), the lowest common multiple of ensemble phrase lengths. The ETC is the basic phrase that is re-cycled (as opposed to repeated without variation) and collectively contributed to by all members of the ensemble.

[7]. The names of these instruments are not standardized and, as such, vary widely by ethnolinguistic group, geography, drum & dance troupe, and individual musician. My choice in instrument names reflects the (Luvale) language used by my primary teachers as well as my desire to remain consistent with terminology introduced in my previous work. For a more detailed account of these instruments (including alternate names), consult the Instruments page of the Makishi Music website.

[8]. For more information on the initiation school/funerary society of mungongi, consult White (1954).

[9]. Likumbi Lya Mize Chibolya Cultural Group. “Mbongo.” Track 7 on Myaso ya Chisemwa Chetu. Zambia Music Copyright Protection Society, 2015, CD. Should the reader be unable to purchase the recording, it can be found on Spotify. A high-quality recording of Mungongi will soon be available on the upcoming album Makishi Music: Chokwe, Luchazi, Luvale, and Mbunda Spirit Manifestation in Zambia to be released by the International Library of African Music.

[10]. This should not be confused with Willie Anku’s (2000, 4) concept of the same name. For Anku, a “regulative beat” is a recurring musical moment where a phrase begins and passes through upon each repetition.

[11]. Polak (2010, 12) theorizes that Waterman’s (1952) influential concept of “metronome sense” is partially responsible for the assumption of isochrony at both pulse and beat levels in African music.

[12]. Consult Locke (1982; 2010) for a discussion of consistent off-beat phrasing and its ability to shift metric perceptions.

13. For additional critiques of African polymeter, consult Kolinski (1973, 496–97), Chernoff (1991, 1098), and Agawu (2003, 79–86), among others.

[14]. Morford and David’s (2023) concept of metric modes is one tool for disentangling fastest pulse ambiguity. Notably, though, they address an ambiguity that analysts feel while I am additionally concerned with emic ambiguity. They present an understanding of time in Mande percussion that allows for simultaneous occurrences of binary, ternary, and quaternary beat subdivision. Although their article is concerned with non-isochrony at the fastest pulse level, they do believe that their model would function in meters that also contain beat-level non-isochrony (2023, 5.6). While an empirical examination of metric modes in Luchazi percussion is beyond the scope of this paper, I do appreciate their de-emphasis of pulsation quantity as a way of meeting musical time on its own terms.

[15]. While a microperception is concerned with embodied experience, macroperceptions refer to musical experience within cultural, social, and historical contextualization (Lochhead 2015, 86).

[16]. Timbre pattern is a synonym of the term “timbre-rhythm” which I introduced in earlier work (Winikoff 2021). Fiagbedzi (1980, 85) conceives of drum parts as “tonal patterns.” Knight (1974, 28) claims that Africans hear drum rhythms as patterns of successive timbres. Serwadda and Pantaleoni (1968, 47) also define drum patterns as sequences of timbres.

[17]. In his study of vocables in Zambian Luvale drumming, Tsukada (1997a) prefers the term “verbal representation” to “oral mnemonic,” “oral notation,” “solfege,” and “oral transmission.”

[18]. Several scholars (Knight 1974; Locke 1998; Nzewi 1997) and myself (Winikoff 2021) have highlighted the importance of open strokes in African drumming patterns. These scholars all agree that the open strokes are the primary contribution of the instrument to the ETC and that the other timbres embellish the pattern and/or help the performer. This likely accounts for the fact that the referenced vocable only represents the open stroke.

[19]. Many words within this region end in “a.” When these words appear at the end of song phrases, performers often change the vowel to “e.” In these scenarios, this move is purely aesthetic and does not change the meaning of words. I have accounted for this by writing “a/e” in the original lyrics.

[20]. When performing this song, singers are permitted variation in lyrical content by, for example, substituting the word mwangana (chief) for likishi (ancestral spirit). I account for this by placing these permitted variations next to each other, separated by a forward-slash.

[21]. In the few academic references to this quaternary quadruple timeline (Kubik 2008, 357; 2010, 2:243; Mapoma 1980, 631; Tsukada 1990, 266), scholars start the phrase and notate it differently. Even in my own previous work (Winikoff 2018), I have used a different starting point (as well as a variation) when notating this pattern.

[22]. Likumbi Lya Mize Traditional Ceremony, (2022, July 5). KUTHOPOKA, THE ROYAL DANCE [Post]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/vakachinyama/videos/568320778080786

[23]. Examples include a variant of the Bambara/Malinké/Senufo/Samogo Koreduga processional music, the Mandinka dance of Boloba, a style of Lobi xylophone music in Burkina Faso, the “Coconut Pickers Song” from Kenya, the song “Go’e Tzi” of the JuHoansi of Namibia, a style of !Kung children’s song, the royal Rwandan music of Umuterero, various styles of San music in Namibia, and the Sengenya dance of Digo in Kenya.

[24]. Track 8 from La Voix des Masques de Zambie: Rituels d’innitiation Makishi et Nyau (1997).

[25]. “Final Ceremony” from The Songs of Mukanda: Music of the Secret Society of the Luvale People of Central Africa (1997b).

[26]. Jones (1959) and Titon (1978) offer two examples.

[27]. To see how I notated this part in a ternary duple scheme, consult Winikoff (2018, 236). This is not the ngoma yakusongo pattern that Tsukada (1997a, 357) provides. While I have heard Tsukada’s pattern in many dances of this culture, I have never heard it performed for Mungongi.

[28]. This part (and its accompanying verbal representation) can be heard on the Mungongi page of the Makishi Music website under “alternate ngoma yakusongo parts.”

[29]. To see how I notated this part in a ternary duple scheme, consult Winikoff (2018, 236).

[30]. This is especially the case in forms of Mande percussion music (Polak 2010; 2022; Polak and London 2014; Morford and David 2023).

[31]. A heavier feeling, imbalanced first beat should not be confused with Morford and David’s (2023) “front-heavy” pulsation quality. My informal descriptor is related to agogic accentuation in the form of a longer non-isochronous beat while their term is formally defined as a pulsation cycle with the potential for more onset density before a specific pulsation.

[32] This abbreviated bell pattern can also be heard in the first of two Chokwe recordings of Mungongi (track 14, “Tshikuwa, Mbongo Menda”) featured on Musiques des Tshokwe du Bandundu (Ménard 1984). Furthering the metric ambiguity, this recording is a clear 3:2 cross-rhythm with the bell strokes happening on the first two events of the 3-stream. The second Mungongi recording on this album (track 15, “Twadi”) does not include any bell, but does feature drums. However, these ngoma patterns are quite distinct from those analyzed in this article and do not evince any quintenary/quintuple metrical structures.

[33]. An embrace of onset ranges that de-emphasize quantity in metric categorization is precisely what Morford and David (2023) promote with their concept of metric modes.

[34]. Agawu tells the African music scholar that “errors recognized and corrected by performers themselves…can be extremely valuable sources of insight into musical aesthetics broadly conceived” (2003, 110). He adds that a failure to recognize these errors runs the risk of removing a critical lens that African (ethno)musicology needs.

[35]. This aligns with Agawu’s points on the oral/aural nature of music analysis which allows analysts to prioritize feeling and sonority over thought while still producing a type of analytical knowledge (2004, 277). I want to thank Nathan Bernacki for sharing his extensive knowledge on embodied cognition with me.

[36]. For a recent example of this type of work, consult Fujita’s study of beat elasticity in Japanese Noh singing and drumming (2019).

[37]. Among other reasons, Morford and David developed their metric mode theory in explicit response to this “overemphasis on pulsation quantity in metric categorization” (2023, 1.6). This focus, they argue, manifests in the literature as an analytical decision between organizing music as binary/quaternary or ternary – an unnecessary tension inherent to either/or categorizations.

[38]. Nicholas Cook (1989, 135) notes that theorists decide to accept an analytical interpretation not because we can hear it, but because we are persuaded to embrace it.