A little piece of rhythm analysis— an interesting item that came up, of all places, through a J.J. Cale song, that accidentally reveals something about the structure of the Son clave rhythm, similar to what we’ve seen in other Latin rhythms.
There’s a clave-like sound here, playing a rhythm of:
||: 1 – 3 – & | – 2 – 4 :||
That is actually a son clave rhythm displaced with the beginning of the pattern falling on beat 3 of the song. What’s interesting is that the main notes are on beats 1/3 in the first measure, and 2/4 in the second measure, which is a kind of structure we see in other rhythms: some down beats followed by some off beats, with the whole phrase displaced. That happens with partido alto, the afro 6 bell rhythm, and a little differently, with the common bossa “clave” rhythm.
That’s all illustrated here:
Of course those rhythms came about through an oral tradition, not through this kind of calculation, and came into the form we see here as those oral traditions collided with the European tradition, and began to be conceived within that metered framework. It says something interesting about how humans conceive of rhythm, though you would have to be careful about drawing too many conclusions based just on how it relates to that European metering structure.
See also this simultaneous clave thing— also interesting, equally simplistic.
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