Editing Rhythm (section)

===African music===
[[File:Diffa Niger Griot DSC 0177.jpg|thumb|right|upright|A Griot performs at Diffa, Niger, West Africa. The Griot is playing a Ngoni or Xalam.]]
In the [[Griot]] tradition of Africa everything related to music has been passed on orally. [[Babatunde Olatunji]] (1927–2003) developed a simple series of spoken sounds for teaching the rhythms of the hand-drum, using six vocal sounds, "Goon, Doon, Go, Do, Pa, Ta", for three basic sounds on the drum, each played with either the left or the right hand.{{Citation needed|date=September 2016}} The debate about the appropriateness of staff notation for African music is a subject of particular interest to outsiders while African scholars from Kyagambiddwa to Kongo have, for the most part, accepted the conventions and limitations of staff notation, and produced transcriptions to inform and enable discussion and debate.{{sfn|Agawu|2003|p=52}}

John Miller{{sfn|Chernoff|1979}} has argued that West African music is based on the tension between rhythms, [[polyrhythm]]s created by the simultaneous sounding of two or more different rhythms, generally one dominant rhythm interacting with one or more independent competing rhythms. These often oppose or complement each other and the dominant rhythm. Moral values underpin a musical system based on repetition of relatively simple patterns that meet at distant [[Cross-beat|cross-rhythmic]] intervals and on [[Call and response (music)|call-and-response form]]. Collective utterances such as proverbs or lineages appear either in phrases translated into "drum talk" or in the words of songs. People expect musicians to stimulate participation by reacting to people dancing. Appreciation of musicians is related to the effectiveness of their upholding community values.{{sfn|Chernoff|1979|p={{Page needed|date=July 2014}}}}