The first epiphanic moment I experienced when it came to playing jazz was understanding jazz rhythm. I remember three years ago at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire standing in a circle with a group of drummers and James Joseph, drummer and brother of pianist Julian Joseph, and being told about the triplet; the “basic rhythmic attitude of jazz music”. We took turns singing the triplet (because “if you can sing it, you can play it”), and somehow a simple “BA-ga-di  BOO-ga-di BA-ga-di BOO-ga-di” got all of us moving and clicking our fingers. The reason for this is of course because the triplet makes it swingin’ (click the link on the quote for a short explanation of swing). Recently, however, I became interested in the significance of rhythm not only in music but to poetry, art, design, health, and life. It seems to me that rhythm goes a lot deeper than just a groovy beat. Through my research, I have found that rhythm affects even golf swings, martial arts, football; and I’m sure many other things. But I’m curious as to why rhythm is such an integral part of human life, and what that means for the importance of music.

In music, rhythm is a measure of when musical sounds begin and end. Rhythm can also be the ‘feel’ of a piece, its character. Take for example Goodbye Pork Pie Hat by Charles Mingus and Stolen Moments by Oliver Nelson. They both have slow tempos, but they feel different (listen to the drums in both and you should be able to hear the difference in feel). Of course to be able to play this, musicians need to be able to feel the pulse, and most of us (with the exception of those who have Beat Deafness) have an internal metronome that keeps us in time. If you spend some time thinking about it, it makes sense that we have an internal rhythm since most of what we do and how we live is dependent on rhythm.

Before street lights and alarm clocks, we would naturally wake up with sunrise and go to sleep at sunset. This is the circadian rhythm that we all have, and is the reason why we get jet lag when moving to different time zones. In a lecture by Professor Stafford Lightman, he talks about the stress hormone cortisol and how your brain depends on rhythm to be able to release this hormone effectively. The amount of cortisol in your body increases as you are about to wake up, which will give your body the energy necessary to start up again. Your brain will know, based on past experiences, when to start releasing the hormone so that you can wake up. (Even just discussing your planned wake-up time the night before can trigger your brain to start releasing cortisol at that time). This is why you might sometimes wake up just before your alarm goes off; and also why it is important that you have a pattern (a rhythm) to the times you go to sleep and wake up. Lightman notes that an unbalanced level of cortisol is associated with ageing, depression and gaining weight. (A disruption of your circadian rhythm can also have these effects, and the light from phone screens is the main culprit of this disruption.) Rhythm can be found in many other places in the human body, such as walking, breathing, heart beating. After all, the first rhythm a baby hears is the beating of its mother’s heart. Oscillation is deeply rooted in our biology, which may explain why we have such a strong connection with it.

Other unlikely areas to find rhythm include art and design (including areas such as architecture and film). In this case, rhythm is different from repetition (only one element that is repeated) and pattern (a predictable repetition). Rhythm in this case is neither the same nor predictable. It is about how the viewer experiences the artwork, how their eye moves around the piece. This video has good examples (with musical aid) of different rhythms in artwork. Rhythm in poetry is well known to all English students (one of which I am not), as an author may use stressed or unstressed syllables to communicate their idea. Similarly to music, in fact, as musicians (such as the two musical examples given at the start) will use rhythm as another medium for their artistic delivery. (This is why reggae feels so different from classical, for example).

It’s clear that rhythm, whatever form it takes, is a part of our lives whether you are a musician or not, and it can be found in almost anything you experience. How fantastic is it to think that something so abstract can have such an impact on all of us. Finding another thing that all humans have in common is a wonderful way of bringing people together. This is part of what makes music so indispensable to human life and culture as a social species. Music is an expression of rhythms (and check out this video to understand how rhythm and pitch are arguably the same thing) and we can connect with them because it is part of our biology. And here I add to my list of reasons on why I love jazz so much – jazz is a music that is felt, because of the rhythms. Once emotion is involved, the musicians who are playing can be so emotionally connected with the rhythms that the music simply becomes an extension of themselves.

“Where words fail, music speaks”.

For all you rhythm nerds out there: