Introduction
When I first enrolled on to this module I knew that for the sake of my personal projects I wanted to explore these different genres and tie them to Irish, Celtic, Welsh and Scottish folk music with their musical ideas. What attracts me the most to these styles of folk music is the frequent use of rhythms where all the stress and accents gravitate around the strong beats of each bar (found in The Chieftains’ ‘The Frost Is All Over’), and the harmony is chords that are easy to understand and mostly diatonic. As I understood this is due to the oral tradition in which folk music is passed down through generations – easier harmony is easier to pick up by ear. To quote the National Inventory (cited below), “Oral transmission is a defining characteristic of traditional Irish music”, as well as the discussion on regional styles of music within Ireland citing “Regional styles is usually understood to mean ‘an identifiable common ‘sound and feel’”.
This approach that regional folk musicians have to music always interests me, and I really enjoy the ideas that originate from folk music – most especially their rhythmic and melodic ideas. As a musician studying jazz I could also see some parallels between folk and jazz music – St Thomas, for example, popularised by Sonny Rollins is adapted from Caribbean folk music with some websites also making parallels to a similar English folk song, ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. Sonny Rollins, however, starts to play with its rhythmic and harmonic ideas, reaching out to chromaticism and using chord extensions in his melody to make the harmony more interesting, as well as varied and off-beat rhythmic patterns coming from his influences from jazz and Caribbean folk music. This blend of styles stuck out to me as a varied and interesting composition, so I then wanted to explore how other regions of the world approach these musical ideas, and if I could blend British folk music with concepts I find to create something similar for myself.
Along with these influences, I also had a core idea at the centre of this composition, which is to put improvisation and storytelling aspects at the forefront, having the written aspect of the composition act as a guiding block for the improvisers to use. The score will demonstrate the core ideas I want portrayed in the piece but will leave room for lots of improvisation around these ideas.
Indian Influences
The first area of study I looked at was Indian Carnatic music. What most intrigued me was their use of Gatis, way of defining different subdivisions in a seemingly much simpler way than Western understanding, replacing our numbering system with vowels that imitate a Mrandanga drum, Konnakol singing. I used this system to create a rhythmic basis for my melody – I originally tried to apply this for a repeating motif that the rhythm section can play underneath a melody, but this wasn’t efficient enough to exercise all the Konnakol ideas I wanted to add – a two/ four bar loop wasn’t long enough to show these ideas, so I assembled some of the rhythms in to a long line that I could later add harmony to.
There were a few Gatis that incorporate the use of different meters, for example Tisra (triplets) and Khanda (quintuplets), but what fascinated me the most was Chatusra Gatis (duplets), as they reminded me of western funk rhythms and the melodic articulation of British and Irish folk music. This was most demonstrated to me by ‘The Gateway of Rhythm Bonus Track’. I particularly liked the flurry of accented semiquavers followed usually by two quavers, with an accent on the last one. They dive more into different Gatis that go away from the straight quavers and crotchets, but I was more drawn to these rhythms due to the likeness of them to Western funk. It mostly reminded of the melody from Chris Potter’s ‘Rumples’ – both have rapid semiquavers rhythmically defined by accenting; hearing Potter demonstrate these Konnakol style rhythms on a saxophone made it much easier for me to digest the rhythms as a saxophonist myself. For my piece however, I decided to focus more on quaver rhythms than semiquavers, using little semiquaver flourishes to try and imitate the fast “Ta-ka” syllables found in Konnakol, and using quavers to demonstrate Konnakol accenting. I felt that this also tied the melody in nicely with the style of Irish Reels that mostly contain straight quavers, like ‘Maid Behind the Bar’, found in the bibliography.
I then moved on to studying Northern Indian Ragas, and was most intrigued by their way of structuring ragas around moments of improvisation based on certain melodic ideas. I originally wanted my composition to follow the Alap Gat form, starting with a drone and loose, free time improvisation around the central melodic idea. In Indian Classical music the Raga will be based around a certain scale (the Raga) that they stick to for most of the improvisation, and then the Gat is introduced via drums after. However, this is when I started assembling players for the piece, I workshopped a few Alap sections around different Raga style melodies and found that each time my players naturally slipped far away from the set scale to more disjunct harmony, so I decided to go with this and abandon the idea of replicating the Alap Gat form. However, I did want to include some sort of consistent drone in the piece, so I decided to incorporate a drone in the second section of the piece, but instead of a constant tone I replaced this with a rhythm inspired from Brazilian carnival music, discussed later. I also still liked the idea of the climax of improvisation in the Alap (the Jhala), so I communicated this to my musicians. By this time in the writing process of the piece I had decided that I wanted to involve spoken word in the piece, so I thought I could use this as in indicator to the musicians to reach a ‘Jhala’ moment in the tune, which I believe was executed well. Overall, the styles of playing found in Ragas and Konnakol singing influenced the rhythmic ideas in the melody and the improvisational aspects of the piece as a whole. I have always been drawn to compositions that leave most of the decisions to the performer by providing foundational information only, like a Raga and a drone in the case of Indian Classical.
I decided I wanted to incorporate a drone into my piece, so I centred the harmony around E minor with the bass playing a consistent E drone. I simply wrote “E drone with bow” on the bass part to communicate this – however, with my further study in to South American rhythm and African harmony I decided to change the part to a solid rhythm, still based around E as a bass note with a small change to the dominant on every fourth bar of the repeating motif.
South American Influences
In studying South American musical ideas, the one that stood out the most across the countries in South America and Africa was their use of claves (named after the instrument) – repeating rhythmic ideas usually over two bars that almost always include an anticipated beat that pulls the listener, inspiring dance. The main idea that pulled me to include these rhythms is the way they are paired with their dancing styles, defined by T Andrews on his dance studio website as “characterized by its slow, sensual movements and the intricate interplay between the lead and follow roles.” This made me wonder if the rhythms used in rumba dancing would still be effective to make people dance if it were sped up.
There are two main variants of clave, ‘Son clave’ and ‘Rumba clave’. I found a video of drummer Ignacio Berroa (cited below) demonstrating the 3-2 variant of the Rumba clave (3-2 referring to the split of pulses along two bars, 3 pulses in the first bar and 2 in the second). In this video he demonstrates the small but vital difference between Son clave and Rumba clave, being that the third pulse is on the ‘and’ of 4, instead of directly on the fourth beat, which makes every pulse in that bar pushed. When you push all these beats as well as having beat 1 firmly grounded in each bar, it creates an amazing push and pull feel in the rhythm, which I wanted to include in my composition. However, I also wanted to include the Son clave, originally thinking of stacking two claves on top of each other, similar to the South American practice of having one clave with multiple different repeating rhythms around it, using the clave as an anchor to remind the listener where beat one is. However, using two claves simply resulted in a confusing rhythm that always lost the 1, as it was being stressed in two different places. So, I decided to blend the two in to one clave to create my own unique rhythm, using the accordion part for this.
In the first bar I referenced the first bar of a Son clave and then replaced the second part of the clave with the first part of a Rumba clave, creating a satisfying rhythm that demonstrates both claves. The fourth bar then includes the second part of both the rumba and son clave (as they are the same) to feel as if I have extended two two-bar claves into one well rounded four bar clave. I then used only the first bar of the Son clave to define the rhythmic basis for the second part of the composition, which has more stress on the harmony than rhythm.
In terms of the melody for my composition, I was influenced by fast paced melodic ideas originating from Brazilian Carnival music, specifically a piece by ‘Pixiguinha’ entitled ‘Segura Ele’. The melody involves a lot of straight semiquavers that include small chromatic enclosures (that fit with the chord, just not the key centre) reminding me of jazz phrasing. This piece also contains an A section consisting of stabs from the rhythm section followed by more fast melodic lines, as if there was a call and response happening between the rhythm section and the melody. I looked into call and response motifs within Latin-American music and found a description on ‘Silent Song Studios’ that describes some forms of call and response featuring syncopation, which differed to how Pixiguinha simply accented the strong beats of the call and response phrase, instead of playing in the gaps of the melody, creating a syncopated effect. I decided to add in a section of the piece that can be used to transition to the second “Highlife” section.
As a member of Leeds Contemporary Jazz Orchestra in 2025, I got the opportunity to work with Gustavo Andrade, a Brazilian saxophonist and percussionist who came to lead to orchestra for a night of Brazilian carnival music. His leadership in the project gave me a lot of inspiration on how to structure my piece when being played by musicians. For example, when rehearsing the tune “Gostoso Veneno”, he explained that the tune contained three core sections that move in a pre-set order. During the performance of the song, Andrade conducted the orchestra to play the sections how ever many times he wished depending on certain aspects of the performance. This seemed like a much simpler way to structure a tune than what I was used to, so I decided to order my piece in a similar fashion, using a short transitionary section to move in between the two larger sections.
African Influences
My study of claves brought me to music from Ghana, where they use claves as well as many other devices to keep time among lots of different polyrhythms. In lectures I learnt that musicians performing this learn their parts in relation to one another, instead of in relation to the pulse. I liked this idea as it correlated well with the improvisational aspect of the song, where all musicians should be listening to each other any way for musical ideas. I decided to add more polyrhythmic ideas to the composition so the musicians feel more inclined to rely on their fellow musicians for time keeping instead of constantly counting in their heads, limiting their interaction. Their use of intertwining polyrhythms meant that occasionally I lost where beat 1 was while listening, but after some time was able to comprehend it when picking apart the separate rhythms happening. Very few of the rhythms happening actually landed on the one, the main one tying it together being the repeating clave. I compared this to my own work, and realised that it felt too heavily influenced by British and Irish folk rhythm without incorporating different polyrhythms, like the music from the Ga tribe in Ghana. So, I altered the different rhythms to stress different beats of the bar which created much more rhythmic variation. I took out the first beat of the clave I was using, as well as the first quaver on the melody (both originally landed on beat 1).
The original bass line I had for each section mirrored the clave exactly that resulted in rhythms that were easy to digest but too boring for my liking. I wanted to put some more stress on beat 4 of each bar instead of beat 1 as my influences from British and Irish folk tradition already covered this. I created a two-bar repeating bassline that stresses beat 3 and 4, dancing around beat 1 by landing on the ‘and’ of the beat instead of directly on the beat. I also added a separate rhythm in the drum part, indicated on cowbell.
I saw a video of Kpanlogo dance in Ghana, where a master drummer in the centre directs the dancers with different musical cues to change the steps of the dancers. This reminded me of cues from jazz compositions, used by a specific part of the bad to signal to the other members to move on to the next section, or go back to the head of the tune. I wanted to see if I could include cues that signal a change of section as well as imply a change in the way you dance to the tune. However, there were no dancers to hand for this ensemble, so I gave the musicians instruction to change the way they play depending on the words read out over the top. I showed them the Jason Aryeh Research Project and asked them to improvise as if they were one of these dancers, mimicking their different steps with rhythm, using the words as emotional guidance of when to move on to a different set of steps/ rhythms.
The main influence for the second section of the piece comes from Ghanaian Highlife music. What drew to me incorporating Highlife into my piece was its origins, being played by brass bands along the Ghanaian coast. Douglas Sanders writes an article where he describes how they play: “These bands skilfully amalgamated a diverse array of instruments, including those of European origin, and introduced vocal components into their performances.” With this in mind, I decided to have a lineup of instruments that reflected the different cultures I had been studying in accordance with Highlife tradition. This included accordion, Hammond organ, saxophone, electric guitar, drum kit and acoustic bass.
Another trait that drew me in to Highlife music was it’s harmonic devises. As demonstrated in the album, “Roots of Hilife from Bamaya to Bosoe”, the harmony mostly sticks to one diatonic scale, with the bass and chords moving diatonically within this scale. On the second song in the album, the bass mostly moves from the tonic to the minor 7th (as the song is built from a minor scale), creating a very digestible harmonic basis. However, I specifically enjoyed this technique used on major scales within Highlife music, such as the third song on the album. Most Highlife music in major keys revolve around chords 4, 5 and 1 (and 6), taking advantage of satisfying plagal and perfect cadences. I decided to include the same harmonic basis in the second section of my composition with a four bar chord loop consisting of chord I, II, IV V returning to I.
British and Irish Folk influences
With all these influences from India, South America and Africa enriching the rhythm and harmony, I wanted to bring the piece back to some core influences from British and Irish folk that I had come to fall in love with.
The amount of polyrhythm in the piece gave every section a lot of groove, but I wanted to add back in the stress on beats 1 and 3, as now there seemed too little action happening on those beats, and I wanted to get a feel similar to the traditional Welsh tune ‘Difyrrwch’ performed by ‘The Trials of Cato’. In this song they manage to create great suspense by dropping the beat and adding it back in at certain points, always predictably on the 1, which gave the dancers in the audience the perfect cue to bust a move at exactly the right time. I also pulled this feel from Irish ‘reel’ forms, a type of dance always performed in 4/4 with strong accents on either 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. This was achieved by putting the bass drum on beats 1 and 3, as well the bass hitting beat every 2 bars.
This, paired with the storytelling aspect from the vocals added an English folky flair that I feel completed the artistic journey of the piece. When being performed in the room, my musicians took these ideas and developed them, all with these influences and core ideas in mind.
References
The Chieftains – Topic (2018). The Frost Is All Over. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_GrL3qYQz0 [Accessed 3 May 2026].
Ireland’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. (2021). Irish Traditional Music – Ireland’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. [online] Available at: https://nationalinventoryich.ccs.gov.ie/irish-traditional-music/.
Secondhandsongs.com. (2026). Song: St. Thomas written by [Traditional] | SecondHandSongs. [online] Available at: https://secondhandsongs.com/work/106245/all [Accessed 3 May 2026].
Asaf Blasberg Videographer (2018). Mridangam Solo by Guru Karaikudi Mani. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jx31BoQ0hg [Accessed 4 May 2026].
John Bouchet (2007). The Gateway of Rhythm Bonus Track. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z84CnmymUI [Accessed 4 May 2026].
unourrit01 (2011). Rumples- Chris Potter. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnR39KzcKUk [Accessed 4 May 2026].
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Andrews, T. (2024). Mastering the Art of Rumba Dance: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners and Enthusiasts – Step By Me Dance Studio in Westminster, London. [online] Step By Me Dance Studio in Westminster, London. Available at: https://stepbymedancestudios.co.uk/2024/05/20/mastering-the-art-of-rumba-dance-a-comprehensive-guide-for-beginners-and-enthusiasts/.
SME2009NL (2009). Part 2 – Afro Cuban Drumming – Ignacio Berroa, Giovanni Hidalgo, Changuito, Michael Spiro. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmm4I5Xy-50 [Accessed 4 May 2026].
Jason Aryeh (2013). Jason Aryeh Research Project. Kpanlogo dance from the Ga tribe in Ghana. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGZ9rDoMEs4.
Fela Kuti – Topic (2024). Water No Get Enemy. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jx2qcKd1-0.
Sanders, D. (2023). Highlife, Ghana’s Musical Gift to the world | World Music Central. [online] World Music Central | Your Connection to traditional and contemporary World Music, including folk, roots, global music, ethno and crosscultural fusions. Available at: https://worldmusiccentral.org/highlife-ghanas-musical-gift-to-the-world/.
Quadzo (2014). Roots of Hilife from Bamaya to Bosoe Full Album. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0odpu3LciM [Accessed 3 May 2025].
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Silent Song Studios (2025). The Use of Call and Response in African and Latin American Music Traditions. [online] Silent Song Studios. Available at: https://silentsongstudios.com/the-use-of-call-and-response-in-african-and-latin-american-music-traditions/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].
The Trials of Cato (2019). The Trials of Cato – Difyrrwch live at the Portland. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mZ1kK2CB5Q [Accessed 6 May 2026].
Celticmusik.com. (2024). Most Popular Irish Reels to Learn and Play. [online] Available at: https://www.celticmusik.com/post/most-popular-irish-reels-to-learn-and-play [Accessed 6 May 2026].
