Comparison of Rhythm of the Sanjuan Tradition with Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu

Sanjuan Tradition of Ecuador is highly different from the Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu. The main feature which clarifies this difference is the styles of rhythm of the both.

In the Sanjuan Tradition, fixed attributes that are able to reflect a highly evident repetitive behavior on several levels is used in the creation of music. A single motive dominates the whole music composition and is composed with the help of 8 beat phrases (Which Cruise Hits Your Groove?, 2013). For instance, the identical first and second half rhythms, characteristic pitch, rhythmic motifs and the harmonics all support a bimodal relationship between the minor and the related major Music Box (Titon, Third Edition).

On the other hand, the Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu is different in its pitch scales which reflect a strong theoretical preference for the pentatonic scale is observed in practice. For instance, when one listens to the Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu compositions, it becomes highly evident that the melody style of the music tends to be largely ornamented with idiomatic inflections within a heterogeneous texture (Jiangnan_sizhu, 2013). In the context of a rhythmic styles (Titon, Third Edition), the usage of tempos range from slow to fast and are somewhat flexible and metered. Also, the subdivision of notes is almost always duple. The sense of loose rhythmic coordination is heard in the preferred texture and in heterophony (Titon, Third Edition).

Sanjuan Tradition of Ecuador is highly different from the Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu. The main feature which clarifies this difference is the styles of rhythm of the both.

In the Sanjuan Tradition, fixed attributes that are able to reflect a highly evident repetitive behavior on several levels is used