Metrical structure and sung rhythm of the Hausa rajaz

Metre, grouping, and event hierarchies in music: A tutorial for linguists

“…Most pieces in most genres of music display metrical structure , an abstract repeating sequence of alternating strong and weak beats associated with particular moments in time 1 . While this has been most thoroughly explored in Western genres, it is also a basic property of music from Indonesia (Hughes, 1988), the Balkan countries (Hannon & Trehub, 2005; Kaliakatsos‐Papakostas et al., 2014), Turkey (Mungan et al., 2017), China (Nan et al., 2009; Stock, 1993), Japan (Pasciak, 2017), Central Australia (Turpin, 2007, 2017), and diverse African cultures including Venda (Blacking, 1970), Ewe (Ekweume, 1975), Berber (Dell & Elmedlaoui, 2002), Dogon (McPherson & Ryan, 2018), and Hausa (Hayes & Schuh, 2019). While the existence of musical metre is widespread in human cultures, the precise nature and variety of repeating patterns differ to some extent between cultures.…”

Syllable weight and natural duration in textsetting popular music in English

“…In Ancient Greek music, for instance, heavy syllables – regardless of accent and position – are set to long notes in the music, while light syllables are set to short notes, an opposition in note value usually nowadays transcribed using quarter and eighth notes (West 1992: 130–3; Hill 2008; see, for instance, the Delphic hymns per West 1992: 288–300). Similarly, a number of Afro-Asiatic languages exhibit living quantitative textsetting traditions in which heavy syllables are mapped onto more grid space than light syllables, including Bole (Schuh 2001), Hausa (Schuh 2011; Hayes & Schuh 2019), Somali (Banti & Giannattasio 1996) and Tashlhiyt Berber (Dell & Elmedlaoui 2008, 2017; Dell 2011). Of course, quantitative textsetting is not confined to Afro-Asiatic (e.g.…”

“…Beyond English, most research on quantitative textsetting treats weight as categorical. For example, Hayes & Schuh (2019: 284–93) model the durations with which syllables are sung in Hausa, but the model takes as inputs only discrete moras and syllables, not natural duration. McPherson (2021: 11–14) goes further, finding that performative duration in Seenku is affected by gradient prosodic effects such as phonetic closed-syllable shortening.…”

“…With Hayes & Kaun (1996), Hayes & MacEachern (1998) and Kiparsky (2006), I assume a modular approach to textsetting, such that correspondence constraints have access to natural prosody, allowing natural prosody to influence the realization of language as sung or chanted, though textsetting imposes its own constraints, modifying that prosody (e.g. Hayes & Schuh 2019: 284–93). Natural duration in principle subsumes all systematic aspects of timing in spoken language, including phonemic length, intrinsic segmental duration (e.g.…”

“…Hayes (2009b) and Keshet (2006) employ a constraint STRONG-IS-LONG, which penalizes short spaces after prominent beats in the music, but this constraint does not refer to syllable weight. 8 The converse constraint LONG-IS-STRONG does invoke weight, but only binary weight (Hayes & Schuh 2019). San & Turpin (2021) employ FINAL-IS-LONG, which requires a measure-final syllable to span three positions, regardless of weight.…”