In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.

In the first of my two articles, I consider the “problem” of Sinhala meter set in an introduction to Sinhala Buddhist ritual, a discussion of the relationship between music and Theravada Buddhism, and a history of Sinhala drumming—a long prologue that is warranted, I suggest, because of the lack of studies of Sri Lanka in ethnomusicology and the prevalence of misunderstandings in the literature on the role of music in Theravada Buddhism....more >>

In two conjoined articles, I argue that Sri Lanka—long passed over in ethnomusicology classes as one proceeds from India to Indonesia or vice-versa—is worthy of gaining a strong foothold in our field. This is due in part to the unique approach to rhythm and meter found in the rituals of a caste called the Beravā, members of the island’s Sinhala Buddhist ethnic majority. The genre’s rhythms are generated by drum syllables (aksaras) of long and short duration (guru and laghu) set in lines of drum poetry (padas). Sometimes the drumming resembles unmetered speech; other times, a pulse or beat cycle sounds present. However, there is no word for “meter” or “beat cycle” in the tradition (the pan-South Asian term tala is not used). In any given padaya (the singular), several aksaras will not match up with a beat, its seeming subdivisions, or the pulse. Even when a seemingly straightforward beat cycle is performed, it may be stretched to match the duration of the drum word. All this gives Sinhala drumming a unique feel: to outsiders, many rhythms appear uncountable. Sri Lankan musicologists have long been aware of the genre’s metric ambiguity, but they are not in agreement on how to understand it.

This second article provides an analysis of drumming in three low-country (southern coastal) Sinhala Buddhist rituals. I argue that because of Buddhism’s Seventh Precept—which prohibits reveling sensuously in music and dance—Sinhala drumming was constructed as speech rather than music so that it would be acceptable as an offering to the Buddha and deities. Drum offerings for the Buddha and deities more closely approximate unmetered speech than drum offerings for demons (yakku). I also contend that modern Indian and Western notions of meter are nowadays often mapped onto Sinhala drumming by non-Beravā, the result being that a tradition of sacred speech is slowly being transformed into music—thus threatening the acceptability of drum offerings in the ritual context....more >>

The ways musicians conceive of and categorize musical rhythms can directly influence the way they perform them. The up-country (“Kandyan”) drumming tradition of central Sri Lanka serves as a vivid example of how the spread and transformation of rhythm concepts has been enabled by particular social histories, and of how these changing concepts of rhythm have influenced the ways in which the music has been performed.

In this article, I analyze the metrically flexible frameworks of rhythmic contours that were employed by up-country performers prior to the twentieth century. I do this by relying on the writings of nationalist musicologists who were critical of earlier practices, and by comparing these accounts with a variety of conceptual rhythmic phenomena found throughout the Indian subcontinent. Given the long history of social interactions between Sri Lanka and India, I argue that there is much to be gained from analyzing Sri Lankan traditional musics in broader South Asian contexts. I also show how present-day understandings of up-country drumming rhythms as metric cycles have their roots in mid-twentieth century cultural reform movements, and how ideological motivations have inspired these particular modes of rhythmic theorizing. I contextualize this in terms of anti-colonial Indian cultural nationalism, and in terms of the academic theorizing that accompanied the revivals of indigenous performing arts. By focussing on structural concepts of rhythm, rather than on the surface rhythms of sung melodies or drumming, I uncover a trend across South Asia of flexible rhythmic concepts moving towards more rigidly defined rhythmic categories during the colonial and post-colonial twentieth century.... more >>