Wordrums
Wordrums is a portmanteau word I made up for the natural rhythms in language (word+drums) that can be the source of rhythms driving a piece of music, or rhythmic motifs. The are a part of the Songday system, where song ideas arise from random phrases taken from (in my case) diaries and journals, including my own.
Here I've distilled some of them to repeating rhythms in MIDI format, and only including the date or sometimes a title.
PS:
Alan Lomax said that songs are "danced speech". This concept was part of Lomax's work on developing a general theory synthesizing his life's research on music and culture. Lomax believed that song and dance were deeply interconnected, with music providing a link between cognitive, physical, verbal, and non-verbal aspects of human expression. His idea of "danced speech" was part of his broader theory that all art may have originated from physical and social phenomena. He proposed that "song was sung speech, and dance was danced speech"
This perspective emphasized the close relationship between bodily movement, vocal expression, and cultural communication in human societies. Lomax's concept of "danced speech" has been influential in ethnomusicology and the study of folk music. It highlights the integrated nature of music, dance, and speech in many cultural traditions, suggesting that these forms of expression are fundamentally linked in human communication and artistic expression.
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Ennio Morricone frequently used strophic rhythms to drive composition: In Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows film (1966), used the rhythm of the title "Uccellacci e uccellini" as a "wordrum". For the Sacco & Vanzetti film, he gave Joan Baez just a basic rhythm and she mapped words over it and became a hit. Rhythms are the best way to approach lyrics. ("Here's To You"). It became anthemic with the orchestra and chorus.
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From "Music And Mysticism", Zakir Hussein, Music And Mind
"In India we take drone as a natural, everyday, living experience, not as a scientific phenomenon. Playing rhythms is almost like reading a novel while you imagine the story—or reading sheet music as you sing a song. That language must become like a second language; just as I have learned how to express myself in English, I had to learn to express myself in the language of tabla. There is a melodic and expressive element to the performance, almost like a question or a series of spoken phrases; the dynamics follow through naturally, like the inflection of a sentence. We first learn to recite and sing the rhythms before we get a chance to play our instrument, and fortunately it is able to show those dips and flows. Music and rhythm were, in fact, my first language, before I even learned to speak. When I was two days old, I was brought home from the hospital. Traditionally your father is supposed to whisper a prayer in your ear. But when my father took me in his arms, instead of whispering an actual prayer with words, he sang rhythms. “Why are you doing that?” my mother asked him. “You’re supposed to say a prayer.” “But this is a prayer!” he responded. “He’s going to be praying through this for the rest of his life and leading the flock through, so I’m starting him right now.” From then on that’s what he did every day; he would hold me in his arms for an hour or two and sing rhythms to me, perhaps to prepare me for what was to come later in my life."
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