What Do We Know About African Rhythm

his paper, at the time untitled, was presented in the "Nonference" on "Time in African Music" convened by Ruth Stone at the conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Los Angeles, California on Oct. 20, 1984. Other panelists were John Blacking and Roderic Knight. James Koetting died of a heart attack the night after giving his presentation. Fellow panelist Roderic Knight felt that Koetting's remarks were of value to the society as a whole, and with the generous permission of Jan Kleeman Koetting, undertook the task of editing the paper for publication. Since the paper was in the nature of prepared remarks only, certain details had been omitted from the rough draft, and others had been added during the presentation. This final product is therefore actually a joint paper, with bibliographic citations, some of the examples, and certain clarifications provided by Knight for the purpose of better illuminating Koetting's basic position. It is intended as a memorial to one of the clearest thinkers and devoted scholars on this subject, whose future contributions will be greatly missed.