steve reich - biography


4. Ghana - Drumming - Gamelan

Reich's interest in world music led him to journey to Ghana in 1970 to study Ewe drumming under the tutelage of master drummer Alfred Ladzepko. An intensive learning experience, Reich sought to apply the basics of Ghanaian rhythm while staying within his own western idiom, thereby eschewing the casually world-beat tinged music that he saw as superficial:

The least interesting form of influence, to my mind, is that of imitating the sound of some non-Western music. This can e done by using non-Western instruments in one's own music (sitars in the rock band) or by using one's own instruments to sound like non-Western ones (singing Indian style melodies over electronic drones). . .

Alternately, one can create a music with one's own sound that is constructed in light of one's knowledge of non-Western structures . . . Instead of imitation, the influence of non-Western musical structures on the thinking of a Western composer is likely to produce something genuinely new.

His studies in Ghana produced two things: Drumming (Reich's penultimate 1971 phasing piece) and a case of malaria. Drumming would put an end to Reich's purely phased works and inspire him to explore new sonic textures; the malaria would put an end to Reich's romanticized view of sublimating himself to a foreign culture in the pursuit of new musical styles--so that when he became enamored of Balinese Gamelan music soon after completing Drumming, rather than travel to Bali he settled for studying Gamelan on the west coast of the United States.