Arthur Morris Jones

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Morris Jones ( 1889 - 1980 ) was a British ethnomusicologist who worked as a Protestant missionary in Zambia in the early twentieth century. He was stationed at St. Mark's School in Mapanza in the southern province of what is now Zambia (then called Northern Rhodesia ). He became known for his ethno-musicological work, in particular his two-volume studies on African music ( Studies in African Music ). With his work he contributed to African rhythm structureImportant for the justification of the research on African music. From 1952 to 1966 he was a lecturer in African music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

In 1934 he introduced the term cross-rhythm . This is a special kind of polyrhythm : movement formulas, phrases or motifs are combined with each other in such a way that their repetitions, accented accents or the reference points of their main beats “cross”, that is, the reference points do not meet.

He put forward a controversial theory about scales or scales and about Amadinda music (he claimed that the wooden xylophone was introduced to Africa from Southeast Asia). One hundred of his field recordings (on acetate material) are part of the British Library's sound archive .

Works

  • Africa and Indonesia: The Evidence of the Xylophone and Other Musical and Cultural Factors. Leiden: Brill, 1964.
  • African Music. Rhodes-Livingstone Museum Occasional Papers; No. 2. Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia: Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, 1943.
  • African rhythm. London: International African Institute, 1954.
  • Studies in African Music. 2 vols. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
  • With L. Kombe: The Icila Dance, Old Style. A Study in African Music and Dance of the Lala Tribe of Northern Rhodesia. Roodepoort, South Africa: Published by Longmans, Green and Co. Verlag for the African Music Society, 1952.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Kubik , For Understanding African Music . Reclam, Leipzig 1988, p. 81
personal data
SURNAME Jones, Arthur Morris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1889
DATE OF DEATH 1980