A Revolution in Time: Book Introduction

From the subatomic to the astronomical, all is in motion.

Abstract light streaks. Image by Mariola Grobelska

We are rhythm. Our hearts beat, lungs breathe, thoughts cycle. Were these to stop for just a moment, our lives could end abruptly. Our planet’s simple, elliptical revolution around the sun gives rise to the beauty and complexity of spring, summer, autumn, and winter - the inspiration for a million poets and painters. From the subatomic to the astronomical, all is in motion.

Rhythm gives language to time’s flow; its words are events that can be ordered through regular patterns or chaotic pulsations. We have an instinct for rhythm, expressing it physically through music and dance, and across space through art and architecture. We are drawn to rhythm, we celebrate it, live surrounded by it, and yet, something is missing.

Our story of rhythm is incomplete: the subject is far vaster than we previously imagined. Intuition has limited our understanding, depriving us of a richer, deeper, more transformative reality. To our surprise, we find ourselves standing at the bottom of a mountain, its peak shrouded by clouds, with no established route for ascent. Yet curiosity beacons us towards the unknown, the fearful, the chance of glimpsing new knowledge from higher summits.

Early in life, I was drawn to this mountain, guided by feelings I did not fully understand. As a percussion student, I noticed that my peers who learned traditionally harmonic instruments had numerous systems for exploring harmony – keys, intervals, chords, modulations, harmonic progressions – but for rhythm, there was nothing comparable. One could find methods and systems created by individuals, which certainly had value, but they never matched the power of culture-wide systems built by innumerable people across generations, such as the system of harmony. Was this because rhythm and harmony were different in nature? Was rhythm inherently unruly and incapable of systemisation?

I always viewed music as a tool for understanding our universe, which revealed that what appeared inevitable is often a choice: there is never only one way to end a chord progression or complete a rhythm. Experiencing this in music taught me to perceive it in the world. When I look outside my window in the city I live in, what I see is not the result of inevitable forces, but the sum of our collective imagination — something we could reimagine.

Central to our conception of the world is our perception of time, which physicists and mystics agree is more complex than our intuitive understanding. As a music student, the thought that rhythm might be incapable of systematisation felt existentially bleak, while the idea that it could provide profound insights into the nature of time was irresistible.

Then, one day, everything changed. Unable to attend an evening concert by the jazz drummer Asaf Sirkis, I decided to join his afternoon masterclass. During the class, he recited rhythms using a South Indian classical system called Konnakol, which can imperfectly be described as a musical language for rhythm. It seemed to possess a unique rhythmic grammar and aesthetic: the meeting of mathematics, music, and poetry — a treatment of rhythm with an almost scientific precision.

For the next ten years, I immersed myself in the music, culture, and rhythms of this extraordinary tradition. My journey began in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood in West Kensington, London, and ended in the noisy, colourful metropolis of Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, South East India.

This book describes a personal story of curiosity and wonder, as well as a wider story of a collective search into the unknown dimensions of musical knowledge. It seeks answers to fundamental questions about music. Do we discover rhythm or do we create it? Are complex rhythms and complex harmonies compatible? Are there limits to music? How can we expand what is possible? Central to this is the idea that Western music may have unknowingly overlooked vital questions about the temporal organisation of sound. This book aims to build a bridge connecting ideas and people, in the belief that global artistic collaboration can open doors to new music.

The book is divided into four unequal parts.

In the first section, we will look at how Western music experienced a deep crisis in the early 20th century, and how its well-established path of progress, defined by ever-increasing harmonic complexity, was destabilised. Like an earthquake rocking the foundations of a city, intellectual certainties became vulnerable, damaged, and in need of reconstruction. Several strands of new music emerged from this crisis, each with competing ideas for what the future might sound like. Yet no widely adopted system for rhythm emerged.

In the second section, we will stand at the shore of a vast mountain lake where ideas run deep and wide, an environment where time can be architected and composed. Exploring certain facets of the system of South Indian rhythm will reveal it to be more than simply a series of practices and ideas, but a unique way of thinking about time. Both ancient and modern, it is built from robust ideas and aesthetics which have been tested over centuries, containing a lifetime of study that can establish foundations for new ways of thinking.

In the third section, we will reflect on the musical mountain we have climbed and what routes lie ahead. A moment to pause and contemplate our place in time. Why is it important to climb? Are all cultures of the world climbing the same mountain, or are we spread across a mountain range? We can consider why the mysteriousness of time provokes in us the desire to organise it, control it, fit it into clocks, calendars, and timetables, while at the same time seeking artistic beauty through the musical language of rhythm.

In the final section, we will look to the future. What does it mean to create music in a world in which technology has shrunk space? Can we belong to something local, familiar, and rooted in tradition, while also participating in global movements and collaborations? If we work globally, how can we collaborate respectfully, honourably, and symbiotically?

The Bishop and anti-apartheid activist, Desmond Tutu, often referred to a significant word called ‘Ubuntu’. A South African philosophy often translated as: ‘a person is a person through other people.’ I find the idea deeply inspiring, and in this book, I want to explore whether this might be true for artistic culture too. Might the first faint notes promising the music of a glad new day be unlocked through collaboration between once distant cultures?¹

1. A phrase borrowed from the violinist and musicologist Maud MacCarthy (1912). Some Indian conceptions of music. London: Theosophical Publishing Society.