[Dixielandjazz] Syncopation

[Ralph Blanchette]

Marek Boym finds it strange that syncopation in (English) literature (often in poetry as in "o'er"  for "over") should be so different from that in music where the stress is shifted from its expected position.

However, I see a connection between the two senses of syncopation since by removing a phoneme we are usually dropping a beat, or part of one, thereby shifting the normal pattern of stress. In nineteenth-century English poetry it was often used to avoid the change of rhythm that would accompany using the "unsyncopated" version of the desired word, as in the triplet one gets in:

"schooner sailing over the sea..."

as opposed to the regular pulse of

"schooner sailing o'er the sea..."

On the other hand, with ragtime the nineteenth-century comes to a close and syncopation can now be used to generate a sought-after change in rhythmic stress, as in the following bit of doggerel I composed for this occasion:

Since I cannot, so I will not 
Be your lover. Please forget it.
When you call me you appall me.
I can't! I won't! I'll regret it.

If each syllable is a quarter note in 4/4, the seventh measure is an example of both kinds of syncopation.

Which is not to say this is how "syncopation" actually acquired it's meaning in music -- but only that we can see the possible connection.

--Ralph