The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Brazil took 35% of the 10 million or so slaves taken from Africa, The Caribbean another 50% & The US less than 4%. It's not surprising that the music survived best in South America & the Caribbean Islands. On a side note I spent much of my 20's & 30's (& 40's) in various parts of West Africa - Including 10 years as the only European in a 180,000 population town. I soon found that playing Afro-Cuban music would fill my house with people a generation older than me asking to borrow my cassettes, my peers asked why I listened to old people music. Jazz was headphones only - guests left & neighbours turned up & suggested things I should play instead (I had LOTS of Cassettes to choose from). The only exception was Elvin Jones, I was asked twice if I could just play the drum track without that other noise. (Coltrane). The Blues Brothers Movie was appreciated but not the blues...

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  3. #27

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    Yeah I was nerding out about medieval music on Wikipedia today, and it reminded me of a term I’d forgotten - rhythmic mode. In the Middle Ages they had rhythmic and melodic modes.

    So, we can write and improvise on melodic modes, but also rhythmic modes, and that makes sense to me because to pick an obvious example, we have clave in Cuban music. But Parker’s music often seems to relate the clave to me...

    It’s interesting that the idea of giving raw pitch material to budding improvisers is absolutely standard - be it blues scales, modes, chord tones or whatever - but as soon as you suggest providing raw rhythmic material for the same purposes people start going on about how it should be purely intuitive. As if this is somehow different from learning a rhythmic pattern in percussion and how to embellish and vary it...

  4. #28
    ragman1...haha or im just a babbling old idiot out of my gourd, thinking he has found the rosetta stone of jazz history evolution and compares himself to einstein blahahahahaha...(they are coming to take me away...they are coming to take me away...)

    dot75 , ive always wanted to visit a west african country ...i always since a kid , got traditional african drumming records, not that i have a huge collection stashed away anywhere, and youtube is a godsend if you love traditional african drum dance

    they say brasil is the second to largest afro descendant population , next to nigera on the planet...and the united states is third largest afro descendant population ( who knew?) actualy all that could be just rumor , i read it somewhere , but cant link it , but, on the one hand not , maybe close to true , and on the other, the tremendous blood mixture from indinigous and the colonizers has to make it a differant situation than the people of africa, but africa has the most widest ethnic variety of the world ....so, now its confusing hahaha

    christian, yeah, its like we have to learn all about groove and rhythm on our own hahahahaha sounds like something else we had to learn all on our own
    did you try the jingle bell bravum bell trick with that cut you brought in? the thing to know is that sometimes in jazz, they are mixing these ketu codes so there are a couple going on sometimes (in reguards to basie, but papa jo jones innovated bravum into the ride pattern).. i would need to hear each cut by a master to analyse what ketu codes they are using or mixing...which is so cool ...gosh , i never was an armstrong enthusiest , im not going to start an armstrong tribute band , but i have listened to more armstrong , jelly roll and joplin more than i ever had ...discovered a new respect ...let alone how much it compliments what i do intend to play . like you said , i cannot not notice opanije in armstrong ...its like i have to go back and listen to everything all over again ...wow that is mind blowing, for what ever reason just to get the feeling you have to go back and check all that hip jazz all over again ..that sais a lot about jazz

  5. #29

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    OK, so here's a thing, obvious relationship between the Opanije bell pattern



    And Buddy Bolden's Big Four beat demonstrated by Wynton Marsalis


  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by bonsritmos
    christian, yeah, its like we have to learn all about groove and rhythm on our own hahahahaha sounds like something else we had to learn all on our own
    I can't imagine what you are referring to ;-)

    Swiftly moving on, I do not feel quite so alone when I go to a course on Samba, for instance. The teachers are VERY specific on what to play, what is Samba and what is not. It's great!

    Beginners jazz course - 'here's some notes make some shit up.' And then none of it sounds like jazz.

    I used to think this was a failure of the academic institutions, but you seem to be saying the reasons for this are at least in part historical, and down to the exact nature of slavery in the US. You know, to a certain extent I get the impression even someone like Wynton who was steeped in these rhythms from an early age and clearly feels them all intuitively is conceptualising things in his own way for the purposes of education and outreach.

    So turning to Brazil for inspiration seems a lot more sensible in this light for people like myself not born into a musical family in NOLA.

    We may or may not rename Opanije as 'the early jazz clave' or call Bravum something like 'swing phrasing clave' or whatever, but the rhythms are clearly THERE in the music.

    did you try the jingle bell bravum bell trick with that cut you brought in? the thing to know is that sometimes in jazz, they are mixing these ketu codes so there are a couple going on sometimes (in reguards to basie, but papa jo jones innovated bravum into the ride pattern).. i would need to hear each cut by a master to analyse what ketu codes they are using or mixing...which is so cool ...gosh , i never was an armstrong enthusiest , im not going to start an armstrong tribute band , but i have listened to more armstrong , jelly roll and joplin more than i ever had ...discovered a new respect ...let alone how much it compliments what i do intend to play . like you said , i cannot not notice opanije in armstrong ...its like i have to go back and listen to everything all over again ...wow that is mind blowing, for what ever reason just to get the feeling you have to go back and check all that hip jazz all over again ..that sais a lot about jazz
    I'd be interested to know any further thoughts regarding this and the development of jazz drumming.

  7. #31
    Yeah, that opanije clip is music tô my ears...

    i was just thinking of this wynton explanation of the bass drum, thanks for bringing it in.

    yes, I agree totally , we may not be able to call these things clave of jazz, but , they are definitely in there !

    that is where I say , in American music, these codes come in mishmash.in Brazil , its codified and definite in Ketu, but popular brazilian music it gets mishmashed too.

    wynton takes it back to marching band evolutions, but , what is driving that? I see it as a people trying to grab and retain a culture that was stripped and banned. So all over the Americas , these new expressions of that culture banned , start evolving. And it's so strong, they become the foundations of the beats and dances of the popular culture.

    ketu is just a great blueprint of where these evolutions came from.it just has a lot of information.

    so here goes the babbling

    i discovered in Ketu , how you take jinka , keep the pi and le thing the same , and add one beat to the bell and it becomes 3/4 salto

    slow ilu way down and use just the left hand part and it's bossa, olodum, ray Charles, Horace silver etc

    there is this incredible way these beats evolve interconnected , that add, subtract, slow it , speed it up,take a triple meter and make it duple, that it always creates something new, usually coupled with a dance. It's always open to innovation

    simplicity repeated over and over that creates larger structures, the fractal concept, and improvisation means it's different every time, like every wave is different in the ocean .

    this explains all these incredible music styles all over the Americas with Afro diaspóric roots, each unique , evolving but related.

    your choice of the Cuban bell part is equally valid to discover properties of swing.

    why jazz separated from Latin jazz , and made it seperate catagory , is beyond me, they are closer related than odd times, odd bars and over kicked accented arrangements.

    you can be anywhere in the world , and if you plug into these concepts , you can get it...and you seem plugged in, hone your up bop think quick technique, with these techniques and you can't go wrong

  8. #32
    Há, auto correct made sato salto , há , it's sato

    Man im just starting tô break down baby dodds , I used to just say , yeah , there is pops and baby dodds. The history of jazz ..let the Dixieland cats show you etc

    now , it's all back to the drawing board...

    many times in early jazz they are doing om pa om pa , with the bass drum figure wynton was talking about, it's the front cats putting out opanije, ilu etc kicks. The drums have lots of rolls and buzz strokes...

    you got second line influence, all these things coming together.

    right now, I don't want to get on the kit and recreate these great drummers, it's more listening and going aha, check that out. I am practicing some rolls they are doing and throwing in some opanije bass drum , and saying wow , look how that works , but nothing ready for prime time in stage.

    what I have done and recorded and taken on stage , is take a bunch of Ketu beats and transferred them to drum kit, with fantastic results.

    but this plug into older jazz styles and what is going on was totally unexpected on my part, I can only follow these insights to where they lead. And it's blowing my mind.

  9. #33
    Final babble in this rambling this morning

    one of the big picture lessons from exploring Ketu is how people holding down these simple repeated syncopated three against two polyrhythmic grooves is , allows you to turn off your thinking brain and allows the sub conscious and intuition to come out front, and this is deeply powerful.

    this isn't trance drumming , it's more alpha state . The repeated pollyrythm gives each bar a nuclear power inside that is the difference in the ancient African concepts from most other world concepts, notice I say most. South India has some grooves , but , the Dravidians who settled there came from Africa 10,000 years ago, so, maybe they brought it.

    but, this Taylor made for intuition and sub conscious to come forward , is the gift of ancient Africa .

    i lament hearing many people here talking if problems improvising. Of getting past technique and letting go soloing. And the secrets to that are all up in these concepts .

    the religious parts of these ancient African concepts are al, about possession Letting a diety take over your soul...the music came first, the shamans knew how to funnel these concepts into a religion, but, principles of the music came before the religion.

    the secrets how to let go and allow intuition to take over are in these incredible drum dance concepts from ancient Africa

  10. #34

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    That really struck me. There is of course the same thing in the (not just European but also Near Eastern and North African) Hellenic cultures, which is the original meaning of the Latin word Genius, which was the same thing as Genie, or Djinn. In Greek, Daemon. The same concept in ancient Egypt... The muses of antiquity and so on. Somebody's genius was literally the spirit that seized them.

    This concept survived Christianity too, but not capitalism. Our modern understanding comes from the 18th century.

    In today's post industrial capitalist world we think of genius as being a possession, not a possessor.

    The phrase 'Bach's great genius' now has a meaning almost contrary to its original, one which I suspect Bach would have regarded as blasphemous. Man is now the master of his destiny, rather than a vessel for higher entities that might use him as their instrument. (Note that I use the old fashioned gendered language.)

    (And in the 18th century, certain humans could also possess and sell other humans, including quite a few of those Enlightment thinkers.)

    Nowadays in what gets called Western Culture, we tend to reject things that are not rooted in measurable science. But there is a great folly here, because while science is a great thing, it is not fundamentally everything we experience or know, and I actually think scientists are more aware of this than you would think from the positivist scientism that dominates mainstream thought.

    From the subjective point of view of the human sphere, the ancient way of viewing these things makes sense and is more useful. We may not in fact think of ourselves of becoming vessels for deities, but that idea of surrender and the music passing through us is not just some New Age Woo Woo shit, but literally a concrete reality and a technique of the mind that we have to cultivate every day in order to play music.

    These rhythms seem like a natural portal into this state of being.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-18-2019 at 07:46 AM.

  11. #35

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    I suppose Red Garland has a lot Opanije going on sometimes:





    But then I always though Paul Chambers would have made a good Sousa player for a marching band lol

    When it switches to 4/4 we get that move to Bravum and the pushes end up being on any or all the beats.

  12. #36
    good catch there, christian
    garner is being subltile but some of that phrasing sure is the opanije, and a lot of bravum bell

    yeah that two beat thing the bass does on heads seems to go back to that ompa om pa thing from before and that walking bass really fits with bravum big time

    jazz had this thing where it was broken up and then went unbroken...almost like funk and rhythm and blues into disco , where they didnt the groove on differant sections, for sure that was a change in groove concept in popular music

    yes, i agree , these rhythms, are a portal to the sub concious, the intuition the inner universe , surely as big as the physical universe

    this human thing and our search is phenominal . these ancient africans sure are due a part in these discoveries ..to come up with these concepts to turn off the thinking brain is an intellectual choice

  13. #37

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    I don’t know if it adds to the conversation, but Mike Longo talks about very similar concepts, from the African roots, “polymetricity”, “polyhemiola”, “ontological” music happening from the rhythm, the problem of Western centric pedagogy having failed to teach the most essential parts of Jazz, etc.

    I know Cristian has taken Mike’s course, but maybe the OP would be interesting in checking it out?


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

  14. #38


    christian mentioned about my first youtube about ketu candomble hookups in jazz and opanije in older jazz styles relating to django , i just finished this and it just got up . chapter 1 in a series of youtubes that goes more in depth about the ketu candomble hook ups in jazz . and its opanije. jelly roll and louis armstrong are from the first youtube idid but then there is prof long hair, dr john , ray charles, miles davis etc, just to show how in depth it goes. other chapters will bring in ilu, bravum, sato , jinka, avamunha , bata, vassi and show their hook ups with various american musics and artists .

    this isnt something im selling. this isnt for sale. i want to share these incredable discoveries so we all can understand jazz , what it is , where it comes from and what it takes to play it. there is no one else making these connections. you cant find these hookups on the internet unless you find something i have done. you let me know if you see anything talking about this. note, there are great musicians in salvador who understand these ketu concepts and play jazz. there is a big band called rumpilezz in salvador that plays great big band music over ketu, there is a group in rio led by a french guy called ketujazz. all of these groups are good, but none of them are going to give you the in depth information how these ketu codes are all over the history of jazz and black american music.

    and one of the mind blowing things is that, the early jazz doesnt use drums. all the tonal instruments are comding from these grooves. especialy louis armstrong. i just recorded the whole hot fives album by louis that changed the jazz world , and he has so much opanije ketu codes in his phrasing , you cant deny the power of these connections.

    this is a jazz guitar forum, this is serious information about elements that make up jazz and how to understand it and how to play it

  15. #39

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    Wasn’t specifically talking about Django. Seems I can’t escape him haha.

  16. #40
    Sorry about that, I thought you were discussing what might be his two three approach at phrasing.

    louis on hot fives was seriously laying down opanije cadences ( he didn't know about ketu but his cultural origins come from the same place as ketu).

    now, I think lots of people copied Louis , but didn't know the groove he was coming from. I'm a drummer and I didn't get it until I learned opanije, then , it slapped me in the face.

    so , lots of big bands arranged around his phrases, I heard some dgango hitting the first part of the cadence , but not quite completing the opanije cadence. The singers copied his phrasing . But his phrasing is coming from a groove.

    as a drummer, I heard oompaoompa, with snare rolls , but I didn't get the bass drum was playing a cadence, and that was opanije cadence too. But Louis especially was grooving his phrasing.

    If i didn't get it as a drummer, I know lots of other people didn't get it.

    so that speaks to people outside of the inner circle of Louis and Jelly Roll, etc might get part right but not the whole concept.

    which is what I thought I heard in the European early jazz.

    werent they rewriting jazz songs to hide them from the nazi's?

  17. #41
    thanks , pcjazz , the text too fast noted.

    i hope to do about 4 chapters , and then put them all together

    the amount of popular American music covered should leave little doubt how these Ketu Condomble codes are in the history of our American pop music ( even more Brazilian pop music ). But, not as a codified religion like in Brazil. In Brazil, Ketu is a definite act of reaching back to try to be in touch with the religious and musical cultural roots where they came from in Africa.

  18. #42

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    Thanks for doing this

  19. #43
    christian , i really apreciete your interest . you were a great contributor to the thread i introduced the first clip i made about this. after talkiing with you about this , your ears were able to hear that red garland was doing opanije phrasing over a bravum rhythm section. that is so what this is all about, hearing things differently for a second to get a larger grasp on what is happening

    you were plugged into cuban rhythms and how they relate to american swing , before we talked

    and it shows. in the little bit of seeing your youtubes, i can tell you have a nice firm rhythm attack. you are thinking about these things and it pays off

    good luck on your journey learning your axe

  20. #44



    Chapter 2 in my youtube series : KETU CANDOMBLE CODES in jazz evolution history , and this chapter is featuring the massivly powerful ILU . This incredible beat has treasure all inside out. You have to play it at its normal up speed, but,you can slow it down, look at the opisite hand, and it reveals some deep secrets of Brazilian music and American music.

    The more i delve into this, the more it just blows my mind . I cant stress enough that these are the foundations for groove, phrasing, phrasing in compositions, and improvising in jazz evolution history. The speed this one can get into is heavy duty, and i discovered making this, some secrets to the stride aproach , now i know what they are doing in the rhythm aproach. and that powerful stride led to up tempo aproaches that mixed with swing later (BRAVUM in Ketu Candomble )

    On one Loius Armstrong thing, you are going to see me crack a huge smile, its because this stuff is hooking up so hard , how can you deny it ? James P Johnson , Art Tatum, Prof Longhair are on here too

  21. #45

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    Yoruba music - Wikipedia

    I think of it as like 12/8 over 4/4
    And triplet quarter notes over 4/4

    Also, tresillo the 3 side of the clave pattern
    Last edited by rintincop; 04-08-2020 at 07:39 PM.

  22. #46
    yeah , that is the spanish word that sometimes is used to describe the feel

    jelly roll mentioned the "spanish tinge"

    no doubt all the caribean cultures have a connection also to what was happening in the usa

    but, this ketu candomble seems much closer to what they were doing in jazz with it , maybe because the sticks bring it closer to drums

    they should have a yoroba description actualy , right ? haha

    and the left hand thing, that catches bossa nova , olodum, frevo , stride , that is something else .

  23. #47

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    Like Billie Holliday singing the triplet quarter notes against 4/4


  24. #48
    oh yeah, that is BRAVUM, ( the next chapter).

    actualy its the half note of the opisite hand in BRAVUM

    BRAVUM is like an art blakey / phillie jo jones lick playing the triplit on the rim click...play the triplit using every other beat and that is what barry is talking about, not about ketu bravum but the polyrhythm becomes that in BRAVUM

    2 against 3 is the serious ingrediant in all of it, every bar , its just that deepest part that goes back to the ancient african concepts

  25. #49
    ...its a ballad so its also got BATA in it, not bata from cuba which is their discription of the religious drumming like ketu describes

    the thing is, you can get implications of two or three of these ketu codes in one song.

    i have said what i see happening up in the states is mish mash using these codes, in ketu candomble from brazil , they are codified beats literaly trying to reach back to west african religious concepts, so they are preserved

    which makes it valuable to me, because now i can see codes in jazz like i didnt before. i understand so much now that i didnt before and im a seasoned jazz player , ive been around . ive listened to more armstrong the last 5 years than my whole life

  26. #50

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    Quote Originally Posted by rintincop
    Yoruba music - Wikipedia

    I think of it as like 12/8 over 4/4
    And triplet quarter notes over 4/4
    It can rock as well as swing: