What better way to show the diversity of the world of music than through its innumerable rhythms and dances? Music and movement is a universal phenomenon and so we asked our writers to nominate some of the great rhythms of the world and albums to showcase them. Some like samba and salsa, bhangra and bellydance, will probably be familiar, others like semba and salegy (from Angola and Madagascar), cocek and nongak (from Macedonia and Korea) maybe not.

We’ve simply arranged our 50 chosen rhythms alphabetically, so get those feet tapping or those hips swivelling and explore. This is Part 1, Part 2 is here: 50 Rhythms of the World (Part 2 – N to Z)

Profiles written by: Bill Badley, Colin Bass, Simon Broughton, Kim Burton, jan fairley, Neil Foxlee, Seth Jordan, Robert Maycock, Chris Moss, Alex Robinson, Toby Shergold, Martin Sinnock, Sue Steward, Alessio Surian, Geoff Wallis & Nigel Williamson

1 Adi Talam

South India

South Indian rhythms are not for the arithmetically challenged. Their sheer mental agility, once you follow it, thrills as much as the playing techniques. Just try drumming fives and sevens while speaking syllables in the basic adi talam cycle of eight. Solos are more important than in the North, centred on a vast repertoire of short compositions. The double-ended mridangam is the principal drum, spectacularly supported by the big clay pot, ghatam, and the tambourine-like kanjira.

Recommended album

Vikku: T H Vinayakram, Live at the Royal Festival Hall (Navras, 2002)

Doyen of the ghatam sparkles in a nine-and-a-half beat number, and shares the adi talam finale with a vivid Carnatic kit player. RM

2 AfroBeat

Nigeria

Nowhere in African music can the cross-pollination with black American rhythms be heard more thrillingly than in the sound of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. After briefly moving to the US in 1969, he returned to Lagos in the early 70s to create Afro-beat, a mighty, simmering stew of African rhythms, call-and-response vocals, brooding horns, jazz flavours and a funk outrageous enough to make James Brown blush.

Recommended album

Fela Kuti: The Best Of Fela Kuti (Wrasse, 2004)

He made over 50 albums, many of them featuring just one or two sprawling tracks. This two disc compilation is the most accessible way to sample Fela, offering a handful of shorter pieces and well-judged edits of longer tracks. NW

Ivete Sangalo

3 Axé

Brazil

Axé, a rhythm which when pronounced in Portuguese (ashay) is left free of any heavy metal overtones is the party music of the Bahian people. It sounds like samba but played whilst on speed and Red Bull. It’s a relentlessly pounding, energised dance beat, driven by drums and frantic syncopation and best heard in a heavy sweat and thick crowd at Carnaval in Salvador. For a hint of what axé is all about, invite lots and lots of friends around, down a few caipirinhas, play some axé extra loud and let all your hips and inhibitions go…

Recommended album

Ivete Sangalo: Ao Vivo (Universal, 2006)

Although almost unknown abroad, this former Salvador shop girl is Brazil’s biggest singing star. She’s best heard live and will be playing in the UK later this summer. AR

4 Benga

Kenya

Benga emerged as a pop style in the 50s when Kenyan musicians began adapting for acoustic guitar the traditional dance rhythms of the Luo people, originally played on instruments such as the nyatiti (eight-stringed lyre). By the 60s the likes of Shirati Jazz had electrified the sound into a fast but fluid hypnotic push-and-pull rhythm, characterised by soft vocal harmonies and intersecting lead guitars, which has dominated Kenyan music ever since.

Recommended album

Shirati Jazz: Pinay Ose Mer (Globestyle, 1989)

We had already selected this as our favourite benga album before the sad news came of band leader DO Misiani’s death in a road accident in May. NW

5 Bhangra

India/UK

In the last 30 years, bhangra has come a long way. It started out in India’s Punjab as a traditional music for bringing in the harvest, but has become one of the world’s great urban styles. Its basis is the single-stringed tumbi played over infectious dhol drums, all supporting extrovert and melodramatic vocals.

British Punjabis revolutionised bhangra, crossbreeding it with the disco, pop, hip-hop, and dance music they came into contact with in the West. This fed back to the subcontinent where bhangra rules, dominating Indo-pop and Bollywood film scores.

Recommended album

Malkit Singh: Nach Nach (OSA, 2000)

No one has sold more bhangra records than Malkit Singh – according to the Guinness Book of Records. Nach Nach is a typically high energy recording that straddles the old and the new. TS

6 Bossa Nova

Brazil

Bossa nova has been synonymous with Brazil – and Rio – since its inception in 50s Copacabana, by singer-guitarist, João Gilberto, pianist-composer, Antonio ‘Tom’ Jobim, and poet-lyricist, Vinícius de Morães. Bossa drew on samba’s 2/4 notation, but without the frenziedly syncopated percussion. A deliciously awkward dialogue exists between voice and guitar, and finger-picked chords relish the desafinado (out of tune) commemorated in Jobim’s classic. Discreet cymbal beats imitate a woman’s sashaying hips. Bossa’s debut was Jobim’s existentially melancholy ‘Chega de Saudade’, immortalised in Gilberto’s 1958 version, while ‘Garota de Ipanema’ (Girl from), by his wife Astrud, launched an international frenzy and jazz collaborations led by Stan Getz. It captivated the world, and even tropicalistas like Caetano Veloso and today’s electronica set explore it.

Recommended album

Elis Regina & Tom Jobim: Elis & Tom (Phillips, 1974, reissued, 2006).

Marvellous, definitive duets between the brilliantly expressive singer Elis Regina and Tom Jobim. SS

7 Bulerías

Spain

Bulerías get their name from burlar (to make fun of) and were created by Gypsies of Jérez de la Frontera playing around with alegría (and soleá) rhythms, making the accentuation of their rhythmic count far more complex. Upbeat favourite for fiestas, they were integral to the renovation of flamenco by the groundbreaking 80s generation.

Recommended album

José Mercé: Aire (EMI, 2000)

With this infectious disc, Jérez singer Mercé, with Moraíto on guitar, expressed flamenco’s total openness to other musics and effected flamenco’s definitive 21st century move into the Spanish mainstream by selling more than any other album in flamenco history. JF

8 Calypso

Trinidad

Late 19th century African work songs co-parented calypso, and the earliest recordings (1914) feature tambour-bamboo drums with acoustic guitars. By the 40s, tuned steel drums (pans) carried the lightly syncopated, springy rhythms which support the calypsonians’ improvised poetry. Patois, slang and double entendre satires of topical subjects (political scandals to cricket) are wielded in the annual Carnival Calypso Monarch contests. Calypso reached post-war London via Lord Kitchener and friends, and 50s superstar Mighty Sparrow, was overshadowed by Harry Belafonte’s diluted million-seller ‘Calypso’, in 1956. By the 80s, calypso was displaced by the soul/calypso fusion, soca.

Recommended album

Various Artists: London is the Place for Me, Trinidadian Calypson in London 1950-1956 (Honest Jon’s, 2003)

Post-war black London remembered through historical treasures including Growling Tiger’s bebop-scat, ‘Calypso Be’. SS

9 Chamamé

Argentina

From the rich soils of Corrientes and Misiones, chamamé sprouted when migrant workers from Eastern Europe rubbed hoes with Guarani natives and Africans from Brazil. The sprightly rhythm has been a folk dance favourite since the late 19th century, but it was legendary accordionist Mario del Tránsito Cocomarola (1918-1974) who turned it into a powerful regional roots music. The title of his most iconic song, ‘Kilómetro 11’, evokes a landscape where there are no great cities, just milestones where people chat, flirt, dance and, occasionally, despair. In all his compositions, Cocomarola balances the melancholy and passion of chamamé with its sweet, rocking beat.

Recommended album

Tránsito Cocomarola: Estampa Correntina (Mercury Argentina, 2000)

This is witty, playful and poignant, containing several standards now regularly performed by Chango Spasiuk and Raúl Barboza. CM

10 Choro

Brazil

Choro is the ragtime of Brazil and the mother of samba and bossa nova. For just as jazz lies latent in ragtime, so those later rhythms lie latent in choro. The rhythm grew from a fusion of African and European dance hall styles – particularly polka. Rio’s masked balls, including those at Carnaval were exclusive for the white and rich. And like Carnaval itself, choro was born when poor African Brazilians created their own festivities in the favelas which honeycombed Rio’s hills even in the early 20th century.

Recommended album

Pixinguinha: Pixinguinha (Iris, 2002)

Choro came to the fore through a series of virtuoso musicians, the most famous of whom was Pixinguinha. Most of the recordings on this compilation were made before the war. But although they show their age as much as Robert Johnson’s blues, as with Johnson, Pixinguinha’s mastery shines through. AR

Kékélé

11 Congolese Rumba

DR Congo

The classic rumba sound of the 60s, 70s and 80s Congolese big bands was a combination of multiple interwoven guitars, sumptuous vocal harmonies and Soul Revue style horn sections. The current rumba revival recreates the wonderful atmosphere epitomised by Franco’s OK Jazz, Tabu Ley Rochereau and Le Grand Kallé.

Recommended album

Kékélé: Congo Life (Stern’s Africa 2003)

Congo ‘supergroup’ Kékélé’s second album was a beautifully executed homage to the golden days of rumba thanks to a magnificently understated arrangement of the subtle instrumentation and sublime vocals. MS

12 Cumbia

Colombia

Cantering basslines, lurching percussion, spiralling clarinets and punchy trombone choruses: that’s Colombian cumbia. The racing 2/4 rhythm of a bamboo guacharaca (scraper) and rumbling, cone-shaped tambora drums, drives dancers into flirtatious moves descended from the slaves in ports like Cartagena. Cumbia remained low-class and largely black until the early 20th century, and the 50s and 60s society big bands like Lucho Bermúdez’s and Los Corraleros de Majagual (whose graduates include supreme accordionist, Lisandro Meza), spread it nationally. Today’s salsa-influenced modernists co-exist with roots accordion groups whose singers yodel like cowboys.

Various Artists: Rough Guide to Cumbia (World Music Network, 2000)

Cumbia’s tremendous variety revealed in the endlessly reinvented classics, include Bermudez’s 60s clarinet fest, Meza’s dazzling accordion, and Los Falcons’ guitar frenzy. SS

Ferus Mustafov

13 Cocek

Macedonia

The cocek of the Balkans is a solo dance of Turkish origin, sensual and sometimes bordering on the lewd, set to a hypnotic, syncopated rhythm, sinuous chromatic melodies and plenty of space for passionate improvisation on the part of dancer and musician alike.

Recommended album

Ferus Mustafov: The Heat of Balkan Gypsy Soul (Tropical Music, 2002)

Macedonia’s top clarinettist/saxophonist is captured here live with a virtuoso band, giving a masterclass in cocek as well as the oro, the country’s version of the rhythmically startling circle dance found all over south-eastern Europe. The blistering performances would drive the dancers of both to their sweating limits. KB

14 CSÁRDÁS

Hungary

With a springy four-beat rhythm, the csardás is Hungary’s quintessential dance and was one of the tools with which Hungary forged its national revival in the 19th century. Taking its name from csárda (inn), the dance was popularised by Gypsy bands and is still the staple repertoire of Budapest dance houses today, with fiery fiddles and rhythmic sawing bass. It’s a couple dance that starts slow and works up speed, often with a playful or erotic undercurrent.

Recommended album

Muzikás: The Bartók Album (Hannibal/Ryko, 1999)

From Hungary’s pre-eminent dance house band, this kicks off with a fast Trans-danubian csárdás and features many more from Hungary and Transylvania. SB

15 DIDGERI-BEAT

Australia

Based on traditional Aboriginal clapstick beating patterns of Arnhem Land’s Yolngu people (which can vary from a slow 20-30 beats per minute to a very rapid 240bpm), the term didgeri-beat has been used to describe the fusion of these ancient dance rhythms with contemporary indigenous music. Accompanied by the circular-breathing modulations of the yadaki (didgeridoo), the pulsating tempo has been successfully combined within reggae, rock, country and electronic genres to form the basis of most modern Aboriginal music.

Recommended album

Yothu Yindi: Tribal Voice (Hollywood, 1991)

Fronted by former school teacher Mandawuy Yunupingu, Yothu Yindi’s classic album alternates short traditional pieces with indigenous rock anthems, including the title-track and their hit single ‘Treaty’. SJ

16 Forró

Brazil

This jittery, jig-like 2/4 rhythm was ostensibly born in barn dances thrown by English railway companies in north-east Brazil. Brazilianised with a soft Portuguese ‘l’ and ‘r’, these ‘For Alls’ – as they were christened by the English, became ‘fa-haws’ – spelt forrós. Today the rhythm is Brazil’s favourite dance after samba.

Recommended album

Luiz Gonzaga: Série Retratos: Luiz Gonzaga & Gonzaguinha (EMI, 2004)

Forró would have died out were it not for Luiz Gonzaga, a washerwoman’s son of from the deserts of Pernambuco. It’s hard to find decent Gonzaga records outside Brazil, but this collection, featuring tracks recorded with his son showcases a broad, representative sweep of his music. AR

The Klezmatics

17 FREYLEKH

United States

If you ever been to a Jewish wedding, or seen a film of one, then you’ll recognise a freylekh (also spelt freilach), when dancers with arms entwined form a ring or a line and do exaggerated stomps on every down beat. Freylekh is Yiddish for ‘merry’ or ‘happy’ and the dance has a fast 4/4 beat. It’s one of the exuberant staples of klezmer music.

Recommended album

The Klezmatics: Rhythm & Jews (Piranha, 1991)

The track ‘NY Psycho Freylekhs’ gives you an idea of the Klezmatics’ urban take on the traditional East European dance form with screaming clarinet and blaring trumpet. A superbly inventive set in which tradition meets innovation. SB

18 Highlife

Ghana

The exuberant rhythms of highlife began among the Ashanti people in Ghana but swiftly spread throughout Sierra Leone and Nigeria. By Ghana’s independence in 1957, the original traditional-based style had diversified into sophisticated dance bands led by the likes of ET Mensah and King Bruce and vibrant electric guitar combos such as AB Crentsil’s Sweet Talks.

Recommended album

AB Crentsil: Hollywood Highlife Party (Stern’s 1978)

Recorded in Los Angeles, according to the Rough Guide To World Music this is ‘beyond doubt the best Ghanaian record of the last 20 years’ – and we’re not about to argue. NW

19 Jaipongan

Indonesia

Strictly speaking jaipongan is not the name of a particular rhythm, rather it denotes a style of music and dance. Purportedly developed by the Bandung musician and producer Gugum Gumbira in the 70s from various traditional sources, it was perceived as rather wild and suggestive at the time but is now established as a classic West Javanese form.

Recommended album

Uun Budiman and the Jugala Gamelan Orchestra: Banondari – New Directions in Jaipongan (Felmay, 2006)

This album marks the return to producing by Gugum Gumbira after a decade of concentrating on his other enterprises. Recorded at his own Jugala Studios, which has nevertheless been continually operating as the home of the Jaipongan sound. CB

20 Juju

Nigeria

Although its origins are disputed, the term juju music was first used in the 20s to describe the dreamy, hypnotic rhythms emerging from the Yoruba neighbourhoods of Lagos. With the arrival of amplification after World War II, it took off as the capital’s premier urban dance style. The music then undertook another dramatic development in the 60s with the dense, tight grooves and multiple guitars of bands led by Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade.

King Sunny Ade: Juju Music (Island, 1982)

Forget the rather silly attempt to market him as ‘Africa’s Bob Marley’. More than 20 years on, this album remains the quintessential expression of modern juju. NW

21 KarŞilama

Turkey

The karşilama isn’t the best-known dance in Turkey, but it’s one of the most seductive. It comes from Trakya (Thrace), the small European part of the country and is a staple of the Gypsy musicians who dominate the wedding scene in the region. Although described as a 9/8 rhythm, it’s essentially a lop-sided 2/4.

Recommended album

Selim Sesler: The Road to Keşan (Traditional Crossroads, 2000)

Sesler is probably Turkey’s greatest Gypsy clarinettist and, with his ensemble of violin, kanun (zither), cümbüş (banjo) and percussion, plays the local wedding repertoire of the Thracian Gypsies – spectacular karşilama and other dances. Magnificent. SB

22 Kwaito

South Africa

After apartheid, South Africa needed to find a fresh sound that reflected both its new optimism and the return to the international fold of the newly-liberated ‘rainbow nation’. That sound was kwaito, a uniquely South African hybrid of local beats and such imported forms as hip-hop, house and techno.

Recommended album

Various Artists: Kwaito: South African Hip-Hop (Virgin, 2000)

Fourteen killer tracks that start with the late Brenda Fassie, include Bongo Maffin and Boom Shaka and end with Arthur’s ‘Don’t Call Me Kaffir’, perhaps the defining expression of the new-found pride and confidence of township youth that followed Mandela’s election. NW

23 MAKOSSA

Cameroon

It started life as a rhythm in a hand-clapping game among school kids in Cameroon. Then in 1972 Manu Dibango adapted it, added a dash of American-style funk and turned it into ‘Soul Makossa’. The track was picked up by a New York radio station and the makossa phenomenon was born. Once there were nine different versions of the track in the Billboard chart and the makossa beat has even been credited with launching the 70s disco boom. Michael Jackson later copied the rhythm on his album Thriller.

Recommended album

Manu Dibango: The Very Best Of (Manteca, 2000)

Dibango’s Soul Makossa album has been reissued, but can be hard to find. This compilation includes the original, which is still the best. NW

24 MARRABENTA

Mozambique

The sweetly rolling rhythms of marrabenta may not sound particularly insurrectionary, but during Mozambique’s war of liberation, the colonial Portuguese authorities moved ruthlessly to stamp it out, believing music was a medium of revolution. They failed, of course, and since independence marrabenta has defied years of civil war to become an all-singing, all-dancing emblem of national identity, combining an affinity with other tropical rhythms such as salsa and calypso with distinctive elements of island tradition.

Recommended album

Mabulu: Soul Marrabenta (Riverboat 2001)

A wonderful, multi-generational union of marrabenta veterans and the rising stars of contemporary Mozambican music. NW

Youssou N'Dour

25 MBALAX

Senegal

Throbbing, syncopated cross-rhythms played by traditional sabar drums in an eloquently chattering dialogue with electric guitars, blaring saxophones and full-blooded Wolof vocals – it can only be mbalax, the dominant sound of modern Senegal, pioneered by the incomparable Youssou N’Dour that has become one of the rhythmic glories in the rich patchwork of pan-African music.

Recommended album

Youssou N’Dour: Lii (Jololi, 1996)

Many of Youssou’s albums have tended to be tailored for Western pop audiences. To hear mbalax at it raw best, try his recordings for the Senegalese market, such as this album with his band Super Étoile de Dakar, originally released on cassette but now available on CD. NW

26 Merengue

Dominican Republic

The national dance music of the Dominican Republic, merengue moves to a driving 2/4 rhythm. Originally acoustic and rural, and involving guitars, accordions and percussion – marimbula (box thumb piano), bubbling tambora drum and sharply slashed metal guiro (scraper) – it was adapted for 50s society bands by the dictator-president Trujillo, and subsequently influenced by rock and salsa, by Johnny Ventura and Wilfrido Vargas.

Recommended album

Kinito Mendez: El Decreto de (Sony, 1997)

The quintessentially modern Mendez creates eclectic mixes, including the deeply African ‘El Suero de Amor’ and meringue for the reggaeton era, ‘Looke my Baile’. SS

27 Morna

Cape Verde

Sitting several hundred miles off the coast of West Africa, the Cape Verde islands’ unique geographical location has fostered a rich set of hybrid rhythms combining African and Brazilian elements with strong hints of Portuguese fado. Most famous of all is morna, a slow, blues-like minor key shuffle that is both poetry and dance and the soundtrack to the nation’s soul.

Recommended album

Cesaria Evora: Miss Perfumado (Sony BMG, 1992)

The undisputed ‘queen of morna’, Evora has made a string of potent albums since emerging in her mid-40s to become an international star. Miss Perfumado is one of her best and includes her signature tune, ‘Sodade’. NW

Continued ➔ 50 Rhythms of the World (Part 2 – N to Z)