Scholars have reinforced narrative tropes about Steve Reich's early works at the cost of musical description. Such tropes have discouraged actual description of Reich's techniques of sampling in It's Gonna Rain, and they have obscured Reich's early "structural borrowings" from African music. Scholars often draw connections between Reich's 1968 essay "Music as a Gradual Process" and contemporary aesthetics in art. For instance, when Reich claims that the process and the sounding music "are one and the same thing" this resonates with minimalist aesthetics in art. This aesthetic has become the "myth of minimalism," standing in for actual musical descriptions. In It's Gonna Rain, the process and the sounding music are not equivalent, for, as Reich mentions, when listening to phasing you hear unintended consequences. The many techniques employed in It's Gonna Rain, such as repetition of full statements, phasing, and monophonic sampling, are more analogous to Andy Warhol than to minimalist art. Considering Reich's influence from African music, Reich's "structural borrowing" from African music occurs much earlier in his output than has been acknowledged. Most scholarship only cursorily acknowledges Reich's influence from African music and only after 1971. But Reich's earliest works show the influence of "structural borrowing" from his study of A. M. Jones's transcriptions in Studies in African Music (Oxford University Press, 1959). In works such as Piano Phase or Violin Phase, Reich is borrowing structural features such as a 12/8 meter and non-coinciding downbeats. The principle of non-coinciding downbeats is what led Reich to set the two samples in It's Gonna Rain at different phase relationships. By dismantling the narrative tropes connecting Reich's music to minimalist art and by acknowledging his early study of African music, one comes closer to clarifying his minimalist style.

Works: Steve Reich: It's Gonna Rain (208-11, 213-19, 227, 230, 235-37); Piano Phase (226-27).

Sources: Brother Walter: Recorded sermon; A. M. Jones: African music transcriptions in Studies in African Music (233-36).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Kerry O'Brien