African musical rhythm : an overlooked factor in East Africa's middle and long distance running success?

Abstract

This review article presents the contribution of rhythm as socio-cultural contributor to the dominance of East-African distance athletes. It aimed to qualitatively review similarities between growing up in music, bodily participation in music performances, rhythmic structures, polyrhythms, hemiola and syncopation and flow as elements of music and success of East African distance runners. Results of the review in general, suggest that East African music reflects the rhythm of life and performs a crucial function by integrating rhythm and human movement, including distance running as specific manifestation of human movement. It seems if East African runners perceive the function of rhythm differently than western runners and could have the ability to weave complex rhythms together in their running by interlocking and crossing different rhythmic patterns and structures. Because East-African runners grow up with and within rhythm through their music traditions and bodily participation in music performances, they most likely succeed to “live” rhythm in their distance running as opposed to western athletes who often deconstruct the running motion into different elements and implement a “learn to run” approach. Experience in and exposure to the polyrhythms of drumming as significant element of East African music could contribute to the distance runners being able to experience “flow” in their running. The broad findings of this conceptual review could have several significant implications for distance training in western countries as well as sport coach education syllabi.