I stood at the edge of the group, listening to the music carefully, unable to find the rhythm.  Every clap to what I felt was the beat, fell directly opposite those of the rest of the crowd.  I tried again, my frustration rising rapidly with the crowd’s refusal to keep the beat.  Was it possible that this entire group of people was unable to find the rhythm of music they had heard since birth?

When I finally realized that they were not trying to hit on the beats but rather in the spaces between them, I stepped back and listened.   There was a moment of struggle to re-adjust my expectations.  Then, I felt it. 

A volley of sound rose between the audience and the musicians.  Each of the musicians’ notes were absorbed individually by crowd and returned before the arrival of the next.  Their beats echoed off the few buildings and broke free of the town to radiate into the desert night. I closed my eyes and heard the shape, the texture of the plaza in the reflected sound and the openness of the land in the pauses.

That evening is still crystalline in my mind.  It has become an irreversible part of my understanding of music, rhythm and performance.