End Accents in Other Cultures

Question

Disclaimer: It's difficult mixing terminology between Western and non-Western musics, but I'll try to make my question as clear as possible.

Western Classical music most often has an accent at the start of a given metrical unit; we call it the downbeat. Although there may be an anacrusis, the metrical accent nevertheless typically aligns with the beginning of a barline. In contrast, I've heard that some non-Western cultures are "end accented" and focus on the ends of units/phrases; is this in fact the case?

And a bonus question, if this even exists: are there cultures that metrically emphasize something other than the beginning or end?

Answer 1

Rock, pop, and rhythm and blues often emphasize the second and last beat. This emphasis also serves as a backdrop to funk (more below). Reggae has an even heavier emphasis on the same beats often accompanied with an offbeat emphasis.

Regarding the bonus question, jazz emphasizes the offbeat and in the jazz "subculture" the band leader typically counts in by snapping the fingers of one hand on the offbeat. In contrast, funk emphasizes the first beat together with "in the pocket" usually expressed as a few select notes from a shuffle pattern while leaving out (some) dotted notes. It might be a stretch to say that these examples belong to a specific culture, but all these genres are ultimately of African-American origin.

What these examples have in common is often multiple layers of emphases from different instruments. In this regard, these modern genres are rather polyrhytmic than homorhythmic. In postclassical contemporary art music, polyrhytms take this concept to the extreme. They are most common in minimalistic (or more specifically "postminimalistic") works, which originated mainly in New York during the 1960s.

Answer 2

I've recently studied solkattu, South-Indian (Carnatic) spoken percussion, which could be viewed as one instance of this ending accent.

One element of solkattu is gopucha, which translates to "cow's tail." Gopucha is a process by which rhythmic elements become increasingly tightened together. Because of this tightening, it's not always immediately clear when the rhythmic process will end.

Here is a quick example of gopucha; listen to how the performer's "ta di gi na" syllables become increasingly closer together.

Another major element of this style is kanakku, which translates to "calculation." When a gopucha is to be introduced, then, the performer must calculate when to begin the gopucha so that the ending aligns with the conclusion of the tala (meter).

As such, the practice can be understood as "end accented" because it's not about processes starting together (as is so often the case in the Western style), but rather processes ending together.

(In the 6.5 years since asking this question, I have not found any styles with accents in the middles of units.)