ABSTRACT
Are West-African traditional rhythm timelines more complex than North-Indian talas? Can the choice of the ostinato rhythmic pattern in Steve Reich’s Clapping Music be informed in terms of rhythm complexity? Has the evolution of the popular rhythms of the world favored an increase in their complexity? Can the di culty of learning to perform a rhythm be predicted with a simple and elegant mathematical formula? How similar is the rhythmic oddity property prevalent in the Aka Pygmy music to the Western concept of syncopation? How powerful is rhythm complexity as a feature for music genre classication and music information retrieval? An introduction to the search for answers to these questions is the focus of this chapter.
