Tresillo is the name of one of the most widespread rhythmic structures around the world. It is fundamental to son and salsa music as it describes the three-side of clave which is the key rhythmic pattern used in salsa songs around the world. Geographically, it can be found from Marocco to Indonesia stretching across Africa, the middle East and South Asia while at the same time being fundamental to Latin American and European music. It can be found in musical types as diverse as Jazz, Mambo, Ragtime, Salsa, R&B, Rock and Roll and Tango music.
While its origin can be traced back to Sub-Saharan Africa it is unknown when exactly this rhythm was developed although the earliest reference to it comes from a manuscript in thirteenth-century Baghdad where it was called al-thakil al-thani. The slave trade is one of the key factors that contributed to the rhythm spreading around the world and it pops up throughout history in some of the most famous musical pieces ranging from George Bizet’s opera Carmen to the song Hound Dog by Elvis Presley. In fact it is used so often in traditionally music that it can be viewed as a universal rhythm or cultural meme.
Superimposed over a 2/4 metre it is famously known as the Habanera cross-rhythm, the congo, tango-congo, tango or the tresillo-over-two. This epimoric ratio (3:2) is usually referred to as hemiola or hemiolia in music, also known by its Latin name sesquialterum or sesquialtera meaning a perfect fifth. Tresillo can also be viewed as the first three cross-beats of four-over-three (sesquitertium). Tresillo, meaning "triplet" in Spanish, is the most fundamental duple-pulse rhythmic cell in Africa and Latin America and very closely related to the equally famous cinquillo pattern which can be seen as an embellishment of the tresillo rhythm. It is also closely related to the tumba francesa and the Puerto-Rican bomba.
Tresillo’s musical appeal among other things stems from the fact that it divides a measure into three notes which would normally be occupied by two notes achieving a highly syncopated structure. The rhythmical structure itself consists of 3 onsets across 8 pulses which is a very popular rhythmic structure internationally as discussed later in this blog series. The sounded pulses are on pulse 0, 3 and 6 as illustrated by the following notation:
. This means that when counting the pulses from one onset to the next onset we can write tresillo in its additive form (aka durational pattern or inter-onset interval structure) as 3 + 3 + 2.
