Needless to say, a detailed study of these modifications would throw light on the characteristics of modern Jamaican music.
In Song XXXI. a typical non-European modification is the insertion of an extra (the fifth) bar, so that the phrase consists of nine bars. The five time in Song XI., the change of accent at the close of Song XXIV. and in Song XLI., are no doubt the expression of African delight in the complexities of rhythm.
In the already-quoted 'Koromanti song,' we may observe the curious temporary change of rhythm in the second air, and the characteristic measure which prevails throughout the third air with its syncopation and almost baffling changes. Such features are precisely what we should expect to meet with among a primitive people who more than two centuries ago doubtless possessed in a still higher degree that delight in complication of rhythm which according to Mr. Jekyll (p. 6) persists among their descendants of to-day. For a more detailed study of this aspect of the subject I may perhaps refer enquirers to my "Study of Rhythm in Primitive People" (_British Journal of Psychology_, vol. i. pp. 397-406).
The present taste and preferences of the Jamaican negroes may perhaps be gauged by the similarities and differences in the first bars of Songs LXIII., LXIV., and LXXVIII., by the similarity of Songs I. and VIII., XV. and XXVII., and of the bobbins in LIV. and LXVIII.
But it is not my intention to make a detailed analysis of the songs of the present volume. My object has been rather to emphasize our present ignorance of African music, and to indicate the lines along which a more intimate acquaintance with African and Jamaican songs may be expected to lead to conclusions as to their relation to one another.
By far the greater part of these Jamaican tunes and song-words seem to be reminiscences, or imitations, of European sailors' "chanties" of the modern class; or of trivial British nursery-jingles adapted, as all such jingles become adapted.
Except in the cases specified below, I have not found one Jamaican tune which is _entirely_ like any one English or European tune that I happen to know. But unrecorded folk-tunes are essentially fluid, and pass through endless transformations. In all countries any one traditional ballad may be sung to dozens of distinct traditional tunes, each of these again having variants. It is therefore quite possible that versions of some of the older-sounding Jamaican airs are being sung unrecorded at this moment in the British Islands or elsewhere.