Rainer Polak
Research interests
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Music and dance from Mali;
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Rhythm, timing, meter, and entrainment;
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Cultural variation in music perception;
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Multimodality in rhythm performance and perception;
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Performance and audiency beyond the staged concert;
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Situated learning in vernacular music/dance practices.
Background
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2017 – 2022 Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
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2011 – 2016 Researcher, University of Music and Dance Cologne
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2006 – 2007 Postdoc, University of Bayreuth
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1993 – 2010 Djembe player/teacher, Freelance
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2002 Doctor of Philosophy (Social Anthropology), University of Bayreuth
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1996 Magister Artium (Social Anthropology, African Studies, African History), University of Bayreuth
Selected publications
Jakubowski, Kelly*; Polak, Rainer*; Rocamora, Martín; Jure, Luis & Jacoby, Nori (2022). Aesthetics of musical timing: Culture and expertise affect preferences for isochrony but not synchrony. Cognition, 227, 105205.
Polak, Rainer (2022). Non-isochronous metre in music from Mali. In M. Doffman, E. Payne, & T. Young (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Time in Music (pp. 252–274). Oxford University Press.
Jacoby, Nori*; Polak, Rainer* & London, Justin* (2021). Extreme precision in rhythmic interaction is enabled by role-optimized sensorimotor coupling: Analysis and modelling of West African drum ensemble music. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B,376(1835).
Polak, Rainer*; Jacoby, Nori*; Fischinger, Timo; Goldberg, Daniel; Holzapfel, Andre & London, Justin (2018). Rhythmic prototypes across cultures: A comparative study of tapping synchronization. Music Perception, 36(1), 1–23.
Polak, Rainer (2017). The lower limit for meter in dance drumming from West Africa. Empirical Musicology Review, 12(3-4), 205–226.
London, Justin*; Polak, Rainer* & Jacoby, Nori* (2017). Rhythm histograms and musical meter: A corpus study of Malian percussion music. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(2), 474–480.
Polak, Rainer*; London, Justin*; & Jacoby, Nori* (2016) Both isochronous and non-isochronous metrical subdivision afford precise and stable ensemble entrainment: A corpus study of Malian jembe drumming. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10, 285.
Polak, Rainer & London (2014) Timing and meter in Mande drumming from Mali. Music Theory Online 20(1).
Polak, Rainer (2010) Rhythmic feel as meter: Non-isochronous beat subdivision in jembe music from Mali. Music Theory Online 16(4).
Polak, Rainer (2007). Performing audience: On the social constitution of focused interaction at celebrations in Mali. Anthropos 102(1), 3–18.
Polak, Rainer (2004) Festmusik als Arbeit, Trommeln als Beruf. Jenbe-Spieler in einer westafrikanischen Großstadt. Berlin: Reimer Verlag.
Polak, Rainer (2000). A musical instrument travels around the world: Jenbe playing in Bamako, West Africa, and beyond. The World of Music, 42(3), 7–46. Reprint (2006) in J. Post (ed.), Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader (pp. 161–185), NY: Routledge Press.