If you study music theory in a typical school setting, you might get the idea that the V-I cadence is the fundamental cornerstone of all harmony, or at least, of all “Western” harmony. In a standard theory course, V-I is the first chord progression that you study, and for several weeks or months, it may be the only one you study. Here’s a representative quote from School of Composition:
In tonal music, the dominant chord is just as important as the tonic because it’s the chord that makes us want the tonic. Even if we’re not aware of it, hearing the dominant chord makes us expect its tonic.
It’s THE chord that makes us want the tonic. Even if we’re not aware of it! But that is only true within a certain stylistic context: the music of Western European aristocracy between 1700 and 1900, and the musics descending from it. The conventions of Western Europe’s aristocracy have been very influential, especially in formal academic settings. However, they don’t encompass all the tonal music in our culture. A defining feature of harmony in Black American music is the de-emphasis or elimination of the V-I cadence.
The world of groove harmony is a world where V7-I is rare or absent, and where the tonic is defined through metrical placement, emphasis and repetition. It’s not necessary for tonal music to have any chord changes at all. A lot of the music I like the best comes in the form of what Philip Tagg calls one-chord changes: “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin, “India” by John Coltrane, “I’m Bad Like Jesse James” by John Lee Hooker, “Spoonful” by Willie Dixon, “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” by the Temptations, “Shhh/Peaceful” by Miles Davis.
Then there are songs that do have chord changes, but which don’t use V7. Funk and dance music are full of I-IV and i-IV grooves, as in “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite and “Chameleon” by Herbie Hancock respectively.
The standard twelve-bar blues uses I, IV and V, but blues musicians treat the V chord as optional. “My California” by Lightnin’ Hopkins and “Boogie Chillen” by John Lee Hooker both omit V. “Cousin Mary” by John Coltrane replaces V with #IV. When blues tunes do include V, they often insert IV7 before I. Music theorists like to explain this by saying that IV7 is just an embellishment of the underlying V7-I, but I hear the opposite: V7 is decorating IV7, like a suspension. Rock songs do the same thing. David Temperley and Trevor DeClerq’s analysis of rock harmony shows that, within their corpus, IV-I is the most common way to resolve to tonic.
Gerhard Kubik argues in Africa and the Blues that blues tonality originates in the natural harmonics of scale degrees 1 and 4, and that it was only later adapted to be played on Western instruments tuned in 12-tone equal temperament.
[T]he vocal lines superimposed on a guitar harmonic cycle, when it is in the three common Western chords, often circumvent those chords, most regularly avoiding the dominant, while the subdominant seems to be more acceptable. Even quite generally, the dominant chord is the least used in the standard 12-bar harmonic pattern, being found only in measure 9, sometimes in measure 10 (though usually replaced by the subdominant chord), and sometimes as a “turnaround” at the end of measure 12 to signal the coming of the next cycle. When the dominant chord does occur, it is usually “pulled” toward the subdominant (from measures 9 to 10 in the standard 12-bar form) or toward the tonic (after the “turnaround” in measure 12). In some other instances, musicians substitute for the dominant chord, as in “Two Jim Blues” by George Lewis and in many recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson, where he played a VI7 chord at the beginning of the third line of a blues structure, followed in the next measure by a IV (subdominant) chord (pp. 140-141).
Kubik goes on to say that blues musicians “tend to circumvent, avoid, or quit the dominant chord quickly, as if it lacked oxygen.” Some of my friends on Twitter expressed this same thought:
Because I was raised on pop, rock, hiphop, loop based music's, I really don't like using V Chords in my compositions. They sound "obvious" to me
— Hector Bonte (@HectorBonte) July 29, 2021
https://twitter.com/black_zappa/status/1420770713288445954
Even when Black music does use V7-I as its underlying harmony, the leading tone resolution (7^-1^) rarely appears in the melody. The melody might go 2^-1^ or 6^-1^ for a major pentatonic sound, or b3^-1^ or b7^-1^ for a bluesier sound. In “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5, there are lots of V-I resolutions, but the vocal melody contains zero leading tones. It’s all 2^-1^, and then at the end when they’re ad-libbing, a few instances of b7^ to 1^ as well.
It’s quite common to sing or play the tonic on V, even though it’s a “wrong” note. In Western classical music, you can only use 1^ on top of a V chord if you promptly resolve it to 7^. However, Black musicians will very often not resolve the suspension. For example, listen to Aretha Franklin singing “Amazing Grace”. She’s in A-flat. When she improvises, she often sings A-flat on top of the Eb chord, not as a temporary suspension for G, but as the main note.
In “Starfish and Coffee,” Prince does the same thing. He’s in A, and he often sings A on top of the E chord, never once resolving it to G-sharp.
The ubiquitous I7 chord in blues and related music further weakens the feeling of cadences. When you go V7 to I7, the tritone doesn’t “resolve”, it just slides down a half step. You feel I7 as tonic because of its metrical placement and emphasis, not because of the voice leading.
Blues harmonica is an especially clear example of Black American music’s relationship to the V-I cadence. The harmonica was originally invented to play V7-I cadences and nothing else. When you blow into a harmonica, you get the I chord, and when you draw through it, you get the V7 chord with an added ninth. That’s all you can play… or so Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann believed. However, Black Americans realized that you can also mentally reverse the role of the two chords, so the drawn notes play I7, and the blown notes play IV. You can bend notes to make the blues scale and blue notes too. However, it then becomes literally impossible to play V7-I. You can bend 1^ flat to make the leading tone, but it’s hard to do that accurately, and it ends up sounding like another blue note.
Okay, but Ethan. What about ii-V-I? Don’t jazz musicians use that progression constantly? Yes, they do. However, if you look at how jazz musicians actually play ii-V-I, they do everything they can to soften and obscure the feeling of 4^/7^ resolving to 3^/1^. For example, when you resolve from G7 to Cmaj7, the leading tone B doesn’t resolve at all, it just carries through. The B might also resolve down to A or up to D, with the root C in a different octave, or totally absent. It sounds more like jazz musicians are signifying on the idea of classical V7-I than faithfully reproducing it. In fact, a pretty good definition of “jazzy” playing would be “using voice leading and extensions to disrupt the feel of functional harmony.”
A Schenkerian would read the previous paragraph and say, okay, sure, jazz uses a lot of chord extensions, but at the deep, structural level, it’s still using the same V-I cadences as Beethoven. The problem is that because so much of the meaning of jazz harmony is at the “surface” level of specific voice leading and rhythmic placement, Schenkerian analysis is a poor method for understanding it. (Also, Schenker hated jazz and was super racist.) You can squint your eyes at Oscar Peterson’s chord voicings and see that they’re “really” V7-I cadences, but then you’re erasing the qualities that make them sound like Oscar Peterson as opposed to Beethoven.
But so, who cares? What does it matter if we start by teaching students using the conventions of Western Europe in the 1800s, and then later bring them up to speed on the past hundred years of Black music? The problem is that few music majors do ever learn about Black music. When they get to the 20th century in theory class, they learn about tone rows, not about the blues. As a result, there are all these musicians and academics out there who think they are hearing V-I even when they aren’t.
As an eager undergrad, I was taught that V-I was the most common, "right" way to end a phrase, and applied it to all music I listened to, mainly blues-derived. So basically I trained myself to hear IV-I and call it V-I … took YEARS to undo this!
— Jacqueline Warwick (@JacquelineWarwi) July 29, 2021
Music theory matters, because it isn’t just about understanding a piece of music that you are already hearing correctly. Theory sets the parameters of what you think is allowed, or even what’s possible. Your understanding of theory (or lack of understanding) can change the notes and chords you think you are hearing, especially if you are listening casually. My experience playing Black music showed me that if you have the chords G7 and C, you can just as easily make them sound like the key of G as you can make them sound like the key of C.
Meanwhile, by putting too much emphasis on historical Western European conventions, music theory teachers are alienating or confusing a significant portion of their students. It’s too common for non-classical musicians to speak negatively about learning music theory, or make it a point of pride not to have learned it.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. Let’s stop teaching the preferences of nineteenth century Austrian aristocrats as if they have any kind of objective truth. Let’s teach European tonal harmony as a very widely used and influential system, but only one among many. For all those students who want to make or learn about music that’s closer to home, let’s make sure to equip them with the tools to do so. It would be good for enrollment, and even better for equity.
Update! Read some nuanced pushback from Devin Chaloux.
Spicy take indeed @ethanhein – I'm going to take issue with a few points here, and especially on the idea of V7-I cadences as "harmonic whiteness"
A thread. https://t.co/1XE2uH8lRp
— dc.PhD (@d_chaloux) August 30, 2021
For some less enlightening discourse, check out the Facebook Music Theory group’s comment thread.
This is a really intriguing explanation about why modern pop music generally eschews the V7-I cadence. I always thought this was part of a sense that this would harm the general ethos of the style – where harmonic changes tended to be smooth, eternal, not goal-centered. Where the goal was to sustain a groove!
I always thought about the downplaying of meaning of V in the same way – that “cooler”, gentler harmonic movements like IV-I were preferable to the momentous V-I.
Of course, as you’re pointing out, in music that’s influenced by blues, the seventh is simply part of the scale, not a dissonance that requires resolution. Thus the V7 would lose its meaning. And I need to think about all of this again in the context of your observations.
If Prince sustained an A over an E chord without resolving it to G#, I would have seen that as an 11th-chord-like moment, a consonant 4th… but listening to the example you give in the context of your article, I hear it more as a reminder that, even while we’re in the V chord, we’re not really somewhere different. The I chord is ever-present. The V chord is simply not a big deal.
I try to understand pieces of music, including pieces I’m writing, by asking the question: “How does this music create tension and release?” For some music, the answer to this question is I-V-I. For other music, it isn’t. You can create tension and release with I-IV-I. You can create tension and release with I-I-I if you switch between different extended voicings of the I chord. You can create tension and release by changing register, timbre, rhythm, or lyrics instead of changing the harmony at all. So I totally agree with you that trying to jam everything into a I-V-I framework is not productive. That said, I tend to think of I-V-I as a resource that belongs to everyone. It’s a gift, like any musical material that provides us an opportunity to communicate and somehow touch each other’s souls is a gift. I’m not convinced that associating I-V-I or any other basic chord progression with a particular racial or cultural identity is going to help me understand music any better. Certainly, to associate it with Schenker would be to give him too much credit! He doesn’t get to own it, and nor do any other members of the Western European aristocracy, just because they talked about it a lot.
To be clear, I don’t think of I-V-I as belonging solely to Western Europeans. However, the idea that this chord progression is the defining feature of all tonal music is specific to white theorists with an ethnocentric agenda. It’s also a specifically white thing to try to explain that the conventions of Western tonality have unique explanatory power over all the rest of the world’s music as well. Maybe this kind of thinking doesn’t help you understand music per se, but it’s essential to help you understand the history of music teaching, and its current state.
So there are two separate things here. One is understanding music. The other is understanding the history of music theory and music education. It’s hard to separate the two because whenever we try to understand music, we end up turning back to the music education we’ve had. Still, they’re separate things. There’s how music works. And there’s how we were once taught it was supposed to work.
I agree with your point that much of musical academia (at least as I’ve experienced it) has an ethnocentrist agenda. But the title of your post is “V7-I cadences as harmonic whiteness” and I’m not sure I’m reading it right but this title seems to be making a direct connection between a chord progression and a racial/cultural identity. What is your message with this title? The next time a composer of any background sits down to write some music, and they happen to sketch out a V7-I cadence, would you want them to look at the notes on the page and think “Oh, I am manifesting whiteness here”? Is that a thought process that helps them make better music or be a better musician? Is it possible to simultaneously take exception to the ethnocentrism that pervades the history of western music education while also believing that basic musical resources (fundamental chord progressions, I-V-I, I-IV-I etc.) are available to all composers and performers to use towards expressive ends in a way that isn’t constrained or inflected by race?
I used that title because V7-I has a specific quality for an American listener, and “white” is an accurate name for that quality. In the tweets that I quote in the posts, those guys are describing the sound as “obvious”, “country”, and “Western.” I have also heard “square”, “corny” and “plain vanilla”. Five out of those six descriptors are synonymous with “white”, and “obvious” refers to the sound’s hegemonic normativity, which in America also means “white”. Certainly in my own writing, if I want the music to read as white-sounding, using a lot of perfect authentic cadences is a good way to achieve that. More to the point, if I want to make a good-sounding funk or hip-hop or dance groove, then I will make sure to not use any V7-I.
I appreciate the impulse to want music to live in a race-blind world where everything is available to everyone. I mean, no one is stopping any Black artist from composing like Beethoven, and no one is stopping me from playing the blues. But it doesn’t actually advance antiracist goals to pretend that these musics have no racial valence, it just reinforces the status quo. I want us to name whiteness so that we know what we’re dealing with.
I’d have to disagree with “V7-I has a specific quality for an American listener, and ‘white’ is an accurate name for that quality.” If you flip through a couple of radio stations over the course of a day you can hear V7-I literally thousands of times, rendered by white and black artists alike, in tons of different musical situations. It’s a general enough progression that it can be emphasized and dramatized or played casually and quietly like punctuation at the end of a sentence that we barely notice as we read. While it’s perhaps the most recognizable chord progression (for those who know how to identify it), it doesn’t have one specific form or affect. Personally, I think of V7-I and other chord progressions not as “essences” but more like paints — expressive tools — that can be used in different ways and can take on different qualities depending on the artist and the work (in the same way that red paint, for example, is both easily identifiable and representationally non-specific: it can be used to represent lipstick or gushing blood or a blooming rose, very different things). Whether V7-I sounds “obvious” or “country” depends largely on context and execution. As you say, it occurs all the time in jazz, but in jazz it’s often executed with a focus on smooth voice leading and with harmonic extensions that create variety and surprise. Great — that’s one way to render V7-I that leads to one affect. Another is to strum it with open “cowboy chords” on a guitar while singing a folk song — a different sound/affect. The fact that some people characterize it as “square” or “corny” when they hear it in certain contexts — and the fact that some music by black artists avoids it — might be interesting to note, but it isn’t enough of a data point to conclude that V7-I is a fundamentally “white” thing. I’m not a music historian or academic and I don’t know if the lead sheets for black spirituals that I have access to are “authentic” but when I look through them I see V-I everywhere. I hope it’s possible to be an antiracist, I hope it’s possible to reject the ethnocentrism in the music theory and music education establishment, I hope it’s possible to acknowledge the many ways that race and music-making are intertwined, but also to think that certain basic musical building blocks like I-V-I are abstract and fundamental enough that they themselves do not possess “whiteness” or “blackness” as immutable qualities.
You won’t hear those V-Is equally distributed across all the radio stations. You’ll hear them frequently on the classical station, and a bit less frequently on the country station. On the rock station, you’ll hear them less frequently than IV-I according to David Temperley and Trevor DeClerq’s 2011 study. On the easy listening stations you’ll hear them more or less frequently depending on the era of the music, with fewer of them as it gets more contemporary. On a station that plays blues, funk or R&B, you will hear some, but not many, especially in the music of recent decades. And on the hip-hop station, you can listen for hours without hearing any V-Is at all. The pattern is not subtle.
As to the spirituals, I would be less concerned with what’s on the page and more concerned with how Black artists actually perform them. Listen to Aretha Franklin singing “Amazing Grace” in the video in my post, there are V-Is in the underlying changes but the way she sings the melody avoids the leading tone consistently.
I love this blog, and am fascinated by music theory and its application (or mis-application), but I’m not a scholar, so I’m not familiar with some of the terminology, such as “IV7″ and ” 4^/7^ resolving to 3^/1^” (though I think I understand the gist of the latter). I’d love to be edumacated…
I follow the convention that Roman numerals are chords and Arabic numerals with hats on them) are notes/scale degrees. So let’s say you’re in the key of C. You would label the notes in the scale (C, D, E, etc) as 1^, 2^, 3,^ etc. So in C, 4^/7^ resolving to 3^/1^ means F/B resolving to E/C. In a perfect world those little hat symbols would be on top of the numbers rather than next to them, and that’s how they do it in scholarly journals and such. The point of them is to clarify that these are scale degrees and not some other kind of number.
Now let’s think about chords. The chords in the key of C (C, Dm, Em, etc) are the I, ii, iii etc chords. In classical music, you’d write I, II, III, but jazz convention is to use uppercase for major chords and lowercase for minor chords. I like jazz convention better, because it’s nice to able to distinguish between, say, the IV and iv chords. You can put extensions on Roman numeral chords just like regular chord symbols. So in the key of C, the IV7 chord would be F7.
Thanks, Ethan. Claro. Gracias!