Herbert on rhythm

Recently I have realised that the only definition of music that makes any sense to me is that music is rhythm. It is only when you hear, or put, one thing after another, whether it be another sound or silence, that it becomes music. It's when you put the sound of 20 or 30 rotary cleaners buffing the marble floor of the Palm Hotel in Dubai at 2am next to the sound of a hollow plastic paint bucket used as a stool – a stool now spinning on the floor of the poorly lit, open shower cubicle in the Sonapur worker's camp on the outskirts of the city, after it has been knocked over by one of those delirious cleaners showering at the end of the night shift – that you get to hear the rhythm of a civilisation, an era, a vision in decline.

The fact that music can now be of these things, and not just about these things, is the liberation for which musicians have unknowingly waited years. It's time we started listening again.