Rainer Polak

Associate Professor
Image of Rainer Polak
Norwegian version of this page
Email rainer.polak@imv.uio.no
Room 323
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Visiting address Department of Musicology ZEB Building 2nd floor Sem S?lands vei 2 0371 OSLO
Postal address Department of Musicology P.O. Box 1017 Blindern 0315 Oslo

Bio

Rainer Polak is Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Rhythm Research at the RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion and at the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. Prior to that, he held researcher positions at RITMO (2022–2024), MPI for Empirical Aesthetics (2017-2022), and HfMT K?ln (2011-2016). His study background is in social anthropology and African studies (MA 1996 and PhD 2002, University of Bayreuth).

At RITMO, Polak leads a research project funded by the Research Council of Norway, DjembeDance (2023–2027).

Publications

* joint first authors

Polak, R. (2025). From Mali to Ghana: Pulsation Non-Isochrony in West African Percussion Music Genres. Analytical Approaches to African Music, 1(1). https://africa.iftawm.org/aaam-vol-1-iss-1/

Lenc, T., Lenoir, C., Keller, P. E., Polak, R., Mulders, D., & Nozaradan, S. (2025). Measuring self-similarity in empirical signals to understand musical beat perception. European Journal of Neuroscience, 61(2), e16637. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejn.16637

Jacoby, N., Polak, R., Grahn, J. A., Cameron, D. J., Lee, K. M., Godoy, R., Undurraga, E. A., Huanca, T., Thalwitzer, T., Doumbia, N., Goldberg, D., Margulis, E. H., Wong, P. C. M., Jure, L., Rocamora, M., Fujii, S., Savage, P. E., Ajimi, J., Konno, R., . . . McDermott, J. H. (2024). Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries. Nature Human Behaviour. 

London, J., Jacoby, N., & Polak, R. (2022). Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Cross-Cultural Corpus Studies: Two Case Studies from Mali. In D. Shanahan, J. A. Burgoyne, & I. Quinn (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and Corpus Studies. Oxford University Press.

Polak, R., & London, J. (2022). Tempo, meter, and form: An analysis of “Dansa” from Mali. In L. Shuster, S. Mukherji, & N. Dinnerstein (Eds.), Trends in Word Music Analysis (pp. 143–159). Routledge.

Polak, Rainer, & Doumbia, Noumouké (2022). Learning to dance in rural Mali. In A. v. B. Wharton & D. Urbanavi?ien? (Eds.), Dance and Economy, Dance Transmission: Proceedings of the 31st Symposium of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) Study Group on Ethnochoreology (pp. 282–290). Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.

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 (2021). Presenting yourself through dance: Participatory and presentational aspects of dance performance at local festivities in southern Mali. In V. Apjok, K. Povedák, V. Sz?nyi, & S. Varga (Eds.), Dance, Age and Politics: Proceedings of the 30th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology (pp. 67–82). University of Szeged.

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, justin (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 Gro?stadt. 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.

Published June 9, 2022 12:07 PM - Last modified June 27, 2025 12:11 PM

Projects

External links

Research interests

  • Music and dance from Mali;

  • Biological constraints, social learning, and cultural variation in rhythm perception and production;

  • Multimodality in rhythm performance and perception;

  • Performance and audiency beyond the concert hall.

Performance as a research method: Polak plays accompaniment in the context of apprenticing to master djembe drummer Jeli Madi Kuyate, at a name-giving celebration in Bamako (1994).

Research approach

Polak's research focuses on case studies of drumming and dance practices from West Africa, while at the same time also developing comparative perspectives on cross-cultural variation in human rhythm perception and production. This research aims at integrating approaches from the humanities and the social, computational, and cognitive sciences. Such breadth requires support and close collaboration with colleagues, including music theorist and music cognition researcher Justin London, computational scientist and cognitive scientist Nori Jacoby, (ethno)musicologist Lara Pearson, and cognitive neuroscientist Sylvie Nozaradan, among others.

Parallel to his career as a researcher, and especially during gaps in his academic career, Polak also worked as a freelancer and taught djembe drumming. Throughout his career, he has worked as closely and sustainably as possible with Malian artists. First and foremost, he learned from them due to their enormous artistic generosity. At the same time, he has endeavored to provide platforms for their artistic work in the Global North, e.g., in the form of CD productions and the repeated organization of concert and workshop tours.