How to Use polyrhythm in a Sentence

polyrhythm

noun
  • Lyrics are en Espanol, but your feet won't care a whit once the polyrhythms take over your soul.
    — Jessi Roti, Joe Gray, Kori Rumore, chicagotribune.com, 30 June 2017
  • Often, polyrhythms were implied, and then the band quickly started to play outside and around them.
    — Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2018
  • Noise, protest, and polyrhythms remain alongside declarations of love and hope.
    — Pitchfork, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Most tracks rise from a rubbery bottom that provides a bouncy platform supporting all sorts of polyrhythms.
    — Jim Fusilli, WSJ, 20 Dec. 2017
  • In his music, one hears long, flowing melodies combined with darting harmonies and intricate polyrhythms.
    — George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Sep. 2025
  • The music that played during sunset dinners carried the same polyrhythms as the drum circles at homecoming.
    — Shelby Stewart, Essence, 22 Oct. 2025
  • Across the various polyrhythms, Moran modeled how jazz can make more than one thing happen at the same time, and do so harmoniously.
    — Elizabeth Alexander, Time, 1 Apr. 2025
  • David Byrne needs to figure out the polyrhythms for Talking Heads’ Remain in Light?
    — Devon Ivie, Vulture, 4 Mar. 2026
  • Even the vocals are part of the intricate, incessant polyrhythms that make the group’s assault so unforgettable.
    — Kevin Williams, chicagotribune.com, 1 May 2018
  • The result was a steady stream of polyrhythms, outfitted with skittering variations of timbral color.
    — Seth Colter Walls, New York Times, 1 Oct. 2017
  • Saxophone, trombone and violin all tangled as the bass and vibraphone built a dicey polyrhythm underneath.
    — Giovanni Russonello, New York Times, 12 Dec. 2017
  • What hasn’t changed is the group’s penchant for Caribbean polyrhythms, Afrobeats and Latin-American melodies.
    — John Ochoa, Billboard, 23 Sep. 2019
  • Backed by funky polyrhythms from Dyson’s sticks, saxophonist Khari Lee blew a serpentine alto solo.
    — Dan Emerson, Twin Cities, 16 Oct. 2019
  • Anton starts with rhythm guitar, and then my guitar melody comes in, and then Arthur’s texture of strings takes over that, and eventually, the bass and drums playing a polyrhythm against the rest of us.
    — Liza Lentini, SPIN, 2 Feb. 2024
  • The solution was incorporating polyrhythms and syncopation to add greater variety to the timing.
    — Oliver Sava, Vulture, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Mirada is one of Cornejo’s most mature efforts yet, extending his brand of melancholy corridos and mixing them with alt-rock sounds and surprising polyrhythms.
    — Julyssa Lopez, Rolling Stone, 18 July 2024
  • Eighties Rush is a beast of its own, with walls of synths and an evolving approach from Peart, who began to embrace polyrhythms and reggae à la his friend Stewart Copeland.
    — Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, 12 June 2026
  • Reyna, backed by a few producers, leads a humid romp through the dance cultures of the Latin diaspora, melding bouncy polyrhythms, syrupy melodies, and field recordings of birds and moving water.
    — Stephen Kearse, TIME, 8 Dec. 2024
  • Instruments drift in and out, sometimes accreting into subtle polyrhythms or harmonies, and other times lightly undergirding Ederra’s gorgeous runs.
    — Stephen Kearse, Pitchfork, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Peart quickly became known as one of the fastest and most technically proficient drummers in rock, commanding a huge battery of cymbals and tom-toms and injecting Rush’s music with complex polyrhythms and tempo changes.
    — Al Shipley, SPIN, 12 Feb. 2025
  • Still, Levant’s inability to play Gershwin’s basic syncopations and polyrhythms correctly didn’t stop him from selling many performances and recording of the piece.
    — Ethan Iverson, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2024
  • After his lessons with Smith, Naqvi was best known as the drummer from Dawn of Midi, a mesmerizing trio that approached polyrhythm with a thrilling, almost scientific tenacity.
    — Chris Richards, Washington Post, 20 Dec. 2022
  • The instrumental rockers still pack a punch through core musical ingredients, including electric guitar, bass, drums and saxophone, to produce otherworldly polyrhythms.
    — Washington Post, 12 Mar. 2020
  • The interesting thing here is that the polyrhythms found in traditional music are fundamentally different than the general 4/4 beat of Western music.
    — Katie Bain, Billboard, 12 Sep. 2019
  • In this way, Koenig most resembles Simon, whose music—including its deft (if ballsy) adoption of polyrhythms from sub-Saharan Africa—has always been a major touchstone for the band.
    — Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024
  • His arrangements, with their reverberating acoustics and soft polyrhythms, often evoke bygone Appalachia; his lyrics are mournfully Arcadian in a way that evokes Thoreau.
    — Isaac Feldberg, BostonGlobe.com, 26 Apr. 2018
  • But Ode was again a wild card, working yet another polyrhythm of such power that even as Croker was playing beautiful, vibratoless romances, the drummer’s back-line improvisation was more interesting.
    — Michael J. West, Washington Post, 19 Sep. 2019
  • By the time mainstream radio was catching up to the nervy new wave of bands like the Talking Heads, frontman Byrne was pushing the group to incorporate African polyrhythms into their palette — several years before other rockers followed suit.
    — Joe Lynch, Billboard, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Seldom settling for straightforward linearity or conventional structure, the group arranged sophisticated polyrhythms into the aural equivalent of jigsaw puzzles, and juggled scales and time signatures with profound dexterity.
    — Bob Gendron, Chicago Tribune, 2 Nov. 2024
  • Like juju, the style popularized by King Sunny Adé, fuji was originally built upon an embarrassment of pulsing polyrhythms shaped on kit drums, congas, bells, shakers, and talking drums, without much else beyond hectoring call-and-response singing.
    — Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, 5 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'polyrhythm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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