drumbeat

1. (by extension) A repetitive beating sound.Examples: "This music has a groovy drumbeat that makes me dance!"; "The drumbeat of roadside bombs and suicide attacks continued all over the 2d Brigade, 10th Mountain Division's area of operations."; "Rycant stood close enough to catch his words despite the drumbeat of rain on the thick leaves above their heads, but only Rectoria picked up the note of relief."broadly

2. (figuratively) A driving force.Examples: "Nevertheless, greatness rarely receives public approval, because most people spend their lives goose-stepping to the drumbeat of economic necessity."; "On a more scholarly level the drumbeat of need was signalled too: as when the newly appointed headmaster of the Merchant Taylors' School, Richard Mulcaster, declared: 'it would be a thing verie praiseworthy ... if som one learned and as laborious a man wold gather all the wordes which we vse in our English tung ... into one dictionarie.'"; "We can hear the drumbeat of history, right in our own time."figuratively