
The music moves us, but how? (2018) - ohjeez
https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2018/music-moves-us-how
======
TaupeRanger
"We have no idea, but here are some areas that light up in an fMRI machine
when you listen!"

~~~
Bootwizard
/thread

I feel like this kind of "research" is the bulk of neuroscience papers that I
see these days. Or they're at least the ones that get shared the most because
they claim to explain things that haven't been explained yet.

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bobbiechen
Levitin also points out in "This Is Your Brain on Music" that

 _Only relatively recently in our culture [...] did a distinction arise that
cut society in two, forming separate classes of music performers and music
listeners. Throughout most of the world and for most of human history, music
making was as natural an activity as breathing and walking, and everyone
participated.

[...]

A couple of generations ago, before television, many families would sit around
and play music together for entertainment. Nowadays there is a great emphasis
on technique and skill, and whether a musician is "good enough" to play for
others. Music making has become a somewhat reserved activity in our culture,
and the rest of us listen._

I didn't really realize this until reading this passage. I am lucky enough to
have learned piano at an early age, and have picked up other instruments along
the way. Even so, I was hesitant to sing around others until I took a leap and
joined a choir in college, and got in enough practice to gain the confidence
to sing more.

Music is an incredibly important part of my life, and it makes me a little sad
to see how often people are too embarrassed of their own ability to
participate.

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woodandsteel
Here's Tony Royster, jr doing some crazy things going in front of or behind
the beat
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh8PATuI_NU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh8PATuI_NU)

And here is a musical performance that actually makes many people cry
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8KrpwqxE4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8KrpwqxE4g)

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amelius
What I find interesting is that in some cultures people dance together (e.g.
as couples or as a group), but in Western culture people mostly prefer to
dance alone. And often people even zone out, focusing only on the music and
ignoring other people.

~~~
Sharlin
That’s a _very_ recent phenomenon even in the West. Solo dancing as a
widespread cultural phenomenon was basically born in the 50s, in conjunction
with rock’n’roll.

~~~
tlb
Is that because the music is cool and varied enough that it's now fun to just
dance alone, but it wouldn't have been fun with older music?

Or because, with 1000 kinds of music today, nobody can figure out how to dance
together to a given song?

Or did people dance alone all the time in the old days, but nobody recorded
it?

~~~
Sharlin
There are likely many reasons, among them the fact that the invention of
recorded sound made listening to music something you could do alone in the
first place, and the general trend of individualization in the Western society
in the 1900s.

When it comes to partner dancing, there exist modern social dances that can be
danced to a wide variety of pop music, mostly descendants of the original
30s/40s swing dances like Lindy Hop and Jitterbug, and even moreso than those
predecessors, emphasize improvisation and nontraditional lead–follow dynamics.
West Coast Swing is probably the most popular example while by no means
mainstream; partner dances simply aren’t that fashionable even if there has
been a resurgence of some sort in the past decades. (Coincidentally, I happen
to be currently in Budapest, at one of Europe’s largest annual WCS events!)

Of course, there’s the fundamental fact that solo dancing requires next to no
skill, while acquiring even basic partner dancing skills requires one to take
a class, or at the very least ”learn by doing” in an appropriate environment.

