Musicing

This morning our new baby was propped up in a chair and the other three kids and I were dancing around trying to get her to smile. It was working. I noticed that as they were dancing the kids were making up their own music (each their own tune). So was I. I thought of traditions in which people sing to accompany dancing and wondered if there are any revivals of these practices in North America. I see contra-dance clubs advertised here and there; I wonder how a play party club would fare. At any rate, dancing and singing simultaneously seems to be a “natural” human expression. Music is inextricably connected to the body, whether in the “aesthetic” realm in which movement is conceptualized/remembered or in “real-time” where the body moves with the music (or the music moves with the body!). Of course, I sincerely doubt that the kids were thinking about this kind of stuff and for me it was just a passing thought–we were just enjoying dancing for the baby.

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