--On Saturday, April 21, 2001 3:54 PM -0400 jobling@acsu.buffalo.edu wrote:
> [...]
> I'll just speculate a bit on these two questions. Your
> distinction between musical ability and dancing ability seems artificial
> and pedantic: after all, how well one dances is dependent on one's
> sensitivity to music, isn't it? Like Steve Martin in the old movie _The
> Jerk_, if you try to dance without having a sense of rhythm, you aren't
> likely to impress potential sexual partners. Given that these two
> activities universally accompany each other (see here the remarks about
> music in Brown's _Human Universals_), it seems artificial to say that they
> should be considered as rigorously separate behaviors. [...]
Dance without music would seem to be rare, and some measure of rhythmic
coordination of movements is certainly integral to both. But there are
plenty of contexts in which music is performed without dancing, and in
which the people producing the music are not the ones engaged in dance
display. I don't understand how the distinction is artificial and
pedantic, but perhaps it is.
My question concerned whether Miller's point is that musical ability
evolved to facilitate dance display. I'll have a look at the paper you
mentioned. I can imagine a scenario whereby musical display
(singing/playing music and not dancing) evolved as a by-product of music's
dance-facilitaing role, but it wasn't clear that this is what he had in
mind.
Arnie Cox
Assistant Professor Office (440) 775-8945
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music Home (440) 775-3174
77 W. College St. Fax (440) 775-8942
Oberlin, OH 44074 Arnie.Cox@oberlin.edu
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