Music and Movement

Music and Movement

Right now, ACDC is playing on my lap top. ACDC is not one of the more complicated rock groups out there, and the lead singer sounds like maybe he is the last known male castrati. However, I have this huge urge to leap up from where I am sitting and start dancing and air guitar playing to the music. What is it about a band that maybe plays three chords on the guitar, a little rhythm guitar solo in the middle and not very complicated drum patterns that makes me want to head bang? I have always felt the impulse to move to music, and I believe that it is a basic human urge to move to a beat. I think that they both go hand in hand. Most music has a pulse, and if there is no pulse, people are thrown off. Why? I am not quite sure, but people seem to respond better if they can mentally and physically make sense of music. I took dance classes until I was 15 years old, so I have always moved to music. This also gave me a good sense of rhythm, I think. My parents would bounce me up and down in time to music on their knee, and I really think that had a great deal in my development of a good sense of pulse. When I was in middle school, I was in an Irish band. There is an Irish dance troupe in Jackson, Mississippi, so our paths would cross a lot. I learned how to Irish dance, and that was a lot of fun. In high school, I learned how to do African dance from Ghana. That was really cool! In every culture it seems that the people have made movement to music. From classical ballet dancing to awkward high school dances, I believe that dancing to music helps us express ourselves and allows us to feel the music.