Bipedal steps in the development of rhythmic behavior in humans

We contrast two related hypotheses of the evolution of dance: H1: Maternal bipedal walking influenced the fetal experience of sound and associated movement patterns; H2: The human transition to bipedal gait produced more isochronous/predictable locomotion sound resulting in early music-like behavior associated with the acoustic advantages conferred by moving bipedally in pace. The cadence of walking is around 120 beats per minute, similar to the tempo of dance and music. Human walking displays long-term constancies. Dyads often subconsciously synchronize steps. The major amplitude component of the step is a distinctly produced beat. Human locomotion influences, and interacts with, emotions, and passive listening to music activates brain motor areas. Across dance-genres the footwork is most often performed in time to the musical beat. Brain development is largely shaped by early sensory experience, with hearing developed from week 18 of gestation. Newborns reacts to sounds, melodies, and rhythmic poems to which they have been exposed in utero. If the sound and vibrations produced by footfalls of a walking mother are transmitted to the fetus in coordination with the cadence of the motion, a connection between isochronous sound and rhythmical movement may be developed. Rhythmical sounds of the human mother locomotion differ substantially from that of nonhuman primates, while the maternal heartbeat heard is likely to have a similar isochronous character across primates, suggesting a relatively more influential role of footfall in the development of rhythmic/musical abilities in humans. Associations of gait, music, and dance are numerous. The apparent absence of musical and rhythmic abilities in nonhuman primates, which display little bipedal locomotion, corroborates that bipedal gait may be linked to the development of rhythmic abilities in humans. Bipedal stimuli in utero may primarily boost the ontogenetic development. The acoustical advantage hypothesis proposes a mechanism in the phylogenetic development

Jazz musicians and South Slavic oral epic bards

Albert Lord writes in The Singer of Tales (2000:13) that for the South Slavic oral epic poet, or guslar, "the moment of composition is the performance." The guslar is concurrently performer, composer, poet, and singer. In performance, he participates creatively in shaping the tradition of which he is a part rather than acting merely as a transmitter. Similarly, though in a much more restricted sense, European art music of the late nineteenth century embraced a concept of performance--as contrasted to presentation--in which the musician provided "linear tension that went beyond what could be notated . . . and freely manipulated every part of every phrase . . . to achieve a performance that was itself inherent to the process of communication" (Ledbetter 1977:149-50).Issue title "Slavica." Note: E-companion at www.oraltradition.org at time of printing

Interpreting the fossil evidence for the evolutionary origins of music

ABSTRACT The adaptive history of two components of music, rhythmic entrained movement and complex learned vocalization, is examined. The development of habitual bipedal locomotion around 1.6 million years ago made running possible and coincided with distinct changes in the vestibular canal dimensions. The vestibular system of the inner ear clearly plays a role in determining rhythm and therefore bipedalism did not only make refined dancing movements possible, but also changed rhythmic capabilities. In current scenarios for the evolution of musicality, the descent of the larynx is regarded as pivotal to enable complex vocalization. However, the larynx descends in chimpanzees as well, for reasons unrelated to vocalization or bipedalism. A new perspective discussed in this paper is that vocal learning capabilities could have evolved from a simple laryngeal vocalization, or a grunt. The burgeoning literature on the neuroscience of musical functions is of limited use to investigate the origins of rhythmical and vocalization capabilities, but the out-of-proportion evolution of the cerebellum and pre-frontal cortex may be relevant. It suggested that protomusic was a behavioural feature of Homo ergaster 1.6 million years ago. Protomusic consisted of entrained rhythmical whole-body movements, initially combined with grunts. Homo heidelbergensis, 350 000 years ago, had a brain approaching modern size, had an enlarged thoracic canal which indicates that they had modern-style breathing control essential for singing, and had modern auditory capability, as is evident from the modern configuration of the middle ear. The members of this group may have been capable of producing complex learned vocalizations and thus modern music in which voluntary synchronized movements are combined with consciously manipulated melodies

Getting into the groove: the development of tempo-flexibility between 10 and 18 months of age

Despite good early rhythm processing abilities, and clear enjoyment of music, infants appear not to be able to spontaneously synchronize their movement to the beat of a song (Zentner and Eerola, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 2010, 5768). We present a new social bell-ringing task designed to facilitate synchronous movement to music in infants. Ten-month-olds, 18-month-olds, and adults were played musical tracks of various tempos and given handheld bells to ring, in the presence of either a live experimenter or an animated nonsocial stimulus. Surface electromyography (EMG) was used to measure the timing of arm movements during periods of bell ringing. Infants showed no evidence of synchronous bell ringing at any tempo. However, while the 10-month-olds did not modulate their ringing to the music tempo, the 18-month-olds showed tempo-flexibility. Moreover, 18-month-olds displayed more associated behaviors such as bouncing and rocking in the absence (rather than presence) of a social partner, whereas the behavior of the 10-month-olds was not modulated by the presence or absence of a social partner. The results suggest a distinction between “moving together” and “moving to the beat,” which may have separate underlying mechanisms and developmental trajectories

EFFECT OF ORFF-BASED MUSIC INTERVENTIONS ON STATE ANXIETY OF MUSIC THERAPY STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Orff-based music therapy as a potential music intervention used to decrease state anxiety of music therapy students. For these students, high levels of state anxiety can be detrimental to the quality of clinical treatment, and ultimately their career goals. Thirty-two music therapy college students volunteered for the study and were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. Participants individually took part in either a three-minute breathing intervention or improvisation music intervention and completed the state portion of the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) as a pretest and posttest measure. One-way repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted to compare groups and potential differences from pretest to posttest. Results of the ANOVA revealed a statistically significant decrease in anxiety for both conditions with neither emerging as more effective than the other. Implications for professional fields and recommendations for future study are discussed

An Analysis of the Compositional Practices of Ornette Coleman as Demonstrated in His Small Group Recordings During the 1970s

This study is an examination of the musical output of Ornette Coleman’s small ensembles during the 1970s. The primary goal of the paper is to define the specific changes that took place in the early part of the decade that distinguish the artist’s later musical conception from that which he employed during the previous years. In order to create such a discussion, the study explores several areas of both Ornette’s life and music, and asserts that throughout this decade Ornette’s creative processes frequently exceeded the boundaries that existed in his music of the previous period. The paper is divided into three sections: historical background; Ornette’s “Renaissance”; and an analysis of compositional techniques and improvisatory style between 1971 and 1979, the years that comprise his most extreme departure from the practices in his earlier and more commonly accepted recordings. The overall trend shows an apparent shift in Ornette’s musical thinking represented by several experimentations with ensemble, tone color, and compositional practice. The result of these undertakings eventually gave rise to a new vision for his art represented by the electric group, Prime Time

Low back pain in ballet, modern, and hip-hop dancers

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Low back pain (LBP) is a global medical issue that continues to rise in the general population. However, the consequences of low back pain in dance populations have been difficult to quantify, in part due to varying injury definitions. Low back pain is a multifaceted problem that is anecdotally common, but more research is needed to understand how low back pain impacts dancers’ lives and movements. The key aim of this thesis was to investigate low back pain in ballet, modern, and hip-hop dancers, and provide practical recommendations based on the findings. The aims of this thesis were to: (a) investigate the dancers’ perspectives on low back pain and what aspects of their lives and dancing it affects, including a determination of what movements dancers associate with exacerbating their low back pain, and (b) to further examine these movements, through archival and biomechanical research, to provide recommendations to the dance community. Study 1 assessed the dancers’ perspective on the impact and management of low back pain through an online questionnaire disseminated to primarily ballet, modern, and hip-hop dance populations. The results showed that low back pain negatively impacted dancers’ dance movements and non-dance activities, with spinal extension movements being most frequently reported as a movement that increased the dancers’ low back pain. Therefore, Study 2 utilized archival dance videos from YouTube.com to identify how often dancers were exposed to the movements that they reported in Study 1 as exacerbating their low back pain. Results showed that the dance movements that exacerbate low back pain were present in all the dance environments studied: ballet class and performance, modern dance class and performance, and hip-hop breaking, cyphers, and battles. Ballet performance environments had the highest number of total spinal extension movements (77±69.8), and hip-hop cypher environments had the highest frequency of spinal extension movements per minute (7±9.6). Recommendations for training focuses, based on the complete movement profile for each dance genre, are also presented. Study 3 used a case study to examine the biomechanics of three spinal extension movements: the ballet arabesque, the modern dance attitude with body roll, and the hip-hop dolphin dive. The influence of speed on the forces of the spine in dance had not been studied previously. Results suggest that thoracic and lumbar spine joint angles, angular velocity, and angular acceleration increase all three dance genres when performing movements from slow to fast speeds. Collectively, the results in this thesis verified that low back pain is an impactful condition with significant negative consequences for those dancers who are afflicted. The results also revealed dancers are frequently exposed to movements that they report can increase their low back pain. The results show increased angular displacements, angular velocity, angular acceleration in spinal extension movements performed at progressively increasing speeds. However, further research is needed to confirm if the forces at the low back increase as speed increases, and to clarify the role of asymmetry in movements that increase dancer LB

Musical Cities

Musical Cities represents an innovative approach to scholarly research and dissemination. A digital and interactive 'book', it explores the rhythms of our cities, and the role they play in our everyday urban lives, through the use of sound and music. Sara Adhitya first discusses why we should listen to urban rhythms in order to design more liveable and sustainable cities, before demonstrating how we can do so through various acoustic communication techniques. Using audio-visual examples, Musical Cities takes the ‘listener’ on an interactive journey, revealing how sound and music can be used to represent, compose, perform and interact with the city. Through case studies of urban projects developed in Paris, Perth, Venice and London, Adhitya demonstrates how the power of music, and the practice of listening, can help us to compose more accessible, inclusive, engaging, enjoyable, and ultimately more sustainable cities