From Dance! to "Dance": Distance and Digits.

The relationship between "art" musics and vernacular (or "popular") musics in Western society is complex and has a long history. From engagement and synthesis to incomprehension and antagonism, this relationship has reflected larger social trends--themselves the product of economic and technological change. Within this continuity, there are periods of intensified exchange. In the 1920s, for example, it centered on jazz, but in the 1990s the picture was not so clear. There is a cautious consensus that in the 1990s, there was a profound difference: art music itself appeared to be increasingly isolated as a minority interest (an old argument to be sure, but increasingly highlighted). Another major contribution to this polemic has been the ever-increasing access to sophisticated tools for music production that computer technology has enabled.

The Roots of Music

Let us assume that music has its origin in the earliest experiences of our evolution, namely in the body and in the environment.

The Body

The body generates many rhythms and sensations with cyclic periodicities lying within the duration of short-term memory. The most important are breath, pulse, and the limb movements of physical work, dance, and sex. These are a product of our biological evolution, our size, and our physical disposition in relation to the mass of the earth--hence its gravitational field--and would be different if we had evolved to be the size of a bat or an elephant, or if the earth had possessed a different mass.

The Environment

The environment has a different time scale--with both periodic and aperiodic rhythms--and this is often beyond the limits of short-term memory. This often necessitates repeated listening and consignment to long-term memory, thus encouraging contemplation and consideration: water, wind, the seasons, landscape.