Congreso Internacional: Música y Corpografías / International Conference: Music and Body Matters
Marc Duby (University of South Africa)
Music, metaphor, and the body: Perspectives from philosophy and neuroscience.
It is not unusual to hear musicians and critics both describing music in linguistic or metaphorical terms, as in “the language of J. S. Bach” or “the voice of an instrumentalist.” While these are perhaps convenient shorthand methods for dealing with music, they may well lead us into interpretational errors when we are led to expect music to possess some kind of meaning or explanatory force in common with language. Following the lines of thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mark Johnson,Christopher Small and others, I aim to consider some implications of regarding musical performance as first and foremost originating in embodied activity.
These are:
- “Music” originates from musical activity taking place at specific times in specific spaces and places, and is performed by specific individuals
- While musical performances are clearly embodied, its ubiquitous products are available in digitised formats which tend to obscure its origin as embodied activity
- Despite its wide availability, claims to music’s power to affect us emotionally are culturally located, and optimistic suggestions that music is a universal language tend to ignore its specific location in particular times and places
- Describing music as a language may well undermine music’s power to move us as music, and places an unwarranted explanatory obligation on musical activity.
If music is not considered as a universal language (or a language at all), there may well be room to re-examine the ancient question of its power to affect us as a species. It seems to me that the phenomenological method offers some fruitful ways of considering music as music, as a different social phenomenon from language, and finally that this philosophical method may well provide a useful and appropriate framework for engaging with music. |
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 Mohan Samant
"Musical Evening at Home"
Asian American Art Centre
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