Movement and Music

I must admit, I have never quite known how to move properly to music. To be honestly dancing has not been on my priority list since summer camp in 1988. My grandparents knew how to dance and it was real dancing to real music. In their generation kids could cut a rug to the swinging sounds of Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. In the suburban America I grew up in dancing was simply non existent. Had I grown up with the Hip Hop, Latin or European cultures where dance is still an integral part of life than I sure I would feel differently. But unlike the late great Mr. Brown I was born a Anglo and lame.



Perhaps one thing I like about playing playing and instrument is that you move you body purposefully to make music. You can forget for a moment how you look or even where you are in space for that matter and simply exist for and within the music. Leave the dancing and swaying to the listeners I'd rather be playing.

All that said I still believe that music and movement are inexorably tied. Rocking and singing my children to sleep each night for the past two years I have witnessed the profound union of parent and child in that simple movement. It's odd that when we have children those instincts just kick in as if they were waiting there all along. Stretching into the darkest mists of time when the question arises "what do I do with this crying child" the simple natural answer is to sing and sway. That sweet combination of voice, touch, and movement is magic to you're little one.
Music and movement are natural magnets to one another. Get one going and the other soon follows. One of the cutest things you will ever see you kids do is bob and bounce to music. When our daughter was around 6 months old I would bounce her on my knee and sing "pony girl, pony girl , won't you be my pony girl " Later we discovered that she would begin bouncing herself at the slightest suggestion of the song. One evening after dinner we put on the "Saturday Night Fever" album and watched both the kids just go nuts to it. They bounce and twirl and wave there arms to the music watching you and adapting your moves to fit their heightened level of exuberance . It's really amazing, we seem to be hard wired for this music and movement connection from birth.