Cross-cultural differences in free body movement responses to Argentinian and Afro-Brazilian music

Abstract

From all hidden assumptions behind the models of musical meter and rhythm, the notion that all individuals understand the periodic structure of music in the same way might be the most intractable and risky one. A number of evidences show that musical cultures differ in a number of aspects including cognitive priorities, musical function and relationships between music, movement and dance. From the methodological point of view, it is very difficult to describe the understanding of rhythm structures: tapping methods are limiting and biased, surveys can be too subjective and analyses of performances are ambiguous and multivariate. From the point of view of culture, cultural preferences may be subtle and comparisons between contrasting cultures might be unreliable. In this study we realize cross-cultural comparisons between free movement responses to musical cultures of samba and chacarera music, executed by Brazilian and Argentinian acculturated subjects. We use methods that track the density of kinematic events in the metrical grid at each level of the metrical structure. The results contrast to traditional models of metric structure by exposing an intrinsic diversity, variability and asymmetry of movement responses. The results also show morphological characteristics connected to cultural differences.