The Great Divide

David Olivares

In many social spheres of music, it is accepted that a divide lies between classical and popular music wherein classical is more existent in association with your mind and popular is so with your body. However, I personally believe that both sides can be part of both the mind and the body.

This diagram shows the connections that music makes with the mind and the body via the brain.

The mind and body, in my opinion, work in tandem. Music is one of the few activities that stimulates both sides of the brain, meaning it causes your body to have both an analytical and creative approach If you are the one playing, it gives you the motor skills necessary to allow you to play. The body, of course, is what controls the playing, and part of performing can be how you move with the sounds you make. Just from a biological standpoint, you need the mind to activate the body’s functions. Lots of performers (and their audience members), like Yuja Wang and Alicia Keys, move their bodies to express themselves in combination with the sounds produced. It may their emotional response; it may be just passion for the performance. Regardless, both their minds and bodies are involved.

The song “Joe” by AJR samples Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16. Listen and see how your body reacts as popular and classical music worlds collide.

Listening to all the attached pieces and judging my movements in reaction to them afterwards, I think it isn’t necessarily what the style of the music is, but rather the energy and rhythmic structure it possesses. Songs that have a fixed rhythmic structure/time signature are easy to move to, and songs that are particularly upbeat or busy are also easier to move to (not objectively, but just as my observation). I think the reason people don’t typically listen participatorily at classical concerts is because our modern society has given classical music an academic/traditional label that people are scared to break or change. Not all popular music is meant for dancing, right? A type of music is not meant to classify it as a monolith in which only the mind or body participates. If a song makes me want to move, then I will feel inclined to move, no matter the genre. I propose that there is no divide, but a harmony in which mind and body function together.