Happy and Holistic Syncopation Behind Dance

Stylish, spirited and very talented

I ran into Anatomy Of A Dance Hit: Why We Love To Boogie With Pharrell, and was curious as to what neuroscientists from Denmark had to say about Pharrell Williams' crazy hit:

Moving to music is an essential human pleasure particularly related to musical groove. Structurally, music associated with groove is often characterised by rhythmic complexity in the form of syncopation, frequently observed in musical styles such as funk, hip-hop and electronic dance music. Structural complexity has been related to positive affect in music more broadly, but the function of syncopation in eliciting pleasure and body-movement in groove is unknown. Here we report results from a web-based survey which investigated the relationship between syncopation and ratings of wanting to move and experienced pleasure. Participants heard funk drum-breaks with varying degrees of syncopation and audio entropy, and rated the extent to which the drum-breaks made them want to move and how much pleasure they experienced. While entropy was found to be a poor predictor of wanting to move and pleasure, the results showed that medium degrees of syncopation elicited the most desire to move and the most pleasure, particularly for participants who enjoy dancing to music. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between syncopation, body-movement and pleasure, and syncopation seems to be an important structural factor in embodied and affective responses to groove.

Reference: Syncopation, Body-Movement and Pleasure in Groove Music.

Those are a lot of words to say what happens when it comes to dance beat.  Syncopation is how music shifts from a strong beat to a weak beat, jarring the rhythm some, adding quirkiness to it, and making it more interesting.  Howard Goodall explains:

The neuroscientists found that as far as making us want to dance, it was a matter of balance between predictability and complexity: that is, just enough steadiness and orderliness, yet just enough jarring and quirkiness, too.

Besides `Happy, these three music videos have grabbed me off my seat, and made me dance exuberantly, and this while driving the car.  I imagine that how a song shifts among beats must, in and of itself, be syncopated, too.  In other words, the pattern of syncopation must also be syncopated, in what amounts to, perhaps, as meta-syncopation.  

Moreover, I imagine that it isn't just about sound, but also about visual, linguistic and cultural.  The lyrics of `Happy is inspired and determined.  Those of `Rock your Body and `Moves like Jagger are imperative.  The `Drill and `They Don't Care About Us are about a cultural phenomenon and icon, whose very aura is dance.  Science gives us insight, then, in to what makes us move to music, but art and spirit complete the experience for us.