Hope you have your dancing shoes on, because in this final episode of So Curious’ 4th season, Bey and Kirsten explore the science behind why music makes us dance!
First, they sit down with McMaster post-doctoral fellow Dr. Daniel Cameron to learn about his research into rhythm and the brain. Then, the two are joined by Dr. Jayatri Das, Chief Bioscientist of The Franklin Institute, to explore the incredible ways dance incorporates various sensory systems in our bodies. And to close out the season, Bey and Kirsten are joined by Philadelphia’s DJ Phreakwency to explore the history of dance music, the experience of being a DJ, and what in his experience gets the crowd moving!
Links for Today’s Episode:
- Learn more about Dr. Daniel Cameron and the research he’s part of at McMaster University into rhythm and the brain
- Check out DJ Phreakwency and his monthly dance party, Bass Down Low, at The Dolphin in Philadelphia.
Transcript
Hello, hello. I'm Kirstin Michelle Cills.
Speaker:And I'm the Bul Bey.
Speaker:And we are your hosts for this podcast, so they tell us.
Speaker:Yeah, this show is So Curious, presented by the Franklin Institute.
Speaker:And we are finally at the end of this
Speaker:season, which has been on the science of music and we're going out with a bang.
Speaker:Yeah, that's right!
Speaker:Because today we are looking at the science of rhythm.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:And first we're going to be joined by neuroscientist Dr.
Speaker:Daniel Cameron.
Speaker:He's going to share his work, where he's been searching to discover the hows and
Speaker:whys behind music and why it makes us move.
Speaker:Yeah, and then we'll be sitting down with Dr.
Speaker:Jayatri Das, Chief Bio-Scientist at the
Speaker:Franklin Institute, to learn how our bodies respond to dancing.
Speaker:And to close out the season, we're sitting down with Philadelphia DJ Phreakwency to
Speaker:learn about the history of dance music, and what it's like to guide the dance
Speaker:floor from up in that DJ booth, because that's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker:Yeah, this episode, you cannot play the wall, put on your dancing shoes.
Speaker:Let's get after it! Yeah.
Speaker:All right, so Bey, you've asked this
Speaker:question so many times to our guests this season.
Speaker:I'm going to turn the tables on you.
Speaker:When you listen to music, what part of your body moves first?
Speaker:It's definitely shoulders. Shoulders?
Speaker:Shoulders for me.
Speaker:But I got to say, if I hear a good beat, you got to get the head nod going.
Speaker:But shoulders are hard to go to.
Speaker:I'm moving my shoulders right now.
Speaker:He is popping off, folks! I mean, I would
Speaker:say probably, it's different for me every time, but I guess head.
Speaker:But also feet.
Speaker:I think my feet from doing years of tap dance, like that they just like-
Speaker:Ahh, they tap. - they go on.
Speaker:They go on.
Speaker:Yeah, they're my own little instrument there.
Speaker:Do you snap your fingers?
Speaker:I can snap, yeah.
Speaker:Well, I mean, do you? Like when you -
Speaker:No, not really.
Speaker:I guess if it's a song that really feels
Speaker:like it requires a snap, but that's not my instinct.
Speaker:It's not your instinct? Fair, fair.
Speaker:To give us some of the science behind this, we are now joined by Dr.
Speaker:Daniel Cameron.
Speaker:Daniel, welcome to So Curious.
Speaker:Can you please introduce yourself and what it is you do?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, I'm a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University, so I do research.
Speaker:The field of study that I'm in is in cognitive neuroscience,
Speaker:so it's trying to understand the relationship between the brain and human
Speaker:behavior and thinking and feeling and how we respond to the world around us.
Speaker:I'm specifically interested in music and musical rhythm in particular and what it
Speaker:is about music that gives us this amazing set of
Speaker:experiences and responses that makes us feel things emotionally.
Speaker:We move along, we like it, it brings us together socially.
Speaker:There's so many interesting aspects to this.
Speaker:So, that's the area that I study. Awesome.
Speaker:Are you a musician yourself? I am.
Speaker:I'm a drummer. Perfect then.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly!
Speaker:My interest in rhythm has been since I was
Speaker:a kid, and I didn't always think of it that way.
Speaker:I was a drummer from when I was a kid.
Speaker:My undergraduate degree was in music performance, actually.
Speaker:I studied percussion.
Speaker:In retrospect, I wasn't studying science at all.
Speaker:I didn't think about science.
Speaker:I didn't take any science at my undergrad.
Speaker:I only got interested in that later.
Speaker:But when I look back, it was always
Speaker:interesting to me, like, what is it about certain rhythms that I like them so much?
Speaker:I like to play them, or I can see the
Speaker:effect it has on people who are listening to me when I'm drumming.
Speaker:Certain kinds of rhythms make us want to move, or we just like them.
Speaker:Or how does that work?
Speaker:And then later on, I studied music from other cultures.
Speaker:I was really lucky in university to study music from West Africa,
Speaker:(percissive music from West Africa plays)
Speaker:and from Northern India,
Speaker:(percusive music from North India plays)
Speaker:and music from Indonesia.
Speaker:(percusive music from Indonesia plays)
Speaker:And getting to play this music and use different kinds of rhythms, whole
Speaker:different rhythmic systems and musical systems.
Speaker:That process of learning to appreciate and
Speaker:enjoying those kinds of rhythms was like a mind-expanding experience for me.
Speaker:How does this happen?
Speaker:How do we change our perception in these ways?
Speaker:So that came back around once I got interested in neuroscience and psychology
Speaker:of this topic, of cross-cultural learning and how we can learn new kinds of rhythms.
Speaker:Why does music make us move? Let's start there.
Speaker:That's a good question, and you can think of that question in different ways.
Speaker:You can think of it like, okay, what is it about the music in a given moment?
Speaker:Why is it that you might want to move or move more to some music than others?
Speaker:Or you could think of it like on the bigger evolutionary perspective.
Speaker:Why is it that we have music as a human
Speaker:species and we have music and dance always going together in music-related movement.
Speaker:So why do we move to music?
Speaker:There are theories on the evolutionary side, on the long-term side of why we have
Speaker:music and musical movement, and then it brings us together.
Speaker:So there's research on this, that if you have people synchronize their movements
Speaker:together, and music is great for letting that happen and making that happen,
Speaker:then people are more likely to feel socially bonded afterward.
Speaker:So we've seen this in experiments with children, where you have them bouncing
Speaker:either in synchrony with an experimenter while they're listening to some rhythms,
Speaker:or in a kind of asynchrony, different pattern than the researcher is doing.
Speaker:And if you test those toddlers afterward,
Speaker:in terms of how likely they are to help that person, that experimenter, in some
Speaker:little task like, oh, the experimenter dropped something.
Speaker:Will the toddler come over and pick it up and give it to them?
Speaker:They're more likely to help that person if
Speaker:they've been bouncing along in synchrony as opposed to a different pattern.
Speaker:That shows this pro-social effect of moving together in synchrony.
Speaker:And this has been shown in all different groups and different methodologies.
Speaker:The pro-social aspect, the bringing together of people, making us feel like
Speaker:one group, feeling good about one another is useful.
Speaker:That makes us work together as a community better.
Speaker:Music has this function, and that's one thought about how music and music related
Speaker:movement help us and why we have it in our species at all.
Speaker:Okay, so I have a question.
Speaker:So babies have rhythm, and it's wild
Speaker:because they haven't necessarily been taught it, right?
Speaker:Is it inherent or is it learned?
Speaker:I imagine there's a good combo of both.
Speaker:But if it was never around human, like adult humans, would it still have rhythm?
Speaker:I think you're onto something there.
Speaker:It's some of both.
Speaker:So the evidence that this is something
Speaker:universal is partly what I was saying before.
Speaker:We see this in every culture across the
Speaker:world, some aspect of moving along to music.
Speaker:And we see this in pretty young children and even babies.
Speaker:You see that they'll tend to move to
Speaker:rhythmic music more than music that's more flowy and doesn't have as strong rhythm.
Speaker:And there's research on this.
Speaker:They don't have the motor control to synchronize very well.
Speaker:Like you can't ask a baby, "Okay, tap
Speaker:along with the beat," and they do that really well in the way that an adult can.
Speaker:That's how we do a lot of experiments to test perception of rhythm.
Speaker:But babies, if you just look at their
Speaker:spontaneous movement, they're a little more likely to move when they're listening
Speaker:to rhythms compared to something that's different than rhythms, like speech.
Speaker:If they're listening to someone speaking,
Speaker:they don't move as much as when they're listening to rhythmic music.
Speaker:So that shows that at least from a very
Speaker:early age, that they've got this association.
Speaker:Rhythms and movement are linked.
Speaker:And so, yes, it seems like there's
Speaker:something about the nature of auditory sequences, so sounds in time, and how
Speaker:they're structured, the way music tends to make rhythms, that goes really well from
Speaker:our auditory system to our motor system and allows us to move along.
Speaker:And that relationship is there, to some extent from very early age.
Speaker:The nurture side, you also see massive cross-cultural differences.
Speaker:If we put on some music from a culture that you've never heard that music from
Speaker:before, some traditional music from some far off place, you probably wouldn't just
Speaker:like, oh, pick up on the beat super easily and know how to move to it.
Speaker:It would sound, "okay, these rhythms are a little bit different, a little more
Speaker:complex sounding to me maybe," that it would take some learning and exposure.
Speaker:Definitely, our culture and our
Speaker:experiences as individuals shape how we hear music and how we move to music.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:It's not solved, like which aspects are hardwired and which are learned.
Speaker:And so there's one aspect of this I've
Speaker:been studying recently about something called syncopation.
Speaker:And in music, that's the like funkiness of a rhythm a little bit.
Speaker:It's the use of notes coming off the beat a little more, and more rests or pauses on
Speaker:the beat positions where you normally expect there to be strong notes.
Speaker:And syncopation occurs in all kinds of
Speaker:music, and it's a musical device that's used across the world.
Speaker:And there's an interesting relationship between syncopation, this certain type of
Speaker:rhythmic complexity, and our urge to move to the rhythms.
Speaker:So if you do experiments where you have people listen to a whole bunch of
Speaker:different rhythms, and you just have them listen to rhythms and then say, "How much
Speaker:did that rhythm make you want to move?" And people are pretty good at having an
Speaker:intuitive sense of like, "That's a five out of seven.
Speaker:I wanted to move somewhat to that.
Speaker:That's just a two, that was really boring." It turns out that the syncopation
Speaker:is very related to how much they want to move in an inverted U-shaped manner.
Speaker:So, very low levels of syncopation, so when a rhythm is very simple.
Speaker:(simple rhythmic pattern plays)
Speaker:People tend to not want to move to that as much.
Speaker:Rhythms that are very, very syncopated,
Speaker:really complex, it's harder to pick up on the beat.
Speaker:(heavily syncopated rhythm pattern plays)
Speaker:They don't want to move to those very much.
Speaker:But when there's this sweet spot in the
Speaker:middle, when there's some kind unpredictability, some
Speaker:kind of funkiness, some kind of complexity, that's the sweet spot, and
Speaker:people really like to move to those rhythms.
Speaker:("sweet spot" syncopated rhythm pattern plays)
Speaker:So that's an interesting fact in itself, and it seems like there's limited evidence
Speaker:of this, but it looks like this is fairly robust across different cultures.
Speaker:This is work that tested people from Ghana
Speaker:in West Africa and people in North America, and they didn't differ.
Speaker:They had the same relationship to
Speaker:syncopation and how much they wanted to move.
Speaker:We tested this in expert dancers and then
Speaker:people who have no dance training at all, and there was no difference there.
Speaker:They both have the same kind of relationship.
Speaker:It was the same sweet spot of rhythmic
Speaker:complexity that made them most want to move along.
Speaker:Even though the dancers have so much more
Speaker:experience moving to rhythms and different kinds of rhythms that they can move with.
Speaker:We also looked at this in children,
Speaker:and we're still trying to sort this out, but there's this question.
Speaker:Is this something that we learn, that if you can imagine, oh, as you get to learn
Speaker:more music, you hear your parents' music and your community's and you see how
Speaker:people are dancing, then maybe you learn the association between certain kinds of
Speaker:rhythms and the tendency to dance or to move along.
Speaker:Or it could be something about the way our
Speaker:brains are wired, that there's something about certain kinds of patterns and the
Speaker:way they engage our motor system, that it's a more fundamental thing.
Speaker:And it looks like it might be some of both.
Speaker:We found in three to six year old children that they also liked this sweet spot of
Speaker:some complexity, but not too much, and they wanted to dance more and did dance
Speaker:more to those rhythms compared to very simple rhythms.
Speaker:And now we're testing this in babies, and we're getting kind of a mixed picture.
Speaker:In some ways they're moving more, but then
Speaker:they tend to choose the very simple rhythms.
Speaker:This is still an area we're trying to understand.
Speaker:Awesome. Dr.
Speaker:Daniel, I want to ask you a bit of a personal question.
Speaker:Let's say you're listening to a song, you absolutely want to move.
Speaker:What's the first body part that you are moving?
Speaker:Are you tapping your feet, snapping your
Speaker:fingers, nodding your head, shifting your shoulders, swaying your hips?
Speaker:And what does that say about the brain?
Speaker:That's a good question.
Speaker:I think for me personally, I tend to bob my head a lot.
Speaker:I'm someone that really likes to move.
Speaker:Even if I'm at a classical music concert or something, I'm tend to like, "Oh, this
Speaker:is really nice and rhythmic." I'll bob my head along.
Speaker:I think that's a natural way that we move.
Speaker:And one thing about moving your head is
Speaker:that it engages your vestibular system, so our sense of balance.
Speaker:That comes from - we've got these inner
Speaker:ear structures that can detect when you're leaning to one side or the other by
Speaker:detecting, basically gravity, where your body position is.
Speaker:We know that the vestibular system is like, it's kind of a sense that we don't
Speaker:really think about very much, because unless you're getting dizzy by spinning
Speaker:around or something, we don't really think of it.
Speaker:If you're leaning to one side, you just
Speaker:automatically adjust your posture and your position.
Speaker:But we know that the vestibular system is
Speaker:sensitive to sound, even. So if you have loud sounds, that engages your vestibular
Speaker:system, and it's got close links to the motor system, so it might be involved,
Speaker:there's evidence that it's involved in rhythm perception as well.
Speaker:So that might be one reason that we like
Speaker:to move our heads, is that we're getting such a sensory
Speaker:experience from not just the feeling of moving any body part, but
Speaker:also our vestibular system is getting this activation.
Speaker:So that's one thing about musical
Speaker:movement, but people dance in all kinds of ways.
Speaker:You move your feet, you tap your foot.
Speaker:I'm a drummer, so I'm often drumming with my fingers and hands as I listen to music.
Speaker:It's just kind of a habit, bother all my colleagues, tapping on my desk and stuff.
Speaker:So I think there's different ways, based
Speaker:on our experience and what we have learned as normal ways to move.
Speaker:But I think there is something special
Speaker:about moving our heads to music that engages our vestibular system.
Speaker:You asking this question, Bey, has been very eye-opening.
Speaker:And I think like you said about drumming,
Speaker:how you just tap instinctively, I play piano. And I - not that I'm playing out
Speaker:chords with my hands, but when I'm being rhythmic, no matter where my fingers are
Speaker:going, I'm isolating them in different ways.
Speaker:I'm a hip hop artist myself, and so sometimes I find myself in studio sessions
Speaker:with producers and they'll play a bunch of beats.
Speaker:It's interesting to watch people respond to the beat.
Speaker:They'll kind of like, play air drums.
Speaker:It's like we're all in our own little mental concert in the moment.
Speaker:I feel like if you're a performer, I feel like that's just how it works.
Speaker:It's interesting to see the body
Speaker:physically respond to the music, and I guess try to get
Speaker:some information out of that in terms of what the brain might be doing there.
Speaker:And we know something about the
Speaker:way we engage our bodies and different parts of our body with rhythm, because
Speaker:rhythm has got this interesting property that it's hierarchical, right?
Speaker:There's the beat that we tend to like, if you ask someone, snap your fingers or clap
Speaker:along, they pick one rate and they'll easily clap along with that.
Speaker:But if you know music notation, that might be the quarter note.
Speaker:(quarter note sample plays)
Speaker:There's also the eighth note that's twice as fast.
Speaker:(eighth note sample plays)
Speaker:There's a half note that is also locking in.
Speaker:(half note sample plays)
Speaker:All of those fit equally well in the rhythm.
Speaker:We tend to pick one.
Speaker:But if you look at the dynamics of complex
Speaker:movement, when people are just dancing, when they're just moving spontaneously,
Speaker:not just executing one, kind of, clapping along with the beat or something.
Speaker:They tend to move a little differently.
Speaker:So lower body tends to be these slower
Speaker:movements, and upper body and hands tend to be the faster movement.
Speaker:So it might be like, oh, your half
Speaker:note is where you're feeling shifting from foot to foot and engaging your hips and
Speaker:legs, and then your hands are doing more eighth notes or something like that.
Speaker:This obviously varies from person to person and from music situation to
Speaker:situation, but there are some tendencies that way.
Speaker:We're doing a study now to try to see how kids are learning those things as well.
Speaker:When they're just dancing spontaneously, we record video of them dancing, and then
Speaker:we're doing some automatic analysis of tracking their body movements and what
Speaker:beat rates that their different body parts are synchronizing to.
Speaker:Fun research. Watch kids dance.
Speaker:My last question for you real quick, just
Speaker:in a sense is like, what are you excited for about the future of your research?
Speaker:Like what can we look forward to?
Speaker:I think there's more that we're doing that's exciting.
Speaker:This ongoing set of studies we have about syncopation.
Speaker:And another cool area of research we're
Speaker:working on now is related to bass frequencies.
Speaker:So we did a study where we added some extra bass - really, really low bass -
Speaker:to an electronic dance music concert and found that people danced a little bit more
Speaker:when these extra low bass frequencies were on compared to off.
Speaker:So that was a cool finding.
Speaker:The cool thing about it, one cool thing
Speaker:about it, is that they couldn't even hear when it was on.
Speaker:It wasn't like a change to the music in some perceptible way.
Speaker:It was a really, really low level effect, but still they danced more.
Speaker:How does this work?
Speaker:We're trying to do a study now to see is this the auditory system?
Speaker:Is it our tactile system?
Speaker:Because you can feel music as well, especially bass when it's loud.
Speaker:Or is it our vestibular system, our sense
Speaker:of balance that I was talking about before that's sensitive to these as well?
Speaker:We're doing a follow-up study to try to
Speaker:figure out which mechanism might be underlying this relationship between bass
Speaker:frequencies and dancing and the urge to move.
Speaker:I can't wait to find out!
Speaker:If you need a couple of people to dance,
Speaker:Kirsten and I will definitely come to some EDM concerts.
Speaker:Come on up!
Speaker:You can participate in our study, that would be great!
Speaker:Yeah, thank you! Well, Dr.
Speaker:Daniel Cameron, thank you so much for being on the So Curious Podcast.
Speaker:Thank you for being curious with Bey and I.
Speaker:Awesome. I enjoyed it.
Speaker:Thanks a lot.
Speaker:Thank you much, Dr. Cameron, for sharing your research.
Speaker:It's insane how natural rhythm and dancing seems to be for humans.
Speaker:And to explore the innate need to dance further, we are now joined - in studio!
Speaker:By Dr. Jayatri Das.
Speaker:As always, thank you so much for coming in to speak with us.
Speaker:Hey, Kirsten. Hey, Bey.
Speaker:How are you guys. Welcome back.
Speaker:We are so happy to have you.
Speaker:What are we talking about today?
Speaker:So, I want to talk about the science of how we dance.
Speaker:Oooo, I'm into that.
Speaker:So, I think the place where I start from
Speaker:is, you know there's this myth that we are constantly trying to bust, which is this
Speaker:idea that you only use 10 % of your brain, right?
Speaker:You use 100% of your brain.
Speaker:But I honestly think that dance is one of the best examples of how we can really
Speaker:appreciate how complex our brains are and how you get it all to work.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And as a side note, you just destroyed the plot of so many sci-fi movies.
Speaker:Oh, my gosh. Don't get me started!
Speaker:Yeah. We could do another episode of that!
Speaker:Only 10 % of our brains - all right, so in any case, dancing.
Speaker:Kirsten, can you dance?
Speaker:Yeah, a lot of my life has been taking a full curriculum in it in college, so yeah.
Speaker:Awesome. I mean, all of our time spent together,
Speaker:we've never been around each other dancing.
Speaker:We've been doing a lot of talking.
Speaker:Yeah, well the thing is, my dancing is jazz, tap, and ballet.
Speaker:It's theater dancing. It's still dancing.
Speaker:But dancing that you have to do while singing, so it's not as passionate.
Speaker:And, Dr. as, are you a...
Speaker:I will tell you that organized dance is my downfall.
Speaker:Okay. Like, just free motion I'm all about.
Speaker:But choreo is not your, yeah.
Speaker:Like, the Cupid Shuffle is my nightmare.
Speaker:It's my nightmare, too, for other reasons! It's just a nightmare.
Speaker:But yeah, that's so funny.
Speaker:It's like, having to know my right from my
Speaker:left in quick succession is not a strength that I have practiced.
Speaker:But this whole idea of synchronizing music and movement, right?
Speaker:Pulls in so many different parts of your brain, even just the fact that you start
Speaker:with listening and processing music in your auditory cortex
Speaker:and then your prefrontal cortex, which is about making meaning of things, then you
Speaker:have to decide what you're going to do so that pulls in your motor cortex in terms
Speaker:of planning your movement and executing your movement.
Speaker:You have to do that hand-eye coordination piece of it,
Speaker:the control that comes from your sensory cortex.
Speaker:You have to coordinate your movement to make it smooth
Speaker:- this is where I have incredible appreciation of modern dancers who
Speaker:just, like their bodies are incredibly smooth.
Speaker:And how you have that fluidity of motion is amazing to me.
Speaker:And that comes from the basal ganglia
Speaker:, that's kind of these structures that are deep in your brain.
Speaker:And then you have to put it all together!
Speaker:And that comes from the cerebellum.
Speaker:So there's just so many things happening
Speaker:in your brain that go into what feels like organic, fluid movement.
Speaker:And in a lot of Indian dance, like, facial
Speaker:expressions are such an important part of dance as well.
Speaker:Oh, wow. Yeah.
Speaker:And like Irish dance and tap is the same way.
Speaker:It's just moving the bottom half of your body.
Speaker:Irish, especially, it's literally like
Speaker:straight arms, and you're just moving your legs.
Speaker:The isolation that have to go into it!
Speaker:So one of my favorite things about dance
Speaker:is that it really helps us understand an expanded view of our senses.
Speaker:So what do we normally think of as our senses?
Speaker:Taste, sight, smell, hearing. Touch.
Speaker:Yeah, there you go. So we normally think of those five senses,
Speaker:but scientists think that we actually have many more senses, and there are a
Speaker:couple that I think are really well demonstrated through dance.
Speaker:So one is this idea of body awareness,
Speaker:that we have a sense of where our body parts are.
Speaker:So if I ask you to close your eyes and touch your nose, you can do that.
Speaker:I will vouch that you both just touched your nose.
Speaker:We just did it guys. Yeah, we did it.
Speaker:We did it. Successfully.
Speaker:No one got hurt!
Speaker:Right, so how do you know that?
Speaker:How are you able to do that?
Speaker:It's because you have this sense of where your body parts are.
Speaker:And that's a sense called proprioception.
Speaker:And then another one is our perception of balance.
Speaker:And this one actually starts to build on some of these other senses, because that
Speaker:is bringing in information from your eyes, information from your vestibular system in
Speaker:your inner ear, and proprioception of where your body parts are in space.
Speaker:And so the fact that when you're dancing, all of these things are at work.
Speaker:I mean, our bodies are amazing! Yeah.
Speaker:I think the number one question I always get, like doing ballet is like, "How are
Speaker:you doing triple pyrouets and not getting dizzy?" And it's like, "Because we're
Speaker:spotting." But yeah, you'd think you would get dizzy if you're looking everywhere as
Speaker:you spin, you're going to totally get dizzy.
Speaker:So I'll leave you with one last little
Speaker:interesting tidbit, which is that in our brains, there are some neurons that
Speaker:actually get activated when you just watch an action.
Speaker:And so essentially watching that action
Speaker:creates the same brain activity as if you were performing that action.
Speaker:And some of the best studies around this phenomenon have been done with dance,
Speaker:because what scientists have observed is that these have a greater response when
Speaker:you watch an action that you're familiar with.
Speaker:So I love this experiment, because they did experiments with dancers using ballet
Speaker:dancers, capoeira dancers, and non-dancers.
Speaker:And they looked at these - What's a non-dancer?
Speaker:That would be me!
Speaker:Right! They had Dr. Das there.
Speaker:Let's just say a non-expert dancer.
Speaker:And
Speaker:so they looked at the activity in these brain regions, looking at what happens
Speaker:when a ballet dancer is watching ballet or a ballet dancer is watching
Speaker:capoeira, all of those different combinations.
Speaker:And what they found is that the more familiar you are, so when the ballet
Speaker:dancers are watching ballet dances, when capoeira dancers are watching capoeira,
Speaker:they have stronger responses than when you cross it, like when you tell the ballet
Speaker:dancer to watch capoeira or a capoeira dancer to watch ballet.
Speaker:And then the non-dancers - non
Speaker:-expert dancers - have a lower threshold for both, right?
Speaker:Because they just don't recognize
Speaker:these patterns of movement that activate their brain to respond in the same way.
Speaker:And so these types of neurons are called the concept of mirror neurons, that you're
Speaker:essentially mirroring what you see in your brain.
Speaker:And it's really interesting to look at
Speaker:these as how your brain mechanisms are actually influenced by cultural learning.
Speaker:This is not something that's necessarily innate.
Speaker:There was a time when people thought they
Speaker:might be in there like, "Oh, mirror neurons.
Speaker:They're gonna explain everything!" And they don't.
Speaker:But in this case, the patterns do seem to
Speaker:be pretty strong when it comes to this physical motion and thinking about how
Speaker:dance has really helped us understand that.
Speaker:Jayatri Das, thank you so much for coming
Speaker:through again with another incredible Body of Knowledge segment. Thank you.
Speaker:Oh, yes, thank you. Always fun, thanks, guys.
Speaker:Thank you so much again to Jayatri for
Speaker:joining us throughout this season and all seasons.
Speaker:We love having her on the podcast and in the studio.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And now we are joined by DJ Phreakwency for a crash course in dance music.
Speaker:Thank you so much for joining the show!
Speaker:Cameron, thanks for being here! Yeah, welcome.
Speaker:Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely. Can you introduce yourself?
Speaker:Tell us about yourself, what you do. Sure.
Speaker:As you stated, my name is Cameron.
Speaker:I DJ under the name Phreakwency.
Speaker:I do a number of things.
Speaker:I'm involved in nightlife by way of venue management.
Speaker:I have a creative consulting and management firm.
Speaker:I have a residency at The Dolphin called Bass Down Low with my two best friends,
Speaker:Chris, who is also named Nailsalon and Tia, Lowiron.
Speaker:Love it. Awesome.
Speaker:So we would love to know, what genres and styles do you subscribe to?
Speaker:Like someone's going to see a Phreakwency
Speaker:set, what genre style are they expecting to see?
Speaker:In the beginning, I like to start off with
Speaker:a lot of Midwest-centric stuff on the slower end, primarily like Ghetto House,
Speaker:Hard House, some Deep House, and then into some of the slower Detroit Midwest techno,
Speaker:which is very different from what they do over in Berlin.
Speaker:And with our party Bass Down Low, we're
Speaker:very intentional about that, because it's a very specific sound.
Speaker:But I kinda move into some UK garage.
Speaker:I do a lot of footwork.
Speaker:I do a lot of juke, and I do a lot of club music.
Speaker:I've been in Philly for three
Speaker:and a half years now, and so I've been just completely immersed in Baltimore
Speaker:Club, Jersey Club, Philly Club very heavily.
Speaker:No, that's dope. Frequency, you just threw out a lot.
Speaker:Definitely open that up.
Speaker:Talk about those cultural touch points.
Speaker:You talked about the Midwest.
Speaker:You talked about UK. Seriously.
Speaker:You talked about Philadelphia.
Speaker:What's the differences between those genres of dance and house?
Speaker:Are we talking about tempo, speed? Jump right into it.
Speaker:It's all that tempo, speed, feel, the
Speaker:message that they're trying to convey to you.
Speaker:I think specifically like going back to techno and dance music,
Speaker:all of that kind of started out in Chicago and Detroit.
Speaker:Chicago creating house - they were
Speaker:communicating back and forth with New York by way of various DJs starting at The
Speaker:Warehouse, which is how House Music supposedly got its name.
Speaker:They were playing disco, they were playing post-disco records like Zapp and Roger and
Speaker:then a lot of Donna Summer, and eventually got to that 4/4 kick that we all know.
Speaker:And the guys over in Detroit, the auto industry is on the decline.
Speaker:It's a sight of urban decay.
Speaker:It's a little more rigid.
Speaker:The 808s, the 909s, the 303s, drum
Speaker:machines that they're using, the synthesizers.
Speaker:You're talking about the equipement used. Yeah the equipment.
Speaker:To kind of make these programed sounds, right? Exactly.
Speaker:It's very straight ahead.
Speaker:It's becoming more rigid and it's becoming this sound that is the soundtrack to urban
Speaker:decay, which is why I talk about Detroit techno so heavily.
Speaker:It's very black, it's very rigid, but it's the music of times that's pulled from the
Speaker:past but speak to the future and present all at the same time.
Speaker:Can you speak to some of the sounds that emerged in these literal spaces?
Speaker:You got the nightclub and you got a warehouse. Like an industrial space.
Speaker:Oh, absolutely, like a nightclub,
Speaker:you have to kind of appeal to a wider audience.
Speaker:People like to hear things that are very familiar to them.
Speaker:But when you're in a warehouse,
Speaker:you generally have more of an audience that's open to more experimental sounds?
Speaker:I guess the attitude kind of matches the space.
Speaker:It's a big warehouse, it's industrial,
Speaker:it's no holds barred, it's free, and the sounds are even bigger because you have
Speaker:all that reverberation, all this space, all this concrete, all this brick,
Speaker:steel just vibrating that noise back and you feel it in your chest.
Speaker:That's what I like.
Speaker:You got excited when you talk about it just now!
Speaker:I was going to say I love the passion!
Speaker:And so Bey just touched on this a little, but the dance club, nightlife, what role
Speaker:has that played in culture, like our American culture?
Speaker:Escapism. It's just another form of it.
Speaker:Back in the what? 20s and 30s, it was film and radio and
Speaker:eventually these dances and sock hops with the 50s and-
Speaker:Speak-easies. Speak-easies.
Speaker:It's pure escapism, but especially for Black communities.
Speaker:You're constantly facing some oppressive
Speaker:force, or you just might not be having a good time at work or in school or in your
Speaker:family life, but you can reconnect with these people that you party with or that
Speaker:you may meet there, and you get to just release for six hours.
Speaker:I mean, if you're over in Europe, it's 12 hours, sometimes 34. So, you know!
Speaker:Yeah, that sense of community, right?
Speaker:It's so powerful.
Speaker:Although in this question, I feel like the 808 drum, when you feel it really has the
Speaker:deep low end, and you feel it in your chest.
Speaker:For me personally, I really like that. Do you like that?
Speaker:Absolutely. I don't want to project that.
Speaker:Why is that so special?
Speaker:Why is that big thump of an 808 so special?
Speaker:Oh, you feel it. Yeah.
Speaker:People, they talk about the way it feels in your brain, like certain sounds.
Speaker:It kind of scratches like an itch in your brain somewhere.
Speaker:If you look at old videos from, say,
Speaker:like The New Dance show that they had in Detroit, they would dance in front of the
Speaker:speakers and move their body in such a way, because they were feeling it.
Speaker:They want to feel that bass.
Speaker:That's why people dance and identify with that so much.
Speaker:It's like a pat on the back. Yeah.
Speaker:You just perfectly segwayed into my
Speaker:question, which was like - I'm a comic, right?
Speaker:And so my job when I get up there is I do
Speaker:something and they must laugh, or I did not do my job, right?
Speaker:That's how I know if what I'm doing is "correct" or not, right?
Speaker:So I'm curious about the relationship between the DJ and the crowd dancing.
Speaker:How do you guide that energy?
Speaker:Is that something you use as a gage for yourself?
Speaker:Like, if you're doing well or not?
Speaker:I forgot who coined the term, but it's called dance floor psychology.
Speaker:I'm communicating my past, present, and
Speaker:future to them and having a conversation through the frequencies.
Speaker:So, that's speaking to them, and whatever
Speaker:energy that I'm giving out, I'm hoping to guide them into some direction, whether
Speaker:it's something really energetic or something very sensual.
Speaker:From my sense, it's peaks and valleys.
Speaker:I might have you up here for about 10 minutes, but then I might want to take you
Speaker:down here for about five before I bring you back up even higher.
Speaker:Let me ask a personal question.
Speaker:When you hear music, what's the first thing to move?
Speaker:Is it the head, the hips?
Speaker:Oh, it's like a combination between my neck and my head.
Speaker:That's my little bop right there! Love that.
Speaker:Love that. Yeah.
Speaker:Do you find that the energy of the crowd guides you, or do you typically feel the
Speaker:most like the conductor when you're up there?
Speaker:Like a conductor, but it is a back and
Speaker:forth because just like a performer is up on a stage, whether you're a rapper or
Speaker:you're in a rock band or whatever, you feed off that energy.
Speaker:And that energy that I receive, in some ways, can dictate where I go.
Speaker:If I hear that they're really loving this sound at that moment, I take it there.
Speaker:I accentuate or keep playing songs like
Speaker:that until I'm like, "All right, cool, let me find something else.
Speaker:Let's go in another direction ," because I have your trust now.
Speaker:Is there a pattern that you found doesn't work in a social or party setting?
Speaker:Or are you determined to just be like, "No, this song is going to play!"
Speaker:That was my question. Like, do DJs have
Speaker:the equivalent of comics, like, bombing on stage?
Speaker:Like, nobody laughs.
Speaker:And you're like, "Oh, my God.
Speaker:I want to get out of here so bad!" Absolutely.
Speaker:But we have a quicker turnaround period than comics.
Speaker:It's like, I was playing my party two Fridays ago, and the person that plays
Speaker:before me in rotation was playing some really heady Detroit techno stuff.
Speaker:Like, the people in the crowd that knew, they knew and they really loved it.
Speaker:But you have a walkup crowd and people that aren't so familiar with that and they
Speaker:want to hear some other stuff. So, in my head, I was like, "All right, cool, let me
Speaker:go ahead and start playing some stuff that's true to the sound," But not more
Speaker:poppy, but they have familiar tracks in them, like remixes, edits,
Speaker:something to bring up that energy and people really respond to that.
Speaker:Or I just, you know, turn on some
Speaker:Ice Spice because that's what's hot right now.
Speaker:I was going to say, you have your fail-safes, right? Where you're like -
Speaker:Oh, absolutely. Every DJ has a go to.
Speaker:-this will kill. Yeah.
Speaker:I always found that there's like a social science to parties.
Speaker:Like you see the people who play the wall,
Speaker:you see the party starters, the people who are early on the floor while it's empty.
Speaker:No one's there, but just them.
Speaker:And the DJ is at the center of it all. It's really fun to watch.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I encourage everybody to go to a dance party.
Speaker:Yeah, seriously. And going to a wedding doesn't count.
Speaker:Does not count! It does not count!
Speaker:Phreakwency, tell us, how do you prepare for a DJ set?
Speaker:I find myself preparing a lot less than I did before.
Speaker:All these years have prepared me to be able to just get up
Speaker:in front of a crowd with my USB, plug on in and I can just go from there.
Speaker:I know my music and my crates well enough.
Speaker:But previewing the music, seeing what I may or may not like, what's
Speaker:the energy I'm going for, and do I want to tailor my crates.
Speaker:All my crates are organized by genre and
Speaker:inside the genres, they're tailored by subgenres.
Speaker:And even further, like, they're tailored by beats per minute.
Speaker:That's the tempo of the track.
Speaker:But yeah, I go for a vibe that day, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker:You just have to be able to flex.
Speaker:And that's where all the practice comes into play.
Speaker:Yeah, the flexibility, right?
Speaker:The crowd work of like, hey, if this is just not the vibe, or if your opener did
Speaker:not set the vibe that you had anticipated and you're like -
Speaker:And that's a science in itself right there.
Speaker:Yeah, right.
Speaker:The people aspect, I mean, that's so much of being an artist, right?
Speaker:Absolutely. Which is exhausting!
Speaker:I wanted to ask, it's come up a couple of
Speaker:times in some of Kirsten and I's conversation, the concept of flow.
Speaker:How does flow, I guess, relate to a DJ set?
Speaker:Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker:What's flow for a DJ?
Speaker:That's what I was alluding to earlier, is the peaks and the valleys.
Speaker:It's creating a warm, welcoming environment.
Speaker:So when people are first walking in, if you're an opening DJ or if it's you all
Speaker:night, you need to put yourself in a position of the patron or party-goer.
Speaker:It's early. It's 9:00.
Speaker:You have your, what is everyone drinking right now?
Speaker:Espresso martinis?
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:Oh, they sure are!
Speaker:Or whatever it is, your vodka soda. You want to chill out.
Speaker:You want to ease into it.
Speaker:Me personally, I'm on the faster side of a lot of DJs.
Speaker:So I'm starting off at 125, maybe 130 BPMs playing house music.
Speaker:After that, I get a little more intricate.
Speaker:The drums become more complex.
Speaker:This is me creating an environment where
Speaker:it's going to start to make you move a little more.
Speaker:I'm going to help you ease into that
Speaker:groove, but as time progresses, I'm going to force you to move.
Speaker:Okay. God, the psychology behind it.
Speaker:It's like you're like a puppeteer and we're the puppets, but we don't know it.
Speaker:But we want that!
Speaker:Like, we come there for you to do that, right?
Speaker:All right, I'm going to throw you a curveball question.
Speaker:Oh, yeah. Get him.
Speaker:It's 2:00 AM.
Speaker:Close your eyes, set the scene... People are tired.
Speaker:They've been dancing all night.
Speaker:What song are you playing to
Speaker:get their energy back up for like, another 30 minutes?
Speaker:Oh, see, if this is New York and it's
Speaker:2:00 AM, because bars and clubs here are shut down at 2:00 AM.
Speaker:But New York, if I'm playing in like Boston Nova or Nowadays or something like
Speaker:that, I'm probably playing some jungle edits. Very fast. It's 160 BPMs.
Speaker:It's in your face.
Speaker:The drums are intricate, but they're still palatable enough to make you really
Speaker:feel something and dance the way that I want you to dance.
Speaker:You can't ignore it. No, no, no.
Speaker:Yeah, that's the best kind, right? Yeah, I love that.
Speaker:When you're like, I have no energy, and
Speaker:then a song comes on you're like, But I have to.
Speaker:I physically have to dance to that.
Speaker:Just grabs you by the shoulders. Yeah, right!
Speaker:So before we go, we always like to ask our
Speaker:guests for some food for thought for our listeners.
Speaker:So what advice
Speaker:would you have, Phreakwency, for anyone interested in getting into DJing?
Speaker:Do you have any resources you recommend?
Speaker:If you want to get into DJing, know that
Speaker:this isn't going to pay a lot of money, at least not for a very long time.
Speaker:Get into it because you love the music.
Speaker:You have a message to convey.
Speaker:And even if that message isn't deep or
Speaker:anything, it's just for the love of making people move and giving people a good time
Speaker:that they might remember for I don't know how many years, but when they see you back
Speaker:on the street, they see you and they say, "Oh, man, you provided the soundtrack to
Speaker:one of the best nights of my life!" That's what we do it for.
Speaker:But honestly, learn the fundamentals.
Speaker:There are a lot of people using the
Speaker:technology or they're using the technology as a crutch.
Speaker:When that technology fails, make sure you're able to rely on your fundamentals.
Speaker:That's it. There you go.
Speaker:That's amazing.
Speaker:Yeah, that was really sound advice, honestly.
Speaker:So we want to thank you so much for stopping by.
Speaker:Do you want to plug your social media, anything, any upcoming shows?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:I will be playing every fourth Friday at The Dolphin for Bass Down Low.
Speaker:It's the only party of its kind in Philadelphia and honestly, the East Coast.
Speaker:Also catch me every fourth Monday at Great
Speaker:Circles playing two-hour sets in the radio front.
Speaker:I am Phreakwency on everything. P-h-r-e-k-w-e-n-c-y.
Speaker:Amazing. You cannot miss out.
Speaker:Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:All right. Thank you so much to Frequency.
Speaker:I mean, we've all seen DJs a million
Speaker:times, but they feel like such omnipotent beings to me.
Speaker:They're just in their booth.
Speaker:And I just am like, "What's going through their head?
Speaker:Are they judging my dancing?
Speaker:What's going on?" But it's so cool to hear
Speaker:that he's like, no, he wants you out there dancing.
Speaker:So that was incredible.
Speaker:Thank you to all of our guests who have
Speaker:agreed to be on this season and share your research, your expertise, your music!
Speaker:This was really awesome.
Speaker:Bey, what would you say is your biggest takeaway?
Speaker:Oh, man. What's going to stick with you?
Speaker:Kirsten, these conversations are always a
Speaker:little bit hard, when we have our takeaways and the things that we're going
Speaker:to go home with because there's so much and I'm still processing all of it!
Speaker:Right. There's so many highlights of all of them.
Speaker:But if you have to pick one, something
Speaker:that I just really did not know and that blew me away.
Speaker:Honestly, I think maybe the synesthesia conversation was really...
Speaker:I knew about what synesthesia was, but - Smelling numbers? What?
Speaker:Oh, my God, right.
Speaker:I never knew that here hearing colors went
Speaker:as far, for some people, as certain notes always attached to it. That was cool.
Speaker:And I loved seeing, and we both got to experience, some of the wearable
Speaker:technology around sound, and how that can have people who might experience the world
Speaker:a little bit differently still be able to jump in and join in on the play of audio.
Speaker:Do you experience or appreciate music a little bit differently now?
Speaker:Oh, my God, yes.
Speaker:I just feel like even since we've been recording, I've been listening to a lot
Speaker:more music than usual, hearing all the stuff that goes into it.
Speaker:So this has been amazing.
Speaker:And we also want to take a moment to thank
Speaker:all of you, out there right now, listening.
Speaker:We want to say thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
Speaker:We can have a podcast all we want, but it
Speaker:would just be Bey and I just talking into the ether if it weren't for you guys.
Speaker:Thank you all so much, seriously.
Speaker:Please remember, if you haven't already, to subscribe, you can pull up these
Speaker:episodes again when you're thinking about it, recommend it to your friends.
Speaker:And if you liked what you heard, please leave us a five-star review.
Speaker:It goes a really long way so we can get all this awesome, awsome info out to other
Speaker:people, because people need to hear it, right, Bey?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Six stars if you can.
Speaker:If you can find a way, that would be really cool.
Speaker:Why not? Yeah.
Speaker:Thank you all so much for being here for
Speaker:joining us on The So Curious Podcast and for the last time this season.
Speaker:Go, Birds!
Speaker:This podcast is made in partnership
Speaker:with RADIO KISMET, Philadelphia's premier podcast production studio.
Speaker:This podcast is produced by Amy Carson.
Speaker:The Franklin Institute's Director of Digital Editorial is Joy Montefusco.
Speaker:Dr.
Speaker:Jayatri Das is the Franklin Institute's Chief Bioscientist. And Erin Armstrong
Speaker:runs marketing, communications and digital media.
Speaker:Head of operations is Christopher Plant.
Speaker:Our mixing engineer is Justin Berger, and our audio editor is Lauren DeLuca.
Speaker:Our graphic designer is Emma Seger. And I'm The Bul Bey.
Speaker:And I'm Kirsten Michelle Cills. Thanks!
Speaker:Thank you! See ya.
