I really don't believe you can teach musicality at all.
I think you can teach people what 'you' would do in response to a given stimulus in the music, but that's your musicality, not theirs.
You can probably teach them to anticipate breaks - but hitting breaks like clockwork, without personal feeling, won't make you musical - though it might appear so.
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**Take professional instrumentalists. All are great technicians, but the true musicians are those who bring something from within, that cannot be taught from without. Otherwise every instrumentalist would be a true musician, and that is not the case.**
No doubt most had instructors who nurtured them and provided every opportunity for that innate musicality to emerge, but ultimately it either comes from within the student, or it doesn't come at all.
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I think it goes without saying that a Salsa dancer who doesn't particularly like Salsa is doomed to be a dancer without musicality, no matter what teaching you give them.
Even if they put on a great impression ultimately it's a facade and not a true reflection of feeling the music. All the teaching in the world won't help them.
No, I really don't believe you can teach musicality.
You can set the stage for it to emerge if it's there, but that's all.
Can you teach, technically the structure of the music? Of course.
Will that help someone on their course to musicality in their dancing? Yes, but it won't make it a sure thing.
There is no one way to understand and feel music. We all feel and respond differently and personally.
I think we agree however, as you say you, 'let the student decide what they want to do based on their own feeling.'
Absolutely, their own feeling, their own instincts.
It simply isn't possible to make every instrumentalist a true musician. Ultimately it comes from within or it doesn't come at all.
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I don't believe musicality and a physical technique are comparable. Musicality is not a technique.
You can promote musicality, absolutely. You cannot, whatsover, make it emerge.
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The first step to musicality is emotional response to the music (feel it inside).
The second step is being able to take this emotional response and express it through your body (in salsa dance in this case) (express/feel it with your body)
I think you agree with this?
Let's start with emotional response to music.
You think not everyone can 'feel' or respond emotionally to music? Because paraphrasing you - musicality is 'feeling the music' that comes from 'within yourself'. Your assertion is also that musicality is innate, and not everyone has this innate 'ability'.
You can set the stage for it to emerge if it's there, but that's all.
I'm going to use some non-salsa video's to help respond.
In the first, Benjamin Zander explains how
everybody can love classical music (ie have an emotional response to music). I seriously recommend watching all of this, as the second half really makes the point, but you need the first half to get there. Also it is probably one of the best talks ever given on any subject.
http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html
I hope after watching this you feel that everybody has it within themselves to feel and respond to music. That an emotional response to music is possible from anyone and everyone.
ok, we are half-way to musicality!
Second point - using your body to express/respond to this emotional response.
Again, I think from reading your posts you do not think expression of this response with/via your body or your instrument can be taught.
I think you can teach people what 'you' would do in response to a given stimulus in the music, but that's your musicality, not theirs.
Going to use another video...
...a string quartet masterclass the same conductor as first video teaches as part of a longer version of his talk.
Start at 33:15 (earlier bit of talk is about general leadership so you can skip it) where you hear the first version they play, at 40:00 he starts to talk about how they can take it into another arena musically and then proceeds to teach/bring out their musicality. (Sorry, this is fairly long video, again, I think it is worth it.)
http://youtu.be/-EYm1yoOhbQ
I know you're going to say that as professional musicians they have innate musicality anyway.
But even so, I suggest that the first version of the music they play shows them as technical players just as you describe in the passage I starred above; but in the rest of the video you see what Ben Zander - as someone
from the outside - teaches/helps them to bring out another level of musicality.
He is not in any way teaching what he would
do in response to the music, ie he doesn't demonstrate the bowing, but he uses imagery etc to help them express the music differently through their instruments. And though they are responding to
his story and images, if you look at the women it is clearly affecting them 'inside'.
Or
Take two "styling" workshops I took the other weekend with 2 different well-known professional salseras.
1.
- Billed as 'intermediate'.
- Copy the routine.
- Actually most individual moves where probably those most of us had been taught before, so just the sequence was different. Very much - x for arms, y for feet in the way it was taught.
- Music played as background.
- Most girls in the room didn't have it at all by the end, even with the teacher demoing.
2.
- Billed as all levels.
- Taught/encouraged to 'feel' the routine - some really quite cool things like using vocal sound to change the way your body responds to the music (this was seriously cool btw!).
- I've never done any of the 'moves' before. Every movement involved the whole body, even if there were individual elements for head, arms, torso, hips, legs, feet etc. Much description from teacher of how body was responding to levels and tempo of music, demonstrated but also imagery used to help you understand what it should 'feel' like. Encouraged not to copy, but to feel it for yourself, and adapt to what suited you.
- Moves were choreo-ed to the music. Pretty much every girl in a packed class had it by the end without teacher demoing at same time. I'm pretty sure every girl in the room was feeling and responding to the music with her body; and that they all had a better idea of how to continue to do this outside of that class.
You can promote musicality, absolutely. You cannot, whatsover, make it emerge.
I'm going to steal another example from the second teacher.
Put on some strong, heavy, fast hip-hop. Tell your students to dance to it, without worrying about doing perfect hip-hop moves, just really move your body as the music suggests, get that street feeling going etc
Do you think anyone in your salsa class would find that hard?
Now put on a soft, slow dreamy pop ballad.
Ask your students to do their hip-hop dance to this song.
They will probably end up laughing their arses off because it feels so wrong.
Ask them to dance to the pop ballad in the way the music suggests. I think you'd get some smooth, flowing swaying or similar.
Voila - demonstration that
every single one of your students has innate musicality and can respond to different music from within themselves using their body.
Congratulations.
Now all
you have to do is believe in them, and help them all use their innate musicality in their salsa dancing. (simples)
Basically, the latter point I am, probably badly, trying to make is that great teachers can help anyone use their instrument or body to express their emotional response to the music.
This is too much of an interesting discussion to be left in this thread - would you mind if I asked the mods to cut out the relevant posts and move to Just Dance?
- how they interprete music; dance with those who have ears more. It's not so much about what to do, than when to.
