What I believe we shall be treasuring above all is not so much any music objects, however splendid they may be, as the music act, musicking, that remarkable form of human encounter in which people come together to make meanings, to explore and affirm and, yes, celebrate for a while their common humanity and their sense of who they are and of where they belong. It was a great pleasure for me to be invited to take part in this centennial conference in, if not precisely my own country, at least in my own part of the world. But there's another reason, also, why I'm pleased to have been asked to speak here today. This essay is about grooving and music. Most people, musicians or not, have some sense of grooving, so groove is not only a musical term.
People claim to get into gardening, studying and house-cleaning grooves.
Most people have experienced something like this state of participation. People in a groove experience a kind of altered state of consciousness, perhaps a light trance. Socially, people grooving together are unified. No matter how elusive groove is, it refers to a common human experience which deserves the study that it's just beginning to get. MUSE Inc. We would love to hear from you.