Julian Henrique's Sonic Dominance (Part Two)

Obviously at the heart of dance music is a primal urge to dance, be transported away in the groove, etc – but it’s also an innocent urge, and a really pure one. (Tom Lea, interviewing Amanda Brown for FACT)


This quote from the really sweet and interesting interview with Amanda Brown is a nice and unpretentious way to sum up what JH gets to later in his essay 'Sonic Dominance' (continuing from my earlier post, part one). 


Henriques basically takes the fairly common sense idea that really loud music in dark rooms late at night is an entirely opposite experience to many of the things which make up everyday life. He couches it in intellectual terms, but anyone who's passionate about music has an understanding of the way it can take you out of yourself and give you a different bit of yourself back, leaving you moved around and realigned.. whether we articulate it to ourselves or not, it's certainly true. 

It's a different kind of knowledge, not a fact or kernal of intellectual knowledge that you can hold onto, but a physical knowledge which comes with letting go and letting the physical body live a bit more fully and freely. It's not a way of relating to oneself or the world which is valued at all in the rest of life.. which is kind of a shame, and goes a long way to explaining the cult of dance.