Music brings health and happiness
Dancing is healing! At a recent conference, a medical researcher was presenting findings showing the benefits of dance for older people. In the Q&A session someone said that they were keeping their mind very active with crosswords and sudokus, and they thought this should protect them from senility.
“I am sure that crosswords and sudokus are beneficial, replied the speaker: but the research shows that if you want to delay Alzheimer’s or avoid senile dementia, you should dance.”
Here I am dancing some sort of Highland step, with my friend Dédé Squeren beside me and Pierre-Samuel Gréau on the left of the picture. I think we are performing a simple reel, and what I am actually doing in this picture is avoiding bumps in the plastic carpeting that has been laid down for us across the tarmac in the middle of Josselin. If you trip on a surface like this, you may not get up again! Even though I work to keep my back and body supple, and although I know how to fall safely, tripping in tarmac is definitely best avoided.
A Canadian study for a university thesis in 1988 concluded that dance is good for reducing both stress and weight. “A Little Bit of Weight is Taken Off,” said one of the respondents, explaining her lessened stress levels and providing a title for the M.Ed. thesis. Balancing and managing stress was associated with new “Leadership” skills. For both mental and physical well-being, therefore, an activity program based on Celtic dances (Scottish and Irish) is beneficial.
Ideally at my age, you should keep fit to dance. Many people put it the other way around: “I dance to keep fit” they say …. But that can also lead to injury. What you need is a general fitness regime of which dancing is a part. I do stretching before and after dances to avoid pulling muscles while dancing and to keep away very painful leg cramps while I am asleep. Ideally your feet and tendons should be relaxed in cold water, while your muscles need to relax in hot water. At St Andrews when I am dancing intensively, I wash my feet after a dance in cold water in the hand basin before stretching my legs and back and neck under a hot shower. Then in my bedroom I roll out a yoga mat and do some more rolling and stretching before bed.
Because of my work in peace and anthropology, I need to keep supple. I want to be supple. I still know how to fall safely from youthful days of judo and rugby. I can cross my legs and sit on the floor for hours - a necessary skill for sitting to discuss disarmament prospects with Afghan insurgents, Sahelian rebels or Cambodian monks. While cross legged, I can still bend forward and put my forehead on either knee – not a skill that is needed for village life, but valuable for keeping a dancer supple. One of my dance friends showed me his new step counter, called a FitBit. “The rest of me,” he joked, “is the unfit bit.” Personally I do not use a step counter, but in hotels I always walk upstairs (I usually reach my destination before other people have even found a free elevator) and I often walk 2 miles to the market: keeping fit so that I can dance, dancing so I keep fit.
Dancing brings health benefits to young people as well. Many girls in America and Europe develop terrible posture with rounded shoulders and bent spines (heavy bags of school books with badly-adjusted shoulder straps do not help). Beautiful women have good posture. Good posture means taut back and stomach muscles that protect the body against future aches and pains. Women from West Africa are so striking partly because of their wonderful posture. Because they carry loads on their heads - in order to keep their hands free – their back and spine are used with maximum efficiency. Most of the girls and women in Europe and America with good posture and straight backs have been taught dance. You can tell a woman who dances by the elegance of her walking and the way in which she holds and knows her body. The same is true for men: for dancers, and for soldiers who march. Marching is a simple form of dancing, often done in time to the music of a regimental band. I sometimes reply to people who say they cannot dance: “If you can walk, you can march; and if you can march, you can dance.”
Armies always have regimental bands and regimental marches. Scottish regiments have regimental pipe bands for a reason. Music is good for the soul, good for reinforcing camaraderie, and good for keeping time with the other members of the regiment: the basis of military discipline. The hours and hours that soldiers spend marching around the parade ground are not simply a way of killing time: they are a way of building camaraderie, team spirit and discipline. Marching to music is more enjoyable than marching to the sound of your own footsteps. When the regiment marches with its band playing, its members feel invigorated and there is a lift in the morale of the troops. When the pipes are playing, the soldiers’ blood begins to race and their marching feet barely touch the ground.
Happiness can be created by music, and by the way in which a person’s body and mind fuse with music. Dancing works better than marching to develop an intense relationship with music. When I hear Scottish dance music, my walk quickens. When I hear the bagpipes, my blood races and I cannot remain seated. If the pipes are playing, I have to stand to see the pipers. Sometimes I cannot simply stand still: I have to dance. Africans have a similar relationship with music to the Scots. I have lived my life in the two cultures: African and Celtic music and rhythms move me both spiritually and physically. I sometimes explain to people, “The music enters my ears and flows out through my feet as I dance.”