July 6, 2025
Those who truly understand good music are aware that it’s all stacked upon a solid rhythm. A songwriter might pen the lyrics or melody first and then see how they sound over a few guitar or piano chords; but even then, words that are sung need to have basic rhythmic components such as meter, syncopation and rests in order to catch the listening ear.
I’ve been playing keyboards in a Tower of Power tribute band the past few months (a super funky generational jazz band formed in the late 1960’s and still performing to this day). Recently, I was in between gigs with this particular group and had been focusing on some other musical projects that were pulling some attention away from the funk.
A week or two passed before I finally sat down to put a little time in on the funky Tower material and, being a bit rusty, I hastily tried to nail down the more intricate melodic elements of the sheets in front of me and the music that I was playing along with through my amplifier. I fumbled along, quickly remembering that this badass and complex music required thinking less about the notes (at first) and more about the rhythm, the vibe, the feel- the groove.
After all, the keyboards in these ensembles are a designated part of the “rhythm section”, along with bass, drums and guitar. I started the song over and instead of playing my organ along with it, I danced (seated on my piano bench). I tapped my foot, shimmied my shoulders, swayed and snapped along with the syncopated fills of the beat, eyes closed. I needed to “feel” it before I could get anywhere close to playing it again.
If the goal is to learn and perform a task as expertly as possible, then it goes without saying, there is a requirement of sacrifice that is necessary to achieve it, both in the time we’ve already trained and in the succeeding hours we will spend working at it. But at the end of the day we still have to “feel” it before we can expect it to render anything meaningful or significant.
Larry’s on Ex
The human experience is deeply musical: from our heartbeat, to the sentences we speak, to the steady click of our stride as we stroll down the street (that rhymes!). The reason I decided to dance instead of play my instrument during a practice session, is because I needed the music to flow through my body before it could be allowed to flow back through my brain effectively.
While this seems like a bit of simple, bottom-up processing, it got me thinking about the ways in which our bodies could “do the thinking”: dancing, exercise, sex, meditation; these are a few of the obvious ones, but how else could we benefit from initiating this type of neural processing, from the outside to the in? To be clear, the behaviors to which I’m referring are not automatic tasks that we conduct habitually, such as tying our shoes or even driving our car.
Finding oneself in nature is probably the best place to start this exploration, as “feeling” our way around the office on a Tuesday could be troublesome: “How’s it going this morning, Larry?” to which we may reply “Great. Hey, can I shake your hand? I just really want to feel your warmth before I continue this conversation.”- this may give coworkers the indication that we’re either into them or that we’ve taken a dose of Molly with our breakfast bagel; or maybe both.
We can all benefit from being outside, even without Molly; I don’t know her anyway. Inhaling (hopefully) fresh air and letting our external senses take over does wonders for us, inside and out. This is where rhythm is born, when we create a beautiful dance between stimulus and response. In today’s plasticized, sterile world, however, it seems to be increasingly more difficult to find a groove we can latch onto.
The vast majority of our day is spent answering and writing emails, commuting and scrolling. Hell, even if we do come across a song and click on it, the feed is blasting out of a microscopic speaker on our phone. Since we’ve established the ubiquity and significance of rhythm, the fact that the bass is the first musical component to disappear from this method of listening tells us that this is probably one of the last ways we should be taking in any music that matters.
Shallow End
In past essays, I’ve written a lot about full-sensory experiences and being in touch with some sort of conscious “groove”. While it’s clear that this is slowly lurching out of reach for a great number of us, maybe the things that are colloquially considered “groovy” and becoming rare, possess the greatest value to the human experience. Can we funkafize as easily as we can ritualize our daily activity?
The point is to find meaning and follow it. A groove, similar to a ritual (see our essay, Ritualistic) is what separates common habits and automatic behaviors from more deeply rooted, intentional practices. Given the aforementioned sterility surrounding us, this seems problematic, allowing for nothing more than a tenuous grasp of consciousness and leaving so many of us splashing around in the shallow end of our own experience. The deep end offers so much more space to explore, dive and swim, yet it requires us to be much less comfortable; and more bold.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Dance like nobody’s watching”? The implication here is that we’re much more likely to let loose and really feel it, when we know we’re not being examined under social scrutiny or being filmed on someone’s smartphone. But when do we allow these moments to surface throughout the day?
Maybe not at work, as we’ve already covered; and in between the moments of fulfilling our contractual obligations or employee agreements, we’re rushing to pick up our kids or our dinner, rifling through social media and infotainment sites or just vegging out in front of Hulu. In this screen-laden paradigm, everybody’s watching. And the only people dancing are falling off flatbed trailers or tumbling off of stages, while we chuckle and swipe to the next Reel.
Perhaps movement is the obstacle here. In our illustration of rhythm, we know that music has to move (tension/resolution, a steady beat); and the physiological presence music has within our systems is no different (our hearts have to beat). And since we also know how sedentary a lifestyle most Americans maintain, it’s no mystery that without movement, we’re destined to remain “grooveless” and instead may find a rhythm of monotony, always scraping our knees on the bottom of the shallow end.
Soul with a Capital ‘S’
Who cares if people are watching us dance? Well, Brenda might say, “I care. There is a time and a place for that stuff, to be shaking my body around like that.” When? Let me guess, college? When we’re well into our ‘80’s and scenial? Surely, there must be some period of time in between academia and dementia when we can actually cut a rug and not feel stupid about it. Weddings, sure, but this usually requires a kickass band (I heard Tower of Power is for higher), fancy outfits, speeches about love and an open bar. I guess a $25,000 elegant party and a vicious subsequent hangover is all it takes for Brenda to shake her hips a little.
Finding a groove, for some people, can be as simple as pulling Vulfpeck or The Meters up on Spotify. If it moves us, call it groovy; but do we have the guts to press play and let the sound consume us in front of other people? It depends on the setting: In the office? Eh, probably not; amongst friends late on a Friday night? Sure, why not?
Unless they’re sharing the groove with us though, “other people” might as well be another blockade, further cementing this idea that we cannot groove out unless the circumstances are just so, we’re inebriated enough or we’re confident nobody is watching. Just like movement, other people’s judgement is constantly bouncing around inside of our heads throughout any moment when we could otherwise be dancing or creating or feeling something real.
With all that said, I’m not sure there are a lot of other ways we can let a groove take us in the way that music can. It’s become clear to me that concepts like music are in fact special, cryptically inscrutable. There is nothing like staring down the final mile of a marathon, just as nothing can really simulate an orgasm or offer the inner peace of meditation. As my partner so eloquently commented, “that’s how you know these are things that actually matter.”
Life itself has a beautiful rhythm that is so often disrupted by the doldrums we occupy throughout it. For us to be in sync with our experience, it is absolutely necessary, not just to acknowledge a groove, but to embrace it. Brenda is right, there is a time and place for such debaucherous behavior to unfold: it’s whenever the fuck we allow it to. But she’s a bit of a planner, so let’s send her an Evite to a dance party in the conference room at 3PM. Maybe don’t send one to Molly.
Turn on the amplifier, put on the jogging shoes, breathe in silence, be naked, title the essay and then write it; preheat the oven to 400 degrees, pour some wine and crank up the tunes. We’ll be happy we did and there’s little need to understand the reasons why- not if we just want to feel the groove.