Reybrouck, M. Music Listening as Kangaroo Mother Care: From Skin-to-Skin Contact to Being Touched by the Music. Acoustics 2024, 6, 35–64, doi:10.3390/acoustics6010003.
Reybrouck, M. Music Listening as Kangaroo Mother Care: From Skin-to-Skin Contact to Being Touched by the Music. Acoustics 2024, 6, 35–64, doi:10.3390/acoustics6010003.
Reybrouck, M. Music Listening as Kangaroo Mother Care: From Skin-to-Skin Contact to Being Touched by the Music. Acoustics 2024, 6, 35–64, doi:10.3390/acoustics6010003.
Reybrouck, M. Music Listening as Kangaroo Mother Care: From Skin-to-Skin Contact to Being Touched by the Music. Acoustics 2024, 6, 35–64, doi:10.3390/acoustics6010003.
Abstract
The metaphor of being touched by music is widespread and almost universal. The tactile experience, moreover, has received growing interest in recent years. There is, however, a need to go beyond a mere metaphorical use of the term, by positioning the tactile experience within the broader frame of embodied cognition and the experiential turn in cognitive science. This article explores the possible contribution of a science of touch by defining music as a vibrational art that impinges upon the body and the senses. It takes as a starting point the clinical findings on the psychological and physiological value of tender touch with a special focus on the method of kangaroo mother care, which is a method for holding the baby against the chest of the mother, skin-to-skin. It is seen as one of the most basic affiliative bonding with stimuli that elicit reward. Via an extensive review of the research literature, it is questioned to what extent this rationale can be translated to the realm of music. There are, in fact, many analogies, but a comprehensive theoretical framework is still lacking. This article aims at providing at least some preparatory groundwork to fuel more theorizing about listening and its relation to the sense of touch.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
